I don’t need to tell you – but I will – ‘Forgiveness is not easy!’ Forgiving someone who has hurt us or one of our loved ones is extremely hard to do. People often cry out for ‘justice’ in such circumstances, when what they really want is vengeance. They want to see the culprit punished. That is the human response.
Occasionally you hear someone say ‘I forgive you’ when the matter is quite trivial. Sometimes you hear a person suffering greatly due to the actions of someone who has wronged them by saying they have forgiven them even though the perpetrator hasn’t asked for forgiveness. That is difficult to understand. How would I feel in those circumstances?
So it is astounding that the man Jesus, God’s Son, when he was unjustly condemned to death, tortured, shamed and crucified, said in prayer, ‘Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing’. During his ministry, Jesus taught that those who followed him must learn to forgive and leave all judgment to God. Those who cannot forgive and become hard and bitter instead are not in the state of mind that enables God to forgive him.
Jesus told a parable to illustrate this about a man who owed his boss a huge sum of money. When he begged for time to pay, his kind and generous boss cancelled the debt completely. Wow. What a relief! The man then met another servant who owed him just a small amount of cash and he insisted that he paid him back straight away. His fellow servant begged for time to pay but the man refused and had him imprisoned for debt. When the boss heard about this he punished the unforgiving man and said, ‘Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ God is like the boss – He will forgive our sins (a huge debt) if we repent and ask Him; then we must have the same attitude as Jesus and forgive others who hurt or offend us. Therein lies peace of mind, and peace with God.
But real forgiveness requires one other step to bring about even greater peace and to experience in some small measure the forgiveness God shows us. We have to forget the wrong that has been done to us. No going over it again and again, reminding the person what they have done wrong to us. God tells us that when we ask Him for forgiveness and it is granted he removes that wrong doing as far as the east is from the west – and you can’t get much further away than that! Now that really is peace of mind and incentive not to do the same thing again.
Luke 23: 24
Matthew 18: 23 – 35
Ephesians 4:32