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Freedom Through Forgiveness | Cornerstone Church | Pastor Linn Winters · Rewind

Cornerstone Church

39 min

Linn Winters · Jun 10, 2026 · 5 min read · 39 min listen

The big idea

When someone hurts you, Jesus's plot twist replaces an eye for an eye with forgiveness, handing the offender over to God, and blessing them, because revenge never satisfies.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 9Jesus's teachings often function as a plot twist that overturns what we assumed was true, and stepping into it by faith brings maturity even though it's hard.
Point 2 of 9An eye for an eye is right for criminal and civil law, but it destroys relationships when applied personally, because revenge never satisfies.

Point 3 of 9The story of Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom in Second Samuel shows how seeking revenge for a real, legitimate offense ends up destroying the avenger.
Point 4 of 9When we seek revenge ourselves, we either strike out in disproportionate escalation or go passive-aggressive with bitterness, and neither path satisfies.
Point 5 of 9Bitterness cannot be contained; it leaks out and poisons every relationship in your life.
Point 6 of 9Absalom's unresolved bitterness toward his father led him to rebellion, and ultimately his own death, forfeiting God's plan for his life.
Point 7 of 9Forgiveness means canceling the debt in your heart's ledger, regardless of feelings, and it is possible even when the offender never asks for it.
Point 8 of 9Handing the offender over to God means trusting Him to deal justly with them instead of taking revenge yourself.
Point 9 of 9Blessing the one who hurt you can cause them to see Jesus instead of retaliation, sometimes leading to their own transformation.
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Matthew 5
Matthew 5:38
2 Samuel 13:10-15
2 Samuel 13:28-29
2 Samuel 18:14-15
Ephesians 4:32

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Linn Winters · Jun 10, 2026 · 39 min watch · 2 min read

Freedom Through Forgiveness | Cornerstone Church | Pastor Linn Winters

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Matthew 5
Matthew 5:38
2 Samuel 13:10-15
2 Samuel 13:28-29
2 Samuel 18:14-15
Ephesians 4:32

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

When someone hurts you, Jesus's plot twist replaces an eye for an eye with forgiveness, handing the offender over to God, and blessing them, because revenge never satisfies.

Jesus offers a better way through the pain people cause us than the world's instinct for revenge. Instead of demanding equal payback, He calls us to forgive, release the offender to God, and even bless them, so that bitterness does not chain and ruin our lives, and so others might see Jesus in us.

Key points

1
1Jesus's teachings often function as a plot twist that overturns what we assumed was true, and stepping into it by faith brings maturity even though it's hard.
Pastor Linn compares Jesus's 'you have heard... but I tell you' teaching style to a movie or book plot twist that upends our expectations. He notes that when Jesus introduces a plot twist it almost always requires faith and feels challenging at first, but life becomes remarkably better on the other side of stepping into it.
2
2An eye for an eye is right for criminal and civil law, but it destroys relationships when applied personally, because revenge never satisfies.
Pastor Linn explains that the punishment-fits-the-crime principle underlies U.S. law, but when we import it into personal relationships it becomes revenge, and revenge never calms the heart or brings satisfaction even when accomplished. He clarifies that criminal matters like physical or sexual abuse should be prosecuted, but relational hurts (a withholding parent, an unfair firing, a betraying friend) are the ones this teaching addresses.
3
3The story of Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom in Second Samuel shows how seeking revenge for a real, legitimate offense ends up destroying the avenger.
Pastor Linn walks through 2 Samuel 13, where Amnon rapes his half-sister Tamar and David does nothing, leaving Absalom enraged. He notes that Absalom's anger was legitimate but that his heart, wired like ours, decided he had to bring justice himself.
4
4When we seek revenge ourselves, we either strike out in disproportionate escalation or go passive-aggressive with bitterness, and neither path satisfies.
Pastor Linn shows Absalom getting his men to murder Amnon at a banquet, illustrating how revenge escalates far beyond the original offense. He contrasts this with a passive-aggressive path of quietly rooting for the offender's pain, noting both leave the avenger, not the offender, trapped, like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.
5
5Bitterness cannot be contained; it leaks out and poisons every relationship in your life.
Pastor Linn tells the extended personal story of a rat that died inside a wall in his and Lisa's first apartment: closing the door on the smell didn't work, and it eventually filled the whole home. He applies this directly to bitterness carried toward one person spilling out onto a spouse, a child, or anyone who reminds you of the original wound.
6
6Absalom's unresolved bitterness toward his father led him to rebellion, and ultimately his own death, forfeiting God's plan for his life.
Pastor Linn narrates how Absalom, still unsatisfied after killing Amnon, undermined David's authority at the city gate, staged a coup, and was eventually killed by Joab while caught hanging by his hair in a tree. He draws out that Absalom was in line to be king but bitterness caused him to lose God's plan for his life entirely.
7
7Forgiveness means canceling the debt in your heart's ledger, regardless of feelings, and it is possible even when the offender never asks for it.
Pastor Linn defines forgiveness as tearing up a mental ledger of grievances and declaring the person owes you nothing, distinct from forgetting or restoring trust. He shares his own story of his father abandoning the family, his youth pastor telling him he was becoming just like his dad through unforgiveness, and the moment he chose to forgive a father who never asked for it.
8
8Handing the offender over to God means trusting Him to deal justly with them instead of taking revenge yourself.
Pastor Linn cites Romans on leaving room for God's wrath rather than repaying evil for evil, and shares how his wife Lisa models this by forgiving people who deeply hurt them and turning them fully over to God without lingering angst.
9
9Blessing the one who hurt you can cause them to see Jesus instead of retaliation, sometimes leading to their own transformation.
Pastor Linn returns to Matthew 5's call to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile, explaining that kindness instead of retaliation makes people stop seeing you and start seeing Jesus. He tells the story of his friends Tony and Stacy, where Stacy's sustained kindness through 'the love dare' after her conversion eventually convicted Tony's heart until he wanted what she had.

