Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn
not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Luke 6:37
Are you carrying a grudge? Is your
pride more sacred to you than your relationship to other people? Do the words
“I’m sorry,” and “I forgive you,” seem like a foreign language to your soul?
Sorry seems to be the hardest word to say, but forgiving an offense can be the
hardest action to take. We all have trouble at times forming the words, “I
forgive you.” Pride gets in our way. “Then Peter came to Him and asked, “Lord,
how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”
“No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “But
seventy times seven!” Matthew 18:21-22. Peter asked the
question because he really wanted to hold the grudge. Maybe he’d just turned to
Andrew and said, “I’ve had it up to here with you, Andy! That’s the eighth time
today!” Andrew might have run around the back of Jesus for protection, and so
Peter asked the question, hoping that as an oldest brother himself Jesus would
have moved to the right so that Andrew would have been exposed and Peter could
clobber him.
Yet Jesus stands his ground, like the
Master Teacher He was, and tells him, (paraphrasing is mine) “innumerably more times
more than your precious pride wants you to. It’s necessary for you to be
wronged for the sake of the kingdom.” It was not the first time Peter had been
taught about forgiveness. The Master Teacher held class on it for the masses,
and he was there that day, with his brother, and many of those who had hurt and
injured his pride. Many people had made that trip to the top of that hill, and
probably along the way had carried the burden of a grudge up with them. When
Jesus is teaching them to pray, He spends a lot of time on forgiveness, so it
must be right up there with the sovereignty and power of God.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation, but
deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom, the power, and the
glory forever. Amen.
For if you forgive men their trespasses,
your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Matthew 6:12-15
I’m going to ask that you give me a
little lee-way here, brothers and sisters, and allow me to paraphrase the
Lord’s prayer in this passage because sometimes we hear it so often that we
don’t really hear the words that coming out of our mouths unless we stop and
reword them. Jesus says, “Forgive us the way we forgive those that have wronged
us, and don’t allow us stray into the ways that got us there to begin with so
that we are in the wrong that leads to sin, against ourselves and others, because
evil is enticing and ensnaring, so we need You to keep us from it. Ultimately,
You are God, and we are not and You have the power and dominion over us,
because we are members of Your Kingdom. So it is and will ever be.”
There is only one choice to be made
when you’ve been wronged by someone. You either pick it up and carry it, with
all the hurt and anger, or you don’t. At times, when things are rightfully
causes of hurt and anger, you can’t help but carry things for a while. It’s
human nature to be hurt. When someone dies, when someone leaves you, when someone
injures you or someone you love, or when some other injustice occurs in your
life, it is the human condition to be carrying some grievance against another
person, but a grievance and a grudge are two different things. A grievance is a
result of an unfair act or injustice requiring an act of arbitration or
retribution so that it’s made right. A grudge is a feeling of resentment and
bitterness that can lead to hatred, envy, jealousy and even murderous thoughts.
We are warned about bearing grudges because they are so heavy. “You
shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your
people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” Lev.
19:18 & Eph.4:30-32, “And
do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of
redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put
away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another even as God in Christ forgave you.” God
is such a good Father that He does not want us to carry a load we were not
meant to carry, physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. The stress
created by unforgiveness is intense, and God knows just how it interferes with
the joy He intends for us. The unforgiveness is what gets in the way.
Practically,
what does forgiveness look like? Well, it’s hard! That’s why Jesus had to
repeat it so often. Think about all the times He told people their sins were
forgiven. Isn’t that the message of the Gospel? Forgiveness? Wasn’t that what
the life Jesus lived all about? Our forgiveness? So yes, it’s hard! It’s very
hard to walk in forgiveness when we are being continually wronged. We are
judged by people who don’t live in our skin, don’t think our thoughts, and
haven’t walked in our steps, and yet we do the same to them as well. And it’s
so hard! So what’s the answer?
