FORGIVENESS

FORGIVENESS

 

The Word of God has a lot to say about the act of forgiveness, but there are certain "myths" that have been circulated throughout the church about forgiveness that are not true! I would like to mention a few that come to mind, and comment briefly on them. The first one that is often heard is "Just forgive and forget!", but this is impossible for us to do in the natural. Yes we can forgive the other person who offended us, but to forget about the damage it did to our relationship is a completely different matter. God forgets, or actually chooses to not remember, our sins once they are confessed, but we humans cannot do that. Our memory bank is such that once that offence has been registered in our brain it is there to stay. To forgive requires an act of our will, but the damage has been done to our emotions and recorded in our memory bank. So although we may forgive with our mind, and be very sincere about it, the damage caused to our emotions is not healed, and we may never be able to trust that other person again to have a close trusting relationship.

 

Another thing I consider to be a "myth", is believing that you cannot forgive the guilty party unless, and until they confess their wrong actions, and ask you for forgiveness. Lots of times they are not even aware that their words or actions have offended you. So you could wait for a very long time, and continue to be offended. The important thing to remember is that you are the one who is suffering, so forgiveness will end this. Someone has said that forgiveness is simply "letting go" of the offense, and beaming out forgiveness in the spirit toward the party involved. They are certainly not suffering, if they are not even aware of the incident, but the act of forgiveness will release you from the pain. After all forgiving actually is the act of canceling out the offense, or writing " paid in full" over the record we have been holding! After all, this is what our loving God does with the record of our sins against Him! (Col 2:13-15)

 

In order to accomplish this however, we must first forgive everyone for every sin ever committed against us. (Matt 6:14-15). Then in (Matt 18:21-35) Jesus tells a very important story of the man who owed his master an enormous debt, but his master showed him mercy and forgave the entire debt! Then this man had a friend who owed him a very small debt, and refused to forgive him for it. This man was turned over to the "torturers", or Satan's demons, for not showing mercy to his friend! This is a warning to all of us!!

Sincerely submitted.

Dave Jamer