Forgiveness Can Be Scary
The Bible is a fascinating book. There are passages that seem unrelated to us. There are passages that are profoundly encouraging and uplifting to us. And there are passages that (should) scare the snot out of us. One of the scariest of those to me is Matthew 6:14-15. In this passage, Jesus follows up on His model prayer, in which he instructs us to ask to be forgiven the same way we forgive others. In 6:14=15 He says if we forgive others, the Father will forgive us, but if we don’t forgive others, He will not forgive us!
Most of us try not to read this, and when we do, we assume it doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means, and we skip right over it.
Occasionally someone will tell me that they have tried to forgive but just haven’t been able to. They just can’t forgive the other.
That is never true!
The problem is, most people don’t know what “forgive” means. So, as with other key Biblical words like “love” and “faith”, thy simply assume it means what they think it means. In this case, the average person will tell us that forgiveness means forgetting what the other has done, and acting like it never happened (add the necessity of feeling good about that person—liking them, etc.).
Forgiveness means none of these things.
When Jesus gave the command to forgive, he didn’t use the English word “forgive”—English didn’t exist yet. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit preserved His command with a Greek word—aphete. The word was an accounting term used to denote a debt that was cleared. Forgiveness, then, doesn’t mean that we forget what the other did. It doesn’t mean that we feel good about the other—or that we put ourselves in a situation where the other can do the same thing to us again. It simply means that we refuse to collect the debt owed because of what was done.
We don’t make them pay.
None of us can forget what someone has done to us—or for that matter, what we have done to them! None of us can make ourselves feel good about another. But we can refuse to make them pay, knowing that our Father in heaven has refused to make us pay for our sins. In choosing to do this—and it is a choice—we not only obey God, but we show our faith in Him by being faithful to His example.
Who do you need to forgive? Who has hurt you or sinned against you? Who are you tempted to make pay for what they have done? If you want to follow Jesus, out of love for Him, you express love for the other by identifying how you might make them pay—and NOT doing it!
As we do this, we often experience problems with our own feelings—anger, resentment, and frustration. We can deal with these Biblically if we take the time to understand what scripture says about them. In my next article, I will examine some of the biggest of these and how God has already given us the answer to them!
If this has been helpful to you, please consider sharing it with others. If you find you need help living this out, contact your own pastors or email me @ randy@essentialfaithproject.org.