Today, we are looking at some of the tools that are available to us when we receive Christ – forgiveness and surrender. We will look specifically at forgiveness. It’s not us trying to work out forgiveness. Honestly if it was completely up to us, we would never forgive. It is the Holy Spirit working inside of us. These tools at our disposal give us greater freedom than we have ever experienced before in our lives.
Forgiveness is a transaction, where you choose to give up the position of judge, jury and prosecuting attorney and give that to God. It is more than a feeling; it is an action you take, words you speak, to release the person who has harmed you or offended you. You are letting go of the desire to punish or harm the person or to let the anger continue to kindle into a bitter root.
Why do we forgive? There are two good reasons. When we become born again believers, God forgave all our sins – past, present and future – because of Jesus’ death on the cross. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Up to this point, this is our status – that we deserve death. We have already been spiritually dead – that happened to our descendants, Adam and Eve when they decided they wanted to be their own “gods” and ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But our physical and eternal death is payment to God for the sins we commit in our life.
But hear this: Christ died for your sins, and you never met Him. He took all your sins, all my sins, all of every single person’s sin on the cross and paid the price so we could be free from that penalty. Romans 5:8 which you’ve heard today already, says, “but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
So not only did He take all your sin upon Himself so you don’t have to have an eternal death, but when we become born again believers, we get the opposite – an eternal life. And we are not just sitting on the sidelines hoping to get called in to substitute. We are on the team – Team Jesus. We are adopted into His Family, we are called Heirs, we inherit the Kingdom of God.
The other reason to forgive is purely selfish. When we hold unforgiveness, we are angry, frustrated, stressed, and this can lead to many other emotional and physical symptoms. But here’s the thing – what do you think is happening to the person who harmed or offended you? Very likely nothing! They may not even realize they offended you! So, holding onto those feelings for so long is like you drinking a little poison every day and hoping the other person will die.
Sometimes, we struggle forgiving others even as born-again believers because we have some misconceptions about what forgiveness means and the actions required.
So here is what forgiveness is NOT:
It is not forgetting what happened
It is not excusing what happened or saying it is ok that it happened
It is not saying “it’s ok if it happens again” and putting yourself in a position to be harmed again. It is healthy to create boundaries with people who want to cause you harm.
Forgiveness does not require the other person to be there. As a matter of fact, it is often best if they are not because as we said earlier, they don’t know they’ve done anything wrong, or if they do, they don’t want it to be pointed out to them by the person who they offended.
Here is a guide to what you can say to an empty chair that represents the person whom you want to forgive:
“(Name of person), it hurt me when you (describe all the ways in which they hurt you) and it made me feel (describe all the emotions you felt).
Because I am by nature a forgiving person in Christ, I now choose to forgive you. There is nothing you need to do for me to forgive you. I do it willingly.
I give up the right to be judge, jury and prosecuting attorney, and give it to God, whose job it is.
I choose to trust Jesus alone to meet my needs for love, affirmation, acceptance, worth, and security.”
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