“Then came Peter to (Jesus) and said, Lord how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? 22. Jesus said unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times: but, until seventy times seven.”
Some of my great moments of truth come to me in the morning when I am shaving and looking at myself in the mirror. When one comes face-to-face with oneself, he just has to face the truth. This happened this morning as I was shaving, for I said to myself: “Get over it.” God did not reveal to me what I specifically needed to get over, but He knows what is in my heart, mind and soul. This put me in theologically-philosophical frame of mind (That’s deep. lol), and I felt a blog coming on. Whatever, or whoever, it is that is stuck in our sub-conscious, or conscious minds, we need to get over it. That is basically what Jesus was telling Peter in Matthew 18:22. Peter thought that forgiving seven times was a gracious plenty, but Jesus told him differently. (Don’t start doing multiplication here, for what Jesus meant was that we are to just keep on forgiving – period.) Why do we need to “get over it”? First, if something is eating away at us, it is not hurting the person who caused the “eating,” it is hurting us. We need to get the grudge out of our systems. Years ago, I read about a fish that is called the “hog fish” – at least I think that is what it was called. This fish attaches itself to a larger fish and begins to eat the fish from the inside. That is sort of like what happens when we fail to forgive and move on with our lives. We will not move on, or grow in Christ, until we just get over whatever it was that has eaten at us. We will just be eaten away a bit at a time. Second, we need to think about the times that we have hurt other people. I don’t think that it ever occurs to us that we might be the cause of someone’s hurt or grudge. There are people who need to forgive us for the wrong that we have done to them. When we look at it this way, it should make it easier for us to forgive those who have hurt us. Perhaps we need to forgive ourselves for wrongs that we have done others. Third, we need to forgive others because we have been forgiven by Jesus. Ephesians 3:31-32 gives us this advice: “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be you kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” The fact that we have been forgiven so much by Jesus should be an incentive for us to forgive others. Fourth, we need to forgive others, because God expects it of us. In the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:12), Jesus said that we should pray to be forgiven our “debts, even as we forgive our debtors.” In verses 14-15 Jesus went on to say: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Now this should really give us even greater incentive to forgive others. This doesn’t mean that you will be eternally lost, but it does mean that your Christian growth will be at a standstill until you find it in your heart to forgive others. Let me put it this way: God is serious about this matter of forgiveness. We seem to think that our failure to forgive is not very important, but according to Jesus it is very important. No one knows better than you what you need to “get over.” Today would be a good day. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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September 2021
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