GRACE! The answer is grace. Grace is giving what you
don’t have to give, yet it seems to abundantly come from God because it’s so
sweet and so good it couldn’t come from anywhere else. Grace is giving what is
undeserved to those who don’t deserve it, unexpectedly. In our world today
there seems to be a misunderstanding of grace. People either swing from one end
of the pendulum to the other. They either believe it is earned, like a grade,
and only those who meet certain qualifiers will receive it, or everyone gets it
and its blanket grace and covers everyone, everywhere, simultaneously,
regardless of whether or not they want it. The people in the first category comfort
themselves by viewing grace as being something that their good works will merit
them. I like to call them competitive gracer. They want to be in first place
when it comes to receiving grace, but giving it? They don’t like giving away
the prize to just anyone; it should be awarded to those who are truly deemed
worthy by working out. The second camp of grace believes in a form of universal
grace, where everyone wins regardless of their eternal perspective. Grace is a blanket
that falls from heaven and covers or ‘smothers’ everyone. This form of grace comforts believers in this
concept because then everyone goes to ‘a better place’ when they die. They
believe there is no need for adherence to God’s laws because of this free-flowing
river of grace. The issue with both points of view is that grace is a gift, and
like all gifts it’s not reliant upon the receiver, but upon the giver. Imagine
if you were to go to your bed tonight and there was a gift there for you. It
was something you always wanted and needed, as if the giver had been in your
mind all along and knew you so well, better still it was unique to you, and no
one else had anything like it. That’s what grace is like. Grace is not being
super strong; it’s being weak and finding the strength within the weakness to know it's okay to be weak. It’s not for everyone, because it is a
choice for the Giver. “And He said to
me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in
weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that
the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Cor.12:9
God
is graceful, as we know, but how do we become so graceful that we can forgive
those who do wrong to us? The world would tell you to assess your feelings and
decide how to best express them in some conflict resolution model in which you
and the other party could arrive at a resolution which may leave you both
feeling that you had lost something by compromising. Sometimes you’d give a
lot, and at other times you’d give a little. It’s never a fifty-fifty split.
With forgiving it always puts the forgiver in the driver’s seat giving them
full power and the receiver in the position of getting a gift of great value.
If you’ve ever been a victim of someone, and you forgive them, you’ve taken the
power back from them. They can no longer victimize you. In that sense,
forgiveness is of great value for the one who forgives. If you’ve ever been the
one who has wronged someone and been forgiven, you do know the value of a
restored relationship and the liberty that comes when the guilt is released
from your consciousness. Forgiveness is a win-win for everyone because it’s
God’s grace distributed through His children.
One
last issue in forgiveness is the emotional investment that it requires. The
truth is there are times when it’s easy to forgive an offense, and there are times
when it is extremely difficult to forgive someone. I have been truly touched
and brought to tears by the family members of murder victims, or other victims
of brutal crimes who forgive the perpetrators in open court. I believe they do it for themselves, because
if they don’t these people will continue to hold power over them for the rest
of their lives. The more difficult it is to forgive someone due to our emotions
the more we need to bring it to God for healing. It’s usually our wounds that
need the healing from the injury inflicted, but forgiving them will heal that
too. God created us with emotions, and sometimes we do get angry. It is what we
do with our anger that can get us into trouble. “Be angry, and do not sin. Meditate within your heart on your bed and
be still.” Psalm 4:4 We must check our emotions in the forgiving
process and vent them to the One who can hold them for us, not as the world
tells us to do and vent them at every opportunity. “A fool vents all his feelings,
But a wise man holds them back.” Prov. 29:11 So if we don’t entertain
our feelings of being wronged then it is easier to forgive.
If God, who we have wronged repeatedly,
who we have denied and refused in our rebellion and sin, could forgive us our
sins in such a manner as to make atonement for us through Jesus, who are we to
hold anything against each other? I pray
this blog has caused you to think of those you have been carrying a grudge
against. I pray you now recognize how heavy a load you’ve been carrying, and
you are ready to lay it down. If so, you may have to make a call or send a
simple text that either says those hard things, “I’m sorry,” or “I forgive you.”
If you do it, and you don’t hear back you did your part and the Father knows
it. You have done well. God will work on it from there.
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is
covered.” Ps. 32:1
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