Christ Declares Whom God Will Forgive-Matthew 6:14, 15

Matthew 6:14, 15. Christ declares whom God will forgive.

Jesus here gives some instructions concerning the frame of mind in which prayer must be made. In the Lord's prayer we are directed to say, "Forgive us our debts, or trespasses, as we forgive our debtors, or those who have sinned against us." This petition seems like asking God not to forgive us if we do not forgive others. Some people might have been induced to wish that some part of the sentence was omitted, and that they were instructed simply to ask God to forgive them, whether they forgave others or not. But it would be of no use to make such a prayer; for God is determined not to forgive us unless we forgive others.

It is therefore necessary that we should inquire whether we really forgive them; for our hearts are so deceitful that we are apt to imagine we forgive, when we still harbor a grudge against an offending brother. What then are the signs of having really forgiven an offender? When we have heartily forgiven him, we cease to indulge the thought of his offence, and we take no pleasure in speaking of it. When we have heartily forgiven him, we neither wish evil to befall him, nor feel glad if it do befall him; but, on the contrary, wish all manner of good to happen to him. 

When we have heartily forgiven him, we neither speak bitterly of him ourselves, nor do we feel gratified if we hear others speak harshly of him. This last, perhaps, is the best test of our state of feeling; for some who would not dare to speak harshly of an enemy themselves, would be glad to hear others do so. These should be our feelings even towards one who has not asked our forgiveness; but if our offending brother ask us to forgive him, we ought to restore him to friendship and endearment, and our heart ought to be towards him as before—and thus we ought to continue to act, in spite of repeated offences.

Is it an easy thing thus to forgive? No! it is impossible to nature, and can only be done through the Holy Spirit working in our hearts a sense of our own unworthiness, filling us with love to God for his mercy towards us, and then with love to our fellow-creatures.Though thousands offer this prayer of our Lord every day, it is only accepted from those whose hearts are renewed by grace. Before our prayers are accepted, we ourselves must be accepted. Cain's sacrifice was not accepted by God, because he himself was not accepted. Abel's sacrifice was accepted, because he himself was accepted. 

Would we, therefore, offer acceptable prayers, we must first give our own selves to the Lord; we must come in the name of Jesus, and on account of his sacrifice that he offered on the cross, God will accept us, renew our hearts by his grace, and answer our prayers. God will not be mocked. Man would gladly put God off with formal, heartless prayers; but He will not receive them. He spurns the offering, and says, "Who has required this at your hands—to tread my courts? When you spread forth your hands I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers I will not hear." (Is. 50:12-15.)

But let no penitent sinner be discouraged by these declarations. We may come with our sins to Christ, if they are a grief and a burden to us, for it is He alone who can forgive them, and it is He alone who can subdue them. His Holy Spirit will make us hate our sins, help us to strive against them, and enable us to overcome them+

How Do We Forgive

It is hard to let go and forgive those who trespass against us but, it has to be done. The reason being is that when we do not forgive we are the one being imprisoned in our minds.  So by letting go of the pain and embrace forgiveness we find freedom to move forward and we can begin to heal. Forgiveness is not something that we are going to wake up one morning and find all is well, we no longer suffer the pain inflicted upon us. It is a process where we make up our mind to change our attitude toward the offender. Changing our mind does not mean we forget, it does not mean we have to let people walk all over us, nor that it means we have to be friend with the offender, even though Paul taught us in 2 Corinthians to go for reconciliation when it is possible.  But, if you keep feeling you have been wronged and you deserve to get vengeance then in essence what you are telling God is that you want Him to deal with you in the same way you are dealing with this person. As Christians, we are not allowed to cultivate pride, resentment, coldness anger in your heart. Christ can take away the hurt and the toxins and stress that come with cultivating a spirit of an unforgiving heart.  Nevertheless, a forgiving Spirit is a gift from God through His grace. As Christians we have been equipped by Him to exercise our will to forgive. Christ said so in Luke 17:4

Once you are ready to make the decision to move forward in forgiveness, understand that the process could take a while to get through. You have to change your perception of the situation, meaning stop focussing on the fact that you were wronged. Noticed that I did not say to deny the wrong that was done to you but instead you change your focus on God’s standard. Because as long as you insist on keeping the focus on you and how someone else hurt you, then, you put yourself in the same boat as the offender because you too you are wrong with God and you are sinning. The willingness to turn your heart toward God says that you are ready to trust His dealing of the matter instead of trusting your own judgement.

Once you begin the process to start looking at the situation with God in it and through Him, Admit that you have been hurt and your pride, your flesh, your ego are keeping you away from acting like a child of God. Admit to God your own sin and your willingness to move forward with His help. Usually, by the time I get to that step, I start praying for the offender. At the beginning it will hurt you because the pain is so fresh so your prayers will sound hollow and insincere. But while I am praying I usually beg God to teach me how to pray with all my heart for the offender because I know that is the only thing that would honour Him and bring Him Glory.  Changing your perception to see yourself not better than the other person, will always help you to want what is right in God’s sight.

