Judging by the unusually large amount of response, yesterday’s entry on white hot anger seemed to touch a nerve. I begin my 18th year of writing Words for the Day this year. This morning as I pondered the large response to the entry concerning anger I was thinking of how it ranked overall to various subjects I’ve written about through the years.
While I haven’t measured it scientifically I can say with confidence that the subject that always has garnered the most response is forgiveness. It just seems that forgiving someone who has wronged us is one of the most exceedingly difficult things in life to do. I’m not speaking about the subject of us receiving forgiveness for our sins from God mind you, but our offering forgiveness to others for their sins against us.
Concerning the incident yesterday, I didn’t let the sun go down before I both apologized for my behavior and offered him forgiveness for his. Harboring resentment and anger against someone has a tendency to eat me up. I mull it over and an evil darkness clouds my mind as I envision exacting my revenge against them over and over. When I forgive someone it seems to cleanse my mind and I’m no longer slave to those thoughts. So regardless of whether or not it makes much difference to the person with whom I had the dispute, offering forgiveness helps me.
I’ve always looked at the Bible similar to a vehicle’s owners-manual. God created us and gave us His Bible in order that we might learn how to obtain the maximum out of our relationship with Him. If we follow the recommendations in a vehicle owners-manual we’re going to obtain the maximum from our vehicle. Similarly the closer we can come to following God’s commands in the Bible, the more we can obtain from life.
Jesus was asked by His Disciples one time how to pray and below is His model prayer as recorded in Matthew:
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us today the food we need
AND FORGIVE US OUR SINS,
AS WE HAVE FORGIVEN THOSE WHO SIN AGAINST US.
And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.
Interestingly right below it He offered this:
“If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
I take that to mean He is very serious that He wants His church to forgive. It is bad enough to commit anger sins or whatever, but the last thing I want to do is compound it by committing the additional sin of not forgiving.
I think too we should note that this is not conditional. In other words it does not say forgive if the other party is receptive to it. It states that we should forgive unconditionally. Throughout my life I have had many people that have done me wrong at one time or another and when I was younger even abused me. It was difficult to reach a level of spiritual maturity whereby I could forgive them, but I did. In some cases they snorted contemptuously at my attempts at forgiving and/or apologizing for my sins against them, but it didn’t bother me at all. That is THEIR problem; I wanted to resolve MY problem.
I cannot think of a solitary instance whereby I offered forgiveness to someone that it didn’t result in a feeling as though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. As always God knows what we need, after all He created us. If we would only observe His guidelines in His biblical owner’s manual, we would flourish and be blessed beyond human understanding.
It is easy to remember unconditional forgiveness because that is what Jesus did for us on the cross. None of us deserved it and all of us are guilty of sins against Him and yet He willingly and lovingly forgives all sin to those who are willing to receive it. Praise His Holy Name!
Eph. 2:1
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
February 9, 2016 – Click here to listen