Forgiveness

Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). He further states, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). Notice that after Jesus teaches us to focus first in our prayer upon God, His Name, and His kingdom, then on Christ as our daily Bread, He subsequently reminds us of our obligation to love our neighbor. And what better way can we express selfless love than by forgiving others who have wronged us?

Forgiveness is especially, if not only, necessary when we are in the right (or at least when we perceive that we are right) and the other party is not. In a culture that always demands its rights, refusal to absolve someone of guilt toward us when they have not deserved such absolution is just another one of our rights, we claim. Refusal to forgive is self-centered, while forgiveness thinks lovingly of the other. But the Lord offers us some motivation as well as possibly an initially unsettling realization about the necessity and efficacy of our forgiveness.

If God’s forgiveness of my sins hinges upon my forgiveness of others who wrong me or by whom I perceive that I have been wronged, this then leads me naturally to wonder how well I forgive others. Indeed, how (or in what manner) am I to forgive others?

The Holy Spirit encourages us, through Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, to be “kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven” us (Ephesians 4:32). So I am to forgive as God has forgiven me. And I have reason to hope that His forgiveness will be very efficacious – consistent and entire. When God forgives, He forgives perfectly. So then when forgiveness is required of us, we are to forgive perfectly – sincerely, consistently, and entirely – “as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven” us.

But do we ever do anything perfectly? This is yet another reason to abide in Christ. If the works of Christ are put on our account, and if Christ forgives perfectly, then we can forgive perfectly when we abide in Christ.