your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others,
then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.”
Matthew 6:14-15
God the Father is a forgiving God. These verses can be
a little confusing though because there is a condition on that
forgiveness. But it is because of God’s great mercy that the condition is
there. Because God sacrificed His Son to forgive me, I should be so
filled up with gratitude and thankfulness that it overflows to others.
This happens when I realize the depth of my transgressions, my pride, me
depravity. I have never murdered anyone but it took the same blood to
forgive my pride and arrogance and self-reliance that it takes to forgive a
murderer. It took a desperately wicked and deeply inhumane death by an
innocent man to pay for my sins so that I could be God’s daughter. My
sins were deeper than my actions, they were my identity – I was born a
sinner. To completely be renewed through the blood of Christ, I too, must
die to the old nature and be born again. Part of the new nature is a
forgiving spirit. So forgiving others is an outpouring of who I am in
Christ. If I am truly forgiven, then I will innately forgive
others. It is a sign of my rebirth, not a condition put upon the old
nature that can’t be met.
Forgiveness is an act of worship. It is a volitional
choice to let go of hurts and to live life victoriously. My emotions
don’t always stand in agreement with my decisions, so forgiveness is a journey
of getting the emotions to line up with the decision! It takes reminding
our emotions over and over again of the truth of the choice of forgiveness and
then an act of praise to God for His forgiveness and the ability to
forgive. So, you see, this is not a condition for salvation, but a
statement of what a saved person will do.
So, God the Father is forgiving. He is the epitome of
forgiveness. He demands that we forgive others because we are to be like
our Heavenly Father in holiness. He even gives us the power to forgive!
No comments:
Post a Comment