====== Forgiveness ======

One of my responsibilities as a branch clerk is to act as a recorder during disciplinary councils. During my first experience in this role many years ago, I had the same understanding of what were called "church courts" at the time as a lot of people do; that these events were designed to punish wrongdoing and, if the sin were great enough, eject people from the church. I thought these councils were only to purge evil and preserve the Church's good name. Though these considerations are sometimes a part of deliberations, I have learned that the disciplinary council is far more often a essential part of repentance for serious sins that leads to a most priceless gift from the Savior: forgiveness.

Since I was a child in Primary, I was taught that among the first principles of the Gospel was repentance. Here is what the wonderful "For the Strength of Youth" booklet says about repentance:

  * The Savior suffered for our sins and gave His life for us. This great sacrifice is called the Atonement. Through the Atonement, you can receive **forgiveness** and be cleansed from your sins when you repent.
  * Repentance is more than simply acknowledging wrongdoings. It is a change of mind and heart. It includes turning away from sin and turning to God for **forgiveness**. It is motivated by love for God and the sincere desire to obey His commandments.
  * Satan wants you to think that you cannot repent, but that is absolutely not true. The Savior has promised you **forgiveness** if you will humble yourself and make the effort that repentance requires. If you have sinned, the sooner you repent, the sooner you begin to make your way back and find //the peace and joy that come with **forgiveness**//. If you delay repentance, you may lose blessings, opportunities, and spiritual guidance. You may also become further entangled in sinful behavior, making it more difficult to find your way back.

I don't want to dwell long on repentance itself or how one goes about it. There is much literature on the subject and we have a branch president that will gladly help you along the road of repentance, which can sometimes be long and rocky if a sin is serious enough to warrant a disciplinary council. What I most want to speak of is the //end// of that road, the sweet gift of forgiveness, for if we cannot see the glorious end, we may never begin our journey through repentance in the first place.

This month, the Aaronic Priesthood and Young Women are learning more about the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I want them to know that the things we talk about in class can easily be adapted for use in sacrament talks and save much torture and hair-pulling when a speaking assignment comes. The same resources can be used for both leading class discussions and speaking from the pulpit! One of our topics this month concerned the need to forgive and one scripture, Matthew 6:14-15, particularly stuck in my mind:

  * 14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
  * 15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

We must remember that the purpose of life is not to sin then repent, although we might do this many times in our lives. The purpose of our lives is to return to our Heavenly Father and qualify for celestial glory. We all fall short of these goals and so Jesus Christ was designated to be our Savior and to forgive us of our shortcomings if we will repent. It is that forgiveness, planted like beautiful flowers by the Lord at intervals along our path, that I believe keep us going on that straight and narrow path to eternal life, a destination so far away in the future that it is often difficult to fathom. The sweet peace of forgiveness, a stark contrast to feelings of sinfulness and despair, help us glimpse how it will be in the celestial realm and reacquaint us with the joy of our Heavenly Father's presence!

Now, I hope you don't think that I advocate sinning so that you can later feel the joy of the Lord's forgiveness. In that scripture from Matthew are several keys to feeling the peace of forgiveness: 
  * First, if we have sinned, we must seek forgiveness. This is the impulse that persuades us to repent and instills the desire that Jesus Christ requires to help us change. 
  * Second, we must forgive those who sin against us, thus encouraging them along on their road toward repentance and their own forgiveness from the Lord.
  * Third, we must forgive ourselves once the Lord has forgiven us. A wonderful moment in a disciplinary council is the time when the leader proclaims that the Savior has forgiven a person of a particular sin. It is a joyous and specific event and I mark that date in the record of the council. It is then most important that the forgiven man or woman forgive themselves and move forward.
  * Fourth, the forgiveness we seek depends on our ability to forgive others. We will not be forgiven by the Lord unless we forgive those around us for their sins.

We don't need to sin and repent to feel the joy that comes from forgiveness! We can enjoy those same feelings each time we obediently forgive another person. Remember, we are forgiven //as we forgive//.

I have followed the story of Bishop Chris Williams for a few years now. Here is a Deseret News report of his family tragedy:

  * On Feb. 9, 2007, the Williams family was on their way home from a night out when 17-year-old Cameron White, driving from the other direction, slammed into the side of their car. It happened too fast for Williams, who was driving, to get out of the way. White would later plead guilty to four counts of second-degree felony automobile homicide (charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of an injury accident were dropped). But before Williams even knew the teen’s name or the circumstances, he knew he had to “let it (the act) go.”

Bishop Williams gave a press conference a few days after the crash, as reported in the Church News:

  * "As a disciple of Christ, I had no other choice," said the bishop of the Crystal Heights Ward, Salt Lake Highland Stake.
  * 
  * Bishop Williams spoke with the Church News on Feb. 13 at Primary Children's Medical Center where Sam, his 6-year-old son, was hospitalized for injuries sustained in the accident. Bishop Williams, who suffered a broken rib, said that he had been reading the scriptures shortly before the accident and was impressed by the Savior's statement, "Of you it is required to forgive all men."
  * 
  * Bishop Williams said, "As I understand that statement, it is not an option whether or not I forgive somebody. It is a commandment."
  * 
  * He said that in the moments after the accident, he looked around inside the car and realized that his wife, Michelle, and two of their children, Ben, 11, and Anna, 9, had died in the crash. (Funeral services are scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 17.)
  * 
  * He said he remembered the sealing ordinances of the temple. "I wanted to make sure that I would live in such a way that I'll have the right to be with my family for eternity," he said. "The last thing that I wanted to do in that moment when I realized that my wife and children had passed was to break a commandment. Really, as a disciple of Christ, I had no other choice but to forgive."
  * 
  * At the moment he decided to unconditionally forgive the driver of the other vehicle, Bishop Williams said, he heard Sam calling out to him from the back seat. Until that instant, he had not known whether Sam had survived.
  * 
  * As he was being treated at a hospital emergency room, Bishop Williams asked someone to have placed on the temple prayer roll the name of the other driver, a 17-year-old young man. His reason for doing so was powerful.
  * 
  * When Bishop Williams was 16, he was driving to work at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City when two young boys, brothers, ran from between parked cars and were struck by the vehicle he was driving. One of the boys died.
  * 
  * Bishop Williams said that he remembers sitting in the back of a police car, being 16 years old, "all alone, waiting, terrified, not knowing what had happened, being in a state of absolute shock, grief, pain and hurting, with nobody around, nobody to support me."
  * 
  * "Some lady came up, tapped on the window, opened the car door and said, 'Would you like us to put your name on the temple prayer roll?' Being 16, I knew what baptism for the dead was, but I didn't know what the temple roll really was. But when she mentioned the word 'temple' I felt peace fill that car. I said, 'Please, yes.' It brought such a peace and a calm to me; it has stayed with me throughout my life." 

Did you hear the words "peace and calm" in that last statement? Those are the feelings that come with forgiveness. It was felt in the back of a police car as a nameless woman forgave the future bishop. And many years later, when his own family is the victim of another's wrongdoing, he forgave and the pain of his family loss was lessened by the miraculous power of forgiveness.

Bishop Williams made a few more statements in a press conference just a few days after the tragedy, also reported in the Church News:

  * To his ward members and during the news interview he bore powerful testimony of the Atonement. He said that he wants to be among the friends who will visit the young man "for however long it takes" for him to recover from his role in the tragedy.
  * 
  * "My wife and my two children are taken care of," he said. "They're in a place of rest, a place of peace — Paradise, as it's been named. The true tragedy of this event, the eternal tragedy, would be if this young man chose not to partake of the Atonement, and if we lost that soul. It's one thing to lose a life, but in the resurrection and eternal families, that can be healed through the love of our Savior. This can be an experience of growth, an experience where one day we're very grateful that we were able to pass through it. But if we were to lose that soul, for me, personally, heaven just wouldn't be heaven. I don't know if I could feel celestial joy knowing that there was a soul lost because of this accident."
  * 
  * Bishop Williams acknowledged that he and his family had been "handed a bitter cup." However, he said, a counselor in his stake presidency had explained that not even the Savior drank all of His bitter cup at once.
  * 
  * "He said that in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Savior drank of it a little, and then He went back to His disciples, to His friends, for a little bit of support, and then He went in and drank some more. He had an angel come and strengthen Him and support Him, and He drank a little more. He went back to His disciples, and was able to have a little bit of a respite. Then He started to drink the remainder on the cross, until it was all gone, until it was finished. I think it's like our lives; we're not asked to drink more than we're able to all at once."
  * 
  * He said that with love and support the cup will not always remain full, that one day it will be empty. "The gospel," he said, "gives us such strength to draw on the Lord and to allow Him to put His arm around us and help us to drink."
  *
  * He added that he hopes he will be able to say, "I did that which was my duty to do. I endured that which was put into my cup, that I drank all that I was asked to drink." 

Bishop Williams is a wonderful example of one that, even in heart-wrenching extremities, can forgive. As he says, it is a duty for us, laid upon us by the Savior, who suffered far more than we ever will, suffered at our hands through our sins, and yet forgives us all as we repent.

President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke of forgiveness in a talk at the October 2005 general conference:

  * I know this is a delicate and sensitive thing of which I am speaking. There are hardened criminals who may have to be locked up. There are unspeakable crimes, such as deliberate murder and rape, that justify harsh penalties. But there are some who could be saved from long, stultifying years in prison because of an unthoughtful, foolish act. Somehow forgiveness, with love and tolerance, accomplishes miracles that can happen in no other way.
  * 
  * The great Atonement was the supreme act of forgiveness. The magnitude of that Atonement is beyond our ability to completely understand. I know only that it happened, and that it was for me and for you. The suffering was so great, the agony so intense, that none of us can comprehend it when the Savior offered Himself as a ransom for the sins of all mankind.
  * 
  * It is through Him that we gain forgiveness. It is through Him that there comes the certain promise that all mankind will be granted the blessings of salvation, with resurrection from the dead. It is through Him and His great overarching sacrifice that we are offered the opportunity through obedience of exaltation and eternal life.

My dear brothers and sisters, in some small way, I have felt the joyous feelings of forgiveness and I hope each of us can feel that love of the Savior as he forgives us.

If you have sinned and not yet repented, I beg you to do so. If the sin is serious or you are unsure of its seriousness, I implore you to visit with our branch president, who stands ready to help you along the path of repentance toward that sweet forgiveness. Rest assured that if a sin requires a disciplinary council, the intent is bring you back to the place where you can more fully feel the Savior's love for you and the peace of his forgiveness.

If you seem to lack in spiritual vibrancy, if your efforts in prayer or scripture study seem hollow, you might look around and see if there are those who need your forgiveness. They wronged you and they may not seem repentant, but that is not for you to judge, only to forgive. As you do this, you will find that the Spirit returns and your gospel efforts are better rewarded. Most of all, you will feel the joy of forgiveness!

Of this I bear witness, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.