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The Bible says that we are to forgive one another as God in Christ forgave us (Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13). This is a crucial factor in practicing the church life for the building up of the Body of Christ and thus merits our attention in these days.
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Paul warned the Corinthians that those who partake of the Lord’s table without properly discerning the Body eat and drink judgment to themselves (1 Cor. 11:29). Brother Lee linked the unlimited forgiveness of offenses in Matthew 18—the “seventy times seven”—with discerning the Body:
What does this four hundred ninety mean? It means that you forgive endlessly. To forgive endlessly means to forget. You may be absolutely right and he absolutely wrong, but if you do not forget, the Lord will hold you accountable in the next age. Forgiving, forgetting, others’ offenses is the discerning of the Body. I forgive regardless of how much I am offended, because he is a member of the Body. If I condemn him while I partake of the Lord’s table, in eating the bread, I eat to my own judgment. (CWWL, 1978, vol. 1, 159)
Our forgiveness should not be conditioned on others’ repentance and apology. Brother Lee pointed out, “It is altogether wrong to require others who have wronged us to repent. The Bible does not teach us to demand that others repent; instead, it teaches us only to forgive others” (CWWL, 1984, vol. 5, 8).
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Very good words, but in the Local Churches severely lacking in practice.
Rather the words I quoted exposes the severity of their unforgiveness. Those that were raised in the Local Churches as I was, you may think the norm is the speaking the co-workers have against elders who left. I'm here to tell you that's not normal. That is not building up of the Body of Christ. Rather it is abnormal.
What is normal? By God's grace, I was able to witness it nearly a decade ago. I was meeting with a community church. One of the elders dissented with direction of the church. At his final meeting the pastor called up the elders, they blessed and prayed for this brother and his spouse. The pastor extended an open invitation to visit any time.
I have wondered had our Local Church history been any different had John Ingalls, Al Knoch, Don Hardy, Bill Mallon, etc had been blessed and prayed for publicly? Instead history has shown any offenses these brothers have caused anyone, there has not been any forgiveness.