Application

Pastor Linn frames the response as one step at a time: forgive, hand them to God, and be kind.

Choose to forgive the person who hurt you
Even without feeling like it, tear up the ledger of grievances against the one who wounded you and decide they owe you nothing, whether or not they've asked.
Hand the offender over to God
If you've already forgiven someone but still want them to answer for what they did, release them to God and trust Him to deal with them instead of taking revenge yourself.
Show kindness to the one who hurt you
Look for an actual opportunity this week to bless the person who wounded you, so that they see Jesus in you rather than retaliation.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“So, today's plot twist comes out of Matthew chapter five. It's Jesus speaking and here's what he says, he says, you have heard”
From the transcript
“He says, have heard an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Now, actually, there are contexts”
Paraphrase of the transcript
then Amnon said to Tamar, bring the food here into my bedroom so that I may eat from your hand... Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred.
From the transcript
“Absalom ordered his men, listen, when Amnon is high spirits from drinking wine, and I say to you, strike Amnon down, then kill him”
From the transcript
“Joab said, I'm not going to wait like this for you. So he took three javelins in his hand and he plunged them into the heart of Absalom”
From the transcript
“Be kind and compassionate, forgiving each other just as Christ, God forgave you. In other words, look, you didn't deserve forgiveness”
Paraphrase of the transcript
Do not repay evil for evil. What we just talked about, right? This isn't eye for eye, tooth for tooth... it is mine to avenge, I'll repay, says the Lord.
Paraphrase of the transcript
it says, you've heard that it's been said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you, don't resist any... If anyone forces you to go a mile, go with them two miles

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

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Day 1

"You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth'" (NLT). Pastor Linn opened with a picture I keep coming back to: Jesus teaches like a good story reveals a plot twist. Just when we think we know how this works — you hurt me, you pay — Jesus says, "But I tell you," and the whole scene turns. A twist like that upends what we assumed was true, and Pastor Linn was honest that stepping into it takes faith and feels hard at first. That's worth sitting with before we rush ahead. The instinct for payback feels so natural that it barely feels like a choice at all. And yet Jesus offers a different road through the pain other people cause us — not because the hurt doesn't matter, but because He has something better in mind than the world's reflex. Today isn't about mastering the whole week. It's just about being willing to let Jesus surprise you, to admit He might know a way through that you can't see yet. Pastor Linn noted that life becomes remarkably better on the other side of stepping into one of these twists. You don't have to feel that yet. You only have to be curious enough to keep reading.

For reflection

Where has my instinct for "fair is fair" quietly been running the show?

