Forgiveness

(Luke 5:21) And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?

“Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” The Pharisees were showing their self-righteous pride and were wrong again. It is NOT only God who can forgive sins! We are all not only able to forgive, but commanded to forgive.

(Mark 11:26) But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.

God’s forgiveness toward us is conditioned upon our forgiveness of others. God promises that if we refuse to forgive those who do us wrong then He will not forgive us either. With so much at stake we better understand what forgiveness is, what it is not, and how we can do it. We better not think like the Pharisees and relegate it to a spiritual realm that is out of our reach.

Forgiving is not forgetting. Most people take this view and therefore think it impossible to forgive because they know they can’t forget. God never says He will forget. He says He will not remember, and there is a big difference. To forget is to purge it from your memory, and therefore to never think about it – as if it never happened. To “not remember” is to refuse to recall it to ponder and think about it again. It is to stop living in the past and start living from this day and forward.

To forgive doesn’t erase all the effects of the transgression. Sin cause pain, sorrow, and grief. Someone gets hurt. In fact, everyone gets hurt. Sin is deadly and it eventually kills everything it touches unless forgiveness enters into the picture. The transgressor has defiled his conscience and his soul and the guilt will destroy him if he doesn’t find forgiveness. He may not think so right now and he may not appear to have any remorse, but one day he will. The one who is hurt by the sin will become bitter and their life will be tainted by the feelings of resentment and revenge if they do not find a way to truly forgive. Their bitterness will spread to those around them.

(Heb 12:15) Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;

God is our example for forgiveness. If He can forgive what has been done against him then surely we should be able to forgive anything that could be done against us in this temporal world. The Bible doesn’t say that God so loved the world that he forgave them all their sins. It says that God so loved the world that He GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON. God doesn’t forgive us based on the fact that He loves us. God put himself in a body of flesh and suffered and died in our place and it is on that basis that He forgives. He took our place.

If you truly forgive you will also have to be willing to take the place of the transgressor. Jesus called it bearing our “cross.” One big obstacle to forgiveness is that our sense of justice demands that they be punished. By the law we have a right to demand punishment, but forgiveness is much better and does much more to repair the damage and salvage the lives that are affected by the sin. There will be an argument in your soul that says, “It just isn’t fair!” But you must realize that God could have felt that way about us, too. However, He loved us and counted our redemption worth the cost, so He bore our sins in his own body on the tree. To truly forgive you must be willing to suffer the hurt yourself so the sinner can be free and be reconciled to the one he has wronged.

(James 5:20) Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.

If you forgive you will suffer pain, but you will also salvage the life and maybe the soul of the one you forgive. God requires it of us. We cannot receive his forgiveness if we cannot turn around and give to others what He has given to us. “For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame…” Nothing is as sweet as being forgiven, unless it is being the one who forgives. It is a wonderful gift that enriches everyone touched by it, and remember – it is not “only God” who can forgive sins, you can, too!

Mike Miller
Saturday, February 7, 2009