If You Forgive Others

Again this week we feature an excerpt from The Promises of God ©1998 by Discipleship Publications International. This week’s post is from a chapter written by Roger Lamb.

The need to forgive others is incredibly real. Most of us grow up learning to be disillusioned with promises—especially promises to forgive. We both forgive and ask for forgiveness, thinking that we have buried the hatchet. But just a single fit of rage later, we quickly reach for the handle of the hatchet again. It may be the handle to one or one hundred past hurts that we sling at the person who has committed the new offense. We have all been on the receiving end of that hatchet, and it is not a pretty sight. And it does not feel good. That is the definition of dysfunctional relationships: the inability to solve conflict and forgive.

There is a huge obstacle in our learning forgiveness. We cannot truly forgive until we have experienced forgiveness. We have to be forgiven by God to forgive others as God does. Once we are forgiven by God, however, we are empowered¬—and obligated (Matthew 18)—to forgive. God says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). A true disciple of Jesus who has been forgiven of all his sins should be the most compassionate, forgiving person around. His taste of forgiveness teaches him to forgive.

Immediately after teaching the disciples the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:13-14). When I was wrestling with my bitterness and resentment toward the person who had betrayed me and hurt me so deeply, this passage cut me and clarified the problem. Suddenly other people’s sins against me were no worse than my sins against them, and their “huge” offenses paled in comparison to my own sins against God.