Forgiveness
FORGIVENESS
Untangling Our Lives
Matthew 5:9-15, 23-26; Romans 12:18
Whether sinned against or sinning, the Christian is under obligations to take the initiative in settling the dispute.
But you say, “I can’t forgive.” Then may I say it very quietly, but very solemnly: You can never, never be forgiven. “But if you don’t forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your sins” (Matt 6:15). Do you not remember that in the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “Forgive us of our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”? So if you do not forgive, you ask not to be forgiven. In refusing forgiveness to others you have broken down the bridge over which you yourself must pass, namely, forgiveness.
Victorious Living
(Week 6, Sunday)
The Mark of Jesus: Forgiveness of Injuries
Mark 11:25-26; Luke 11:4; Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13
The sublimest prayer that was ever prayed, for it embodied the sublimest spirit ever shown, was the prayer, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Sir John Seeley says that the outstanding distinguishing mark of a Christian is willingness to forgive injuries (see Sir John Robert Seeley, Ecco Homo [Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1968]). . . .
Now you are to be branded—branded, mind you, with the spirit of forgiveness of injuries. It is going deep, deep; never again will you retaliate or harbor resentments.
Retaliation and harboring of resentments belong to a dead past—gone forever!
Abundant Living
(Week 46, Wednesday)
Cleanse Your Past
Luke 19:9-10
God forgives you; you must forgive yourself. Bury it all at the foot of the cross, and put “No Resurrection” over it. The past is buried. Its effects may carry over into the present, but it, itself, is buried. God can help you counteract and cancel even those continuing effects by starting new redemptive influences. God restores the years that the caterpillar and the locusts have eaten.
The Way
(Week 12, Sunday)
God Forgives You; You Forgive Others
Philippians 2:1-5
Since God forgives you, you can forgive others. But if you shut off others from your forgiveness, then you shut off yourself from God’s forgiveness. The wonder of God’s forgiveness to us should send us out joyously to forgive others.
The Way
(Week 16, Saturday)
For Thine Is the Kingdom
Luke 11:20; 1 Corinthians 15:25; Jude 24-25
We are to ask God to forgive us on condition that we forgive others [see Matt 6:9-13]. If we do not forgive others, then we can never, never be forgiven. We have broken down the “forgiveness” bridge over which we must pass. This necessity for giving forgiveness if you are to get it is the only portion of the prayer upon which Jesus turns and comments. He thus showed the importance he attached to this matter, vital importance. And note that the forgiveness we are to give others is past, not future—as we “ourselves have forgiven” (v. 12 Moffatt). The basis of expectancy of forgiveness is the fact that we have already forgiven others.
The Way
(Week 30, Monday)
The Seven Pillars of the Christian Faith
John 1:1-5
[Jesus] did not come to announce the forgiveness of God; he was the forgiveness of God. The word of forgiveness became flesh in him. He did not come to announce God’s love to humanity; he was that Love.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 9, Sunday)
Outer Assurances of Forgiveness
Luke 15:20-24
And now the drama of redemption shifts from the [prodigal] son to the father: “But when he was still far away, his father saw him and felt pity for him and ran to fall upon his neck and kiss him” (Luke 15:20 Moffatt). He saw him “when he was still far away,” for, day by day, he had watched that road, early and late, believing that the son would come back. He didn’t go after him; there must be no compulsion. The son went on his own and would have to return on his own. But oh, the infinite sympathy; sympathy in its root meaning, “suffering with”!
The father couldn’t go into the far country, but he could go a long way down that road when once he was assured that the son was through with the far country. And the old man running down the road with his beard flying and the tears falling down his face like the summer rain is the most touching scene in history. Jesus looks up, in repeating the story, as much as to say “That’s God.” And it is!
The father let the prodigal repeat his confession, for that confession was catharsis. It had to get up and out. But the father never allowed him to finish it: “Make me as one of thy hired servants” (v. 21); that was choked off. There must be no unreal talk of being a servant: This is my son, my son still! “Quick,” he said, “bring the best robe”—the outer sign befitting a son; “give him a ring for his hand”—the ring as the sign of authority; “and sandals for his feet”—only slaves went with bare feet, a son, no; “and bring the fatted calf”—saved for a special guest on a special occasion. And this was it!
Why these outer signs of the father’s forgiveness and restoration? Would his word of forgiveness not be enough? No, the sense of guilt and inferiority and shame had gone so deep that, in addition to the word of forgiveness, there had to be these outer signs to assure him. So when we come to God in real repentance, we get outer signs of forgiveness: the robe of self-respect, the ring of authority, and the wiping out of the slave relationship. The emotions God gives are not forgiveness; they are the outer assurances of forgiveness.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 17, Thursday)
Forgiveness Is Power
1 John 4:7, 11
After surrendering these resentments to God, now actively forgive those against whom you have the resentments. Not only forgive them, but tell them so. The telling them so will be the catharsis, the cleansing.
