One of the unfortunate things about the Christian life is that as a believer, you will be faced the prospect of being hurt or offended by another believer. It would be wonderful if this wasn’t the case. It would be even better if our churches could always be like entering Heaven here on earth each time we entered the doors. The reality is that the church is made up of sinners and is also led by sinners which means that sin sometimes arises and creates hurt and problems…even among believers.
I want to begin a series of posts dealing with forgiveness from a Scriptural perspective. The first aspect that I want to address is the foundation of forgiveness. We forgive as believers because each of us has been forgiven by Christ. It is this love and forgiveness that we have been shown by Christ that then becomes the foundation for our forgiveness of those that hurt us.
Notice from Scripture exactly how this looks:
1. Love Does Not Keep a Record of Wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:5)
In speaking about showing love to one another, Paul tells us under inspiration that one of the greatest ways to show love toward a person is to be willing to forget their sin. The word translated “thinketh” in the KJV literally means, “to not keep a mental record of something.” Therefore, to forgive means to also forget! The reality is that if you want to forgive someone, you need to start by making sure that you forget what they did to you or how they hurt you…even if they haven’t said sorry or reconciled with you about the matter. If you don’t, the opposite of this will happen in your life…bitterness will settle in and will destroy your life and the lives of those around you! (Hebrews 12:15)
2. Love Overlooks a Multitude of Sins (1 Peter 4:8)
So, does this mean that when someone sins that I should act like I never saw anything and refuse to deal with it? The answer to that question is absolutely not! We are told that we need to confront and address sin whenever we see it and help other believers with it whenever we see it begin to overtake their lives. The word translated “cover” here means “to keep silent about something.” The intent of the verse does not mean that we show our love by looking the other way. The point is that we show our love by understanding our own sinful state and understanding that not every mistake a person makes needs to be jumped on or confronted. The other aspect to this is that when we forgive, we no longer bring up the past and discuss the sin that was committed or how the person hurt us. Certainly, it is ok to discuss a matter if you are needing counsel, or help on how to handle a matter but once the answer has been given and the plan has been put into place on how to handle it, then it is time to put it into place and begin to move ahead without constantly remembering or bringing the issue up.
3. Love Seeks to Restore the One Who Has Fallen (Galatians 6:1)
There are two things that need to be noted about the word translated, “restore.” This Greek word means, “to make someone completely adequate or sufficient for something…” The other aspect is that this is an imperative or a command. We are commanded as believers to help those that have sinned to literally become adequate believers once again and by doing so, we reveal our own spirituality. We need to remember that the opposite is also true…we fail to restore and we reveal our own unspiritual perspective on the matter.
No one has ever said that forgiving someone is easy to do. There are a couple of things to keep in mind whenever you must embark upon the process of forgiving:
1. It will take work to forgive
2. It will take time to forgive
3. It will require confidence in God’s Word to forgive
4. It may require counsel and encouragement to help forgive
5. It may require accountability from another believer to forgive
I will have more to say on these points in the next post. For now, remember that the foundation for forgiveness is love…love for the Lord first followed by love for the person being forgiven.
May the Lord help you to consider these things so that you can get on the road to forgiving as soon as possible!
No comments:
Post a Comment