Pray

Pray for the willingness to let Jesus surprise you with a better way through ___.

Day 2

Pastor Linn walked us into a hard chapter. Amnon assaults his half-sister Tamar, and David does nothing. Into that silence steps Absalom, Tamar's brother, carrying a rage that was, as Pastor Linn put it plainly, legitimate. The wound was real. The injustice was real. I don't want to move past that too quickly, because sometimes we treat anger over genuine harm as if it were the sin. It isn't. What Pastor Linn drew out was subtler: Absalom's heart, wired like ours, decided he had to be the one to bring justice. The offense was true; the conclusion — this is mine to settle — is where the road bent toward destruction. Notice the distinction Pastor Linn made elsewhere, too: criminal matters like abuse should be prosecuted, not swept under a rug of easy forgiveness. This teaching speaks to the relational wounds we carry — the withholding parent, the unfair firing, the friend who betrayed us. If you're holding a real hurt today, you're in good company with Tamar and with Absalom's ache for her. The question the story raises isn't whether your pain is valid. It's who gets to hold the scales.

For reflection

What real hurt am I still holding, and have I quietly appointed myself its judge?

Pray

Pray for honesty about a wound that is real and still tender in ___.

Day 3

Pastor Linn turned the page to the banquet, where Absalom has his men strike down Amnon on his command. It's a jarring escalation — one offense answered with a killing. And that's the shape revenge tends to take when we take it ourselves: it rarely stays proportional. Pastor Linn named a second path too, the quieter one — going passive-aggressive, nursing bitterness, secretly rooting for the other person's pain. Loud or silent, he said, neither one satisfies. The offender isn't the one left trapped; the avenger is. He used that old line about drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. What strikes me is how reasonable both paths feel from the inside. The loud version feels like justice. The quiet version feels like restraint. But Pastor Linn's point was that revenge — of either kind — never actually calms the heart, even when we pull it off. Absalom got what he wanted and was still not satisfied. So the honest question today isn't just "would I ever do what Absalom did?" Most of us wouldn't. It's "which quiet version am I already living in?" The tallied silence, the withheld warmth, the private scorekeeping — these are the socially acceptable ways we sip the poison.

For reflection

Is my hurt showing up loud, or is it living quietly as scorekeeping and withheld warmth?

Pray

Pray for freedom from the private scorekeeping that keeps you, not the offender, trapped in ___.

Day 4

Pastor Linn followed Absalom all the way to the end. Still unsatisfied after Amnon's death, Absalom undermines his father's authority at the city gate, wins the people's hearts, stages a coup, and is finally killed by Joab while caught hanging by his hair in a tree. Here's the detail Pastor Linn wouldn't let us miss: Absalom was in line to be king. There was a future with his name on it. And bitterness cost him the whole thing. That's the sobering trajectory of an unsettled offense left to grow. It doesn't stay contained to the one who hurt us. Pastor Linn told the story of a rat that died inside the wall of his and Lisa's first apartment — how closing the door on the smell did nothing, how it eventually filled the whole home. Bitterness is like that. It leaks. It seeps onto a spouse, a child, anyone who happens to remind us of the original wound. I find that both frightening and clarifying. Frightening, because I've closed a lot of doors and called it handling things. Clarifying, because it means the invitation to release a grievance isn't God being demanding — it's God trying to keep the smell from filling my whole house.

For reflection

What "closed door" in me might actually be a smell slowly filling the whole house?

Pray

Pray that God would guard the relationships in danger of catching the leak from ___.

Day 5

"Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you" (NLT). After the weight of Absalom's story, Pastor Linn gave us something concrete. Forgiveness, he said, is tearing up the ledger — the mental list of grievances — and declaring that the person owes you nothing. He was careful to say what it isn't: it isn't forgetting, and it isn't automatically restoring trust. And it's possible even when the person never asks. Pastor Linn shared his own story here — a father who abandoned the family, a youth pastor who gently told him he was becoming just like his dad through his unforgiveness, and the moment he chose to forgive a man who never came asking. What moves me is that he chose it before the feelings caught up. That reframes forgiveness for me. I'd always treated it as something I'd do once I felt ready, once the ache faded. But this is a decision made in the heart's ledger, sometimes with the ink still wet from the wound. It's not pretending the debt was small. It's precisely because the debt is real that canceling it means something. And notice the anchor Ephesians gives: forgive as God through Christ forgave you. You're not asked to generate this from nothing — only to pass along what you've already received.

