“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
The text written above is one sentence from the Lord’s Prayer, and it is probably the most difficult. In it we ask God to forgive us as we forgive others. Jesus added fuel to the fire in verses 14-15: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This puts a premium on forgiving others. I have entitled this article “Revisiting Forgiveness,” because I have written about it, or referred to it a lot on CouchPotatoRedux. I looked up the word “forgive” in The Revell Bible Dictionary and found it to be helpful in helping us understand why forgiveness is so important. This article will be based on the three parts of this definition. The first part of the definition was: “To pardon or absolve of wrongdoing.” When God forgives us for our sins, He absolves us of them. In other words, we are free of them. Our sins have been cast as “far as the east is from the west.” We do not have to feel guilty about them anymore, because God has absolved them. This is something like what our forgiveness is to do for others and ourselves. When we forgive someone, we are saying that what they did to us, said to us or about us, has been absolved. When we say that we have forgiven everyone who needs our forgiveness, we need to think way back in our lives. Have we forgiven everyone who has hurt us in some way or another? I don’t mean to nitpick, but we really need to forgive it all. This would include parents, teachers, bullies from school days, etc. etc. Have you absolved people of the wrongs they have done to you? The second part of the definition was: “to cancel a debt.” I don’t mean to be redundant, here but when we cancel a debt it means that the debt is no longer outstanding. We sometimes feel that people who have hurt us in some way or other are indebted to us to apologize, and until they do, we are unwilling to forgive them. It is true that when we ask God to forgive our sins, we need to repent and confess in order to receive the forgiveness. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you are not God. Jesus, who is God, prayed as He went to the cross: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” I’ve got news for you: “them” means you and me. Jesus forgave us because He died for our sins on the cross as well as for those who crucified Him. It is real Christian faith that will help us to cancel the debts of others even though they do not apologize. I personally know that this is not easy, but it needs to be done if you are to have the peace that Paul describes as “passing all understanding.” The third part of the definition was: “to give up resentment.” This might be the most difficult of all. Think back on your life: what resentments do you still hold? Hey, I’m not just preaching to you in this matter. It takes a lot of prayer for me to get over resentments in my life. But you might be thinking that since I’m a preacher I shouldn’t have a problem with this. We preachers can have ego problems like everyone else. People give us ample opportunity to hold resentments against them. But this is not just true in the lives of preachers, it is true in everyone’s life. There are people who will go out of their way to offend us, or hurt us in one way or another. The Holy Spirit knew this about people when He inspired: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” If Jesus doesn’t resent us because of the sins for which He has forgiven us, then our excuses for resentment are very thin, or downright invisible. The business of forgiveness is not an easy business, but it is very important. We will be happy Christians and churches when we forgive each other. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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