Every time I preach, I try to leave it all on the stage. And in the sense of giving it everything I’ve got-all of my energy, all of my effort-I do.

But there’s another sense in which I don’t. Every week, countless scriptural insights, sermon points, and illustrations do not make it into my final sermon. It’s not that they were necessarily bad or untrue. It’s a simple matter of not having an unlimited amount of time every week to say everything I want to say.

Yesterday was probably the most obvious example of this in recent memory. I began a two-week series on forgiveness conservatively titled “F-Bomb.” Going into the sermon, I had about six pages of possible points that I wanted to give over a two-week span. I probably made it through one page. And that was pushing it.

Now I fully believe that I said everything God led me to say this past weekend. And God showed up in powerful ways beyond description and set a lot of people free from the prison of their own unforgiveness. But a lot was also left unsaid that I think could really benefit people as they’re processing through what forgiveness looks like. So I thought it would be good to give you a behind the scenes look at a few of the things that didn’t make the final cut or that didn’t receive a fuller explanation than what I gave. Think of these as the bonus tracks to yesterday’s sermon:

  • Forgiveness isn’t given on the expectation that the other person will change, apologize, or understand. It isn’t based off the response of the person. It’s born out of our response to the gospel. Sometimes, forgiveness precedes repentance. On the cross, Christ forgave the people who were crucifying him long before they ever repented of it, if they even did. His forgiveness did not guarantee their repentance. But it did make it possible.
  • Confrontation is not always necessary for forgiveness to occur. In fact, sometimes not confronting those who have hurt you is the wisest and godliest thing you can do. If you insist on having to tell everybody how badly they have wronged you, it might reveal that you really aren’t interested in forgiving them at all. You’re just using the pretense of forgiveness as a platform for condemnation.
  • There are many offenses that are beyond your ability to forgive. There are none that are beyond the ability of Christ to forgive through you. For you, forgiveness might be a miracle. But God isn’t relying on your power to forgive any more than he was relying on the power of Elijah to stop the rain or the power of Moses to part the Red Sea. Never let your inability trump God’s infinite abilities. Rather than worrying about whether you have the power to forgive, ask Christ to unleash in you the unlimited power of forgiveness that resides in the cross.

(If you weren’t there to hear it, we’ll have the whole sermon up later today.)