For reflection

What would it look like to tear up the ledger against someone, even before I feel ready?

Pray

Pray for grace to cancel a specific debt in your heart's ledger toward ___.

Day 6

"Never pay back evil with more evil... Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, 'I will take revenge; I will pay them back,' says the Lord" (NLT). Pastor Linn pointed to this as the next step after forgiveness — and it names something many of us feel. Sometimes we've genuinely forgiven, torn up the ledger, and yet still want the person to answer for what they did. That lingering wish for accounting isn't hypocrisy; it's the heart looking for justice. Romans doesn't tell us that longing is wrong. It tells us where to put it. Handing the offender over to God means trusting Him to deal justly with them, so we don't have to carry the role of judge ourselves. Pastor Linn said his wife Lisa models this — forgiving people who deeply hurt them and turning them fully over to God, without the lingering angst that keeps a wound open. That last part is the gift: not just releasing the person, but being released from the exhausting job of making sure they get what's coming. God sees what happened. God is not indifferent. Leaving room for His justice isn't letting the offender off the hook — it's trusting a Judge who is more fair, more informed, and more patient than I could ever be.

For reflection

Whom am I still quietly waiting to "answer for it," and can I hand that waiting to God?

Pray

Pray for the trust to release someone fully to God's justice and lay down the role of ___.

Day 7

This is the week's forward-facing step. Jesus talks about turning the other cheek and going the extra mile, and Pastor Linn read it as an invitation: kindness in place of retaliation makes people stop seeing us and start seeing Jesus. He told the story of Tony and Stacy — how Stacy's sustained kindness after her conversion slowly worked on Tony's heart until he wanted what she had. So here's the question for the ordinary week starting tomorrow: is there one actual, findable opportunity to bless the person who wounded you? Not a grand gesture. A text you didn't have to send, a warmth you could have withheld, a door held instead of slammed. This is where the whole week lands — not in a feeling, but in a Tuesday. Forgiving in the heart, handing them to God, and now, when the moment comes, choosing a small kindness. I'll be honest that this feels the most costly of the three. It moves from the private ledger out into the visible world. But that's exactly where someone gets to see Jesus instead of a scoreboard. You don't have to manufacture the moment. Just keep your eyes open this week, and when the opportunity shows up, let kindness be the thing they see.

For reflection

What is one real, concrete kindness I could offer this week to the person who hurt me?

Pray

Pray for open eyes to spot one real opportunity this week to bless ___.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Pastor Linn opened by comparing Jesus's teaching to a plot twist in a movie or book. What's a story with a twist that caught you completely off guard the first time you saw it?

Discussion questions

1
Read Matthew 5:38-39 aloud together. What is the difference Jesus draws between what people had heard and what He now tells them to do?
2
Pastor Linn noted that "an eye for an eye" works well for criminal and civil law but breaks down when we carry it into personal relationships. Why do you think that principle turns into something destructive once it moves into how we treat people who've hurt us?
3
Read 2 Samuel 13:28-29 aloud. Absalom's anger over what happened to Tamar was legitimate, so what does it tell us that his path of taking justice into his own hands ended up costing him so much?
4
Pastor Linn told the story of a dead rat behind a wall to picture how bitterness can't be sealed off. Where do people tend to see bitterness toward one person leak out onto others who had nothing to do with the original wound?
5
Pastor Linn defined forgiveness as tearing up the ledger and declaring the person owes you nothing, and he distinguished that from forgetting or automatically restoring trust. How does that definition reshape what forgiveness actually asks of us?
6
Read Romans 12:17-19 aloud. Pastor Linn described handing an offender over to God rather than repaying them ourselves; what does it look like for us to trust God to deal justly with someone instead of holding onto the case ourselves?

Pray together

Ask God for the grace to release old grievances to Him, and for hearts free enough that others might see Jesus in us.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Go deeper

Where these passages are preached

Matthew 5 2 Samuel 13 2 Samuel 18 Ephesians 4

Explore related topics

Bitterness Forgiveness Revenge Trust in God

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