A pastor was in charge of a USO group during World War I. A woman who was jealous of his position and unspeakably nasty to him backed him in a corner and in public struck him on the cheek. He turned the other, and said, “That too, please.” Said it three times. The woman was dumbfounded. She stood there helpless. The whole community was won to him and revolted against her by this simple act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is power. . . .
Many people feel that if they don’t stand up and retaliate, they will become everybody’s doormat. Everybody’s doormat, or everybody’s temple of refuge? The chamomile plant grows fastest when it is walked on. The soul grows fastest when it has learned to give back love for hate and light for darkness. For you become what you give back.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 26, Friday)
Psalm 51:9-13
A young man in Japan leaned over the back of the bench on which I was seated and whispered, “Are you sure I am forgiven?” I assured him on the authority of the character of God in Christ that he was forgiven. A few minutes later he asked again, “Are you sure I am forgiven.” I assured him that he was. A third time he asked the same question, “Are you sure I am forgiven?” The last time he really accepted my assurance. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that we want to know as much as to know whether our sins are forgiven. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing that we can say with greater assurance than that God does forgive, and that God forgives graciously and fully and finally. “Scarlet your sins may be, but they can become as snow” (Isa 1:18 Moffatt). Your very sins become white, for when you look at them, you no longer see sins, you see grace, the whiteness of grace. That indeed is deliverance.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 32, Friday)
The Highest Statement of Morality
Proverbs 19:11; 24:17
[How do we move] out of resentments? Forgive others as Christ forgives you. As you stand in need of forgiveness, so give it to others. For if you refuse it to others, this blocks the forgiveness toward you. God cannot forgive the unforgiving. God’s hands are tied. So if we refuse forgiveness, we break down the bridge over which we must pass, the bridge of forgiveness.
The highest statement of morality ever given on this planet of ours is this one: “Treat one another with the same spirit as you experience in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5 Moffatt). This transcends all Ten Commandments and goes beyond all moral codes; treat others the way Christ treats you! He forgives and forgives freely, and he forgets and forgets wholly, and he buries and buries completely. . . .
O forgiving God, help me to forgive as freely and fully as you forgive. I do, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 9, Friday)
Jeremiah 33:6; Malachi 4:2
So if the body is to be at its best, the soul must be dear of all haunting guilt. The most blessed fact of the Christian gospel is the offer of divine forgiveness. This is the most healing fact that can steal into the depths of personality. It pervades one as a sense of release and well-being.. . .
When the blinded Saul heard the word of divine forgiveness, “immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight” (Acts 9:18). The physical symptom dropped away when the spiritual tension was released. As long as he couldn’t see spiritually, he couldn’t see physically. The “scales” dropped from his eyes when the guilt dropped from his soul.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 34, Thursday)
The Gospel Is God’s Search for Humanity
John 1:9-13
Jesus didn’t come to bring the forgiveness of God—he was the forgiveness of God.
Mastery
(Week 1, Thursday)
They Did the Most Incredible Things
Luke 9:28-31
When he [Jesus] prayed, “Father, forgive them,” God could forgive because Jesus was dying for them that they might be forgiven. He answered his own prayer by making it possible for God to forgive.
Mastery
(Week 42, Monday)
Responsible for All We Know and All We Might Know
Romans 8:1-8
When we refuse to walk in the light, [Jesus] automatically shuts off the cleansing and the fellowship. But the person who is honestly walking in the light has fellowship and cleansing even though that person blunders and sins while walking in the light. If God sees the central intentions are right, God forgives and cleanses marginal mistakes and sins. God is not a mote picker; God is a maker of men and women.
Mastery
(Week 50, Saturday)
John 8:10-11
The mature Christian conscience is a conscience that has been cleansed once and for all from all we have done and have been. When Christ authoritatively says, “Your sins are forgiven,” the conscience accepts it and ceases to trouble us about those sins any longer. If conscience is the voice of God in the soul, then what God accepts the conscience accepts, what God forgives is forgiven by conscience, what God buries the conscience buries, and what God wipes out of the book of God’s remembrance the conscience wipes out of remembrance too.
Paul puts it forcefully: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). If you are in Christ you are not in condemnation. To keep on condemning yourself for something that God has forgiven and buried is disloyalty to God.
Christian Maturity
(Week 41, Thursday)
When God Forgives, We Should Also Forgive
Romans 8:31-34
When forgiveness comes, it comes, and there is no mistaking of it. And where God is, there is forgiveness and peace.
Christian Maturity
(Week 41, Friday)
There Is No Emptiness in Love
Matthew 12:43-45
What Christ forgives, we must not dig up again. It is gone forever.
Christian Maturity
(Week 42, Sunday)
He Breaks the Power of Cancelled Sin
Forgiveness was not condoning sin, but cancelling sin by forgiveness and power. The sins are actually gone as condemnation and as present fact. They are gone! He forgives and gives—forgives the past and gives power for the present and the future.
In Christ
(