Matthew 6:12-15, NASB - And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ For if you forgive other people for their offenses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive other people, then your Father will not forgive your offenses.
We pick
up today where we left off yesterday with the discussion of self-serving reasons
that learning to forgive is good for you.
Yesterday we touched on the physical, relational, emotional, and mental
benefits of the practice of forgiving. Today, we add the spiritual
dimension. Forgiving others is good for
your relationship with God and refusing to forgive hinders your relationship
with God. However, the correlation doesn’t
work the way many people think. Many
read the scripture above and take from that God withholds God’s forgiveness if
we don’t forgive others. In other words,
God’s forgiveness is conditional. That
is NOT what this passage is saying. Just
to be clear – God’s forgiveness is NOT conditional. Let’s take a closer look.
There is a principle that has been
demonstrated over and over and which all of us should recognize and begin to
live into. What you focus on, you get
more of. This extends to spiritual
disciplines as well. If you are angry
much of the time, you will receive anger most of the time. If you act in judgmental ways, you will find
yourself being judged. If you are free
with your condemnation of others, you will find yourself being condemned. The apostle Paul said it this way:
“Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a
person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the
needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show
for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s
Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.” Galatians 6:7-8
So, for a moment today, I encourage
you to focus on your experience of being forgiven. The reason for that is you need that
experience as a basis to practice forgiving others. In a surprising way that I hope you all have
or will experience, the opposite is true as well. As you practice forgiving others, your own
experience of being forgiven deepens and expands. That’s why Jesus, Paul, and forgiveness
teachers in every tradition teach about the profound connection between
forgiving and being forgiven. One does
not exist without the other.
God forgives us first (Eph 4:32),
then we begin to forgive others and ourselves. This leads to a deeper
experience of God’s forgiveness. This empowers us to better be able to forgive
others and ourselves. The cycle repeats.
The cycle repeats again. Forgiveness
grows in us and in the world. That’s how
it supposed to work. Forgiveness is a
conspiracy of God’s scandalous love. It
turns the Old Testament notion of “eye for an eye” upside down. That’s why I call it a revolution – a
forgiveness revolution.
However, the revolution goes
nowhere without our participation, without our practice. That’s why I consider forgiveness a spiritual
discipline. One aspect of a discipline
is that you do it even when you don’t feel like it because, somewhere way
deeper than your feelings, you know it’s good for you. This conviction that it’s good for you grows
as you do it – you begin to actually feel the benefits after you been doing it
while. This feeling reinforces and
inspires you to move even deeper into the discipline – thus someone who
couldn’t even run a mile at one time completes a marathon. The practice of forgiveness is like that too.
But at first, if you’re like me,
you really don’t want to do it and furthermore, it doesn’t seem like it would
be good for you. Even with the
experience of BEING forgiven under your belt, turning around and forgiving
others doesn’t seem attractive. God can
forgive because God is, well. . . God.
Ah, but let me plant a thought in your mind before I sign off until
tomorrow.
Question: Remember a
time when you knew that either God or someone else had forgiven you. Connect with how that affected you
physically, emotionally and spiritually.
To the extent you were able to make that connection, how are you now
more ready to forgive others?
Prayer: God, thank
you for your forgiveness. Help us begin
to understand why you forgive so that we may begin to forgive as well. Amen
Song: I’m Not Who I
Was – Brandon Heath
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqj9ACL5fNQ
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