If the offender is in your life and you have to deal with him or her, then it is important that you gently with the help of the Holy Spirit confronts this person and establish healthy boundaries. If you are dealing with someone who is mean-spirited, abusive, insensitive and has no willingness to change, then God never said you have to take the abuse, let the person off the hook for his or her actions or lack of actions, and to accept their lack of respect or ignoring the problem. It is not a godly way to handle the situation because sin is sin. God’s Word tells us to rebuke frankly so we will not share in his or her guilt (I paraphrase there). Honest rebukes every time, not only separate us for tolerating someone who is sinning over and over again, it also helps us to stop perpetuate an attitude where we offer ourselves as martyr so we can wallow in a pity party and play the victim. What you also need there, is to work on changing your own behaviour by taking a page from Christ who forgave while on the Cross. You need to think about Stephen who forgave those who stoned him. Christ also said to forgive as many times it is necessary. Even where there is no room for reconciliation, that is okay just as long as we make sure we keep an open heart willing to please Christ in the situation we are in. We do that by cultivating a Spirit not willing to maintain grudges and willing to obey God.

God has allowed me to thrive under these circumstances where I dealt with a lot of verbal abuse. There were circumstances in my life where I was judged, tried and sentenced all by the same people while they were wrong about my motives.  It is amazing to see how He sanctified me through those circumstances because I have learned to take them in His name and brought it all at His feet. God really means business when He said “vengeance is mine” He is truly your defense and will vindicate you too in His own time.

PRAYER: Father I pray hearts of stones would be softened and my brothers and sisters in Christ would be enlightened. They would learn to understand how important it is to forgive. Your Word does not offer an alternative to forgiveness, and no matter how cruel someone is to us, you expect us to forgive. So daddy, I pray that we would take forgiveness seriously to heart and in our walk with you. The Spirit of unforgiveness is destroying us and the Church, so I pray we would all get off our high horses, wake up and see Satan is having a feast on our account. Bring your holy repentance in our hearts. You taught us to forgive even as you hanged on the Cross. Father, teach us and help us make it a priority in our lives today my Lord!

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Forgiveness

 “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” 

The Lord's prayer teaches us to pledge to forgive in the same way He forgives our trespasses against Him. Yet, to most of us Christians these are just vain words we say and we not only do not know the meaning of them, we are able to live our Christian life never examining those words, what they mean to God and also to us in our walk with Him. In essence we are telling God to deal with us in the same way we deal with other people who have sinned against us. The majority of Christians finds it difficult to forgive simply because forgiveness is not easy for most of us. We have a need to retreat and protect ourselves from those we know have the ability to hurt us. The more we have been hurt the more we need to protect ourselves. Some of us, we are so busy protecting ourselves, we project an emotional state of mind that lump everyone in the same batch. We have become so crippled emotionally that we are not capable of seeing the love around us and we cannot accept love of other people.  

When we do not forgive, we tend to think that harboring resentment and bitterness towards those who hurt us somewhat amount to something toward the offender. We feel more in control because we are holding power over them. Some of us do not forgive simply because of fear because we don’t want to find ourselves again in the same position. We dig ourselves deep into holding onto the pain, the hurt, the humiliation as well as the offender who caused our pain.  It is like having a cassette player in our mind playing things over and over again as a reminder that you were victimized.  We find some sort of strange satisfaction in rehearsing those sick feelings. It is like playing the cassette in our mind to make sure we keep our hatred for the offender alive and fresh. We do not want to forget. We hold onto everything because we feel we should be compensated, somehow there should be some punitive damages. Some part of us wants vengeance for what we lost because of someone else. We find it difficult to forgive because our pride and self esteem have been injured and we have been humiliated. Over the years we build up so much resentment in our hearts, so much bitterness that we are like people who have injected themselves with some kind of poison running through their bloodstream. By the time we get there, we have learned to live like a rat in a cage.  We are clueless of the fact that we have actually built our own mental cage, stepped into it and threw away the key.

When we do not want to forgive, we find it easy to find hundreds of reasons to justify our behavior. We internalize them, and we learn to believe in what we tell ourselves. We feel if we forgive, the other person would be let off the hook and this cannot be. In our ill informed mind, we think the offender is free to go on with life while we are still suffering the consequences of the pain and humiliation suffered from their actions. I find people with very low self-esteem always go on and on about the fact that they were hurt because they were not appreciated, not loved enough and that people hurt them on purpose etc. It is an amazing and sad thing to watch Christians holding on to grudges for decades just because someone made them feel unloved or unappreciated. They simply cannot get over the disappointments and are not willing to forgive.  

Please understand I am not talking about someone who has been raped or someone who has watched a loved one taken away by a bullet or something like that. I can imagine these tragedies are harder to forgive and they have nothing to do with our pride. While lack of forgiveness no matter what the situation in our live, how vile and deep someone violated us, it is a destroyer. It destroys our souls and relationships. Over the years we build up so much resistance to forgive the one who inflicted pain on us, that we allow the offender to have a hold on us even after decades.

The truth is, there is always freedom in Christ. The hurt inflicted on us does not have to overpower our lives. But, we cannot find this freedom unless we make the choice to forgive. Ultimately we have to make the choice to let go and allow ourselves to heal and be free. One of the sad things that I observed, it does not matter how well we know the Bible or how long we have been calling ourselves “Christians” but if we are not able to forgive, we cannot reach maturity in Christ either.

PRAYER:  Dear Lord, forgiveness is not easy, so I thank you for making a way for us to find freedom in you. I pray that we would choose forgiveness every time that we are hurt by someone else, knowing that your Word tells us not to seek for vengeance because vengeance is yours. I pray that you would soften the hearts of my brothers and sisters in bondage, they would learn to see their offenders in the same way you see them. Your grace would be flowing in their hearts they would not be discouraged but pursue forgiveness at any cost because it is your will daddy. May you be glorified in us my Lord Savior Redeemer!

Next Article will be on “How Do We Forgive”

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