9 Practical Lessons on Repentance & Forgiveness: Leadership Culture (Pt. 2)

By Sutton Turner, CP Guest Contributor Tuesday, June 23, 2015

4. REPENT TO OTHERS.
Practice Matthew 5:23-24.
When confronted with sin that you have committed, quickly and humbly repent to that person. If you are in a healthy, biblical community, you will oftentimes have people come to you sharing how you offended them or sinned against them. (Side note: confrontation is good. We all hate it because we hate being wrong. But the Church really needs to see confrontation as a helpful means to sanctification.) Other times you will pray, and the Holy Spirit will graciously tell you whom you have sinned against and need to repent to. Whichever means the Lord uses to confront your sin, confess it, repent of it, and change it.

In 2014, I prayed and the names of eight people immediately came to my mind. Over the next couple of days, I began to call them and repent to them. The Holy Spirit wants us to repent and reconcile with our brothers and sisters. You just need to ask him.

5. GAIN A BROTHER.
Practice Matthew 18:15-17.
Disputes and offenses happen in any organization, however in the church, we must always follow Jesus' teaching. Matthew 18 lays out the process for dispute communication.

1. The objective is to gain your brother or sister. Every confrontation needs to have the proper end goal: restoration.
2. Meet with your brother or sister face-to-face whenever possible.
3. If this one-on-one meeting does not bring about repentance, then bring in a biblical counselor, pastor, etc. to help you gain a brother or sister.
4. If this meeting does not bring about repentance, then take this situation to church leadership to help you.

Over the last two years, I have seen many people forego their responsibility to seek reconciliation according to this biblical process. With the rise of Facebook, blogs, and Twitter, people seem to think that telling your Facebook friends of an individual's sin is the first step. I have personally failed in this regard and have also been victim to it. It is detrimental to reconciliation and extremely hurtful to a relationship between siblings in Christ. Don't do it! Resist the strong temptation to function outside of the instructions of Scripture. You can be sure that it is from the enemy whose only plan for your life is to kill, steal, and destroy (John 10:10). Do not let him take the joy of restoration from you.

6. FORGIVE THOSE WHO WILL NOT MEET WITH YOU.
In walking out the instructions in Matthew 5:23-24, you need to seek as much as possible to meet face-to-face with your brother or sister. However, you will find that some people will not meet with you, even though they have written blogs, done interviews with media outlets, and continue to communicate to others how you have sinned against them. Forgive them, pray for them, and do not put a time limit on reconciliation. For instance, there is someone that has been very public regarding my sin against him for almost two years now. Unfortunately after repeated attempts, he still refuses to meet with me. I pray for him and continue to hold out hope for reconciliation through a face-to-face conversation someday.

In my experience, some of your greatest and most vocal critics who are calling for repentance will not want to sit down with you to give an opportunity to admit wrongdoing, apologize, and ask them for forgiveness. There is then no opportunity for reconciliation. (You however don't need to meet with those you've offended in order to repent.)As a leader, this will be very difficult and one area you will need to continually give up to Jesus in prayer. Forgive, forgive, and forgive with your mouth in prayer until that forgiveness gets deep into your heart.