Teenagers Need Forgiveness

Jesus is asked how many times we should forgive someone. The standard religious answer of the day was you forgive someone seven times. Jesus said, one time, that’s it. . . No, that’s not what he said. He said, “Not seven times. Seventy-seven times.” Some scholars say that seventy-seven was a symbolic number that implied an unlimited scope. In other words it was Jesus way of saying you forgive someone for doing the same stupid, wrong, even evil stuff to you, indefinitely.

Do you buy that? Isn’t that pretty difficult?

Have you ever struggled with forgiving a son or daughter something they’ve done wrong to you, especially something they’ve done more than once?

If a teenager were guilty of say, lying, seven different times, would you be ready to forgive and forget? If a teenager were caught stealing seven times, let alone seventy, what would you call them?

There was an old proverb known by the people of Israel for many years that said,

“The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”


This meant, whatever the parents did wrong the children will pay the price as well. The children will make the same mistakes as the parents. It’s like a bad debt that won’t go away. That old sin cycle will keep on spinning. But the Lord speaks to the people through Ezekiel, saying, “Why do you keep on repeating this proverb? It’s not true and so you shouldn’t say it anymore. Everyone will be responsible for their own sins. All lives are mine. All souls are mine. Only the person who sins will pay the price of the sin, which is death.”

Of course everyone, parents and youth, everyone sins. But the good news in this is that God has a remedy for every person – that remedy is new life through God’s gift of His Son. And new life starts with experiencing forgiveness.

This can be difficult for teenagers because seeking forgiveness would be admitting there is something wrong.

Kraken scene from Juno

Teenagers don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want anyone to know there’s anything wrong with them. Shoot I don’t want people to know there is anything wrong with me either. I don’t want that. And I’m supposedly mature. A teenager’s worst fear is that they will be found out. So they change the subject.

There was a boy in my youth group many years ago who seemed to be struggling with living up to his own reputation. Mike was a smart kid with an even quicker wit. He liked to play the part of the slightly bad boy. He was pleasant most of the time but he always had a gleam in his eye, like there was more going on than he would tell you about. I’m not altogether sure why he came to my youth group except that he was friends with a couple of the kids in the group and that there was a part of him, perhaps a very small part, that was interested in what we were living.

Mike stopped coming to youth group as he got older. I would see him in the neighborhood occasionally. I would hear about minor troubles and then a dui. Then another. Fast forward maybe five years later Mike contacts me and says he wants to talk. He had just been convicted of another dui and fleeing the scene. He was about to go back to jail for the third time. He had a young wife and a baby that he would be leaving for awhile. He came to me to ask if I thought he could change. He came to ask me to pray for him.

I think people like watching soap operas because the characters always stay the same. If a guy is player and cheater in one episode, he will be in another. If a woman is prone to letting people walk all over her last year, it will still be happening to her this year. So you can tune in to the soap opera after missing months of it and really only need a little help catching up. It’s like the characters in the story walk around with cartoon bubbles over their heads that say, “Womanizer”, “Doormat” “Convicted Felon”.

Some people in real life live like they have a label hovering over their heads that everyone can see. Mike must have felt like that after a while. What do you have to do to get rid of the label?

Teenagers probably feel the label more than most. By the time they’re in the eighth grade they’ve been labeled – nerd, jock, band nerd, cheerleader, druggie, loser, slacker.
There’s a scene in the movie Juno where Juno goes over to the adoptive parents house and hangs out – the adoptive mother finally says, “Your parents are probably wondering where you are. Juno says, “Nah, I’m already pregnant. What other shenanigans am I going to get into?”

We’ve all got labels. Like the discount clothing bin at your favorite store. The clothes are discounted cause their odd sizes, or faded, or marked in some way. And so the bin is marked, “As Is.” There’s no other way to buy them, but “as is.” We’re like that. We all come “as is.” And here’s the thing teenagers need: they need to know that they are loved as is, and they are forgiven for their mistakes and for their sins, as is.

Now, forgiving is not excusing. It’s not saying it was okay to do wrong. Forgiving is saying what you did is wrong but I won’t make you pay the price. It is the first step in the remedy for sin. There is this great truth:

“And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4.32


There’s this brief episode in Acts where it says that Paul and Barnabas, the great missionaries to the whole non-Jewish world, are getting ready to go on another missionary journey. Barnabas wants to take a young man named John Mark. But Paul says no because Paul thinks John Mark is immature and unreliable. Paul and Barnabas argue about it the disagreement becomes so intense that they split over it. Barnabas ends up taking John Mark with him and Paul finds another partner in Silas.


Now, Paul had his reasons. But Barnabas did what was needful. John Mark may have been unreliable and immature, but he didn’t stay that way. Because he knew he was forgiven. He knew that because Barnabas showed him that. John Mark was a young man who became what God wanted him to be because someone decided to forgive him his faults and help him to grow. Barnabas name, by the way, means “son of encouragement.” Our kids need more Barnabases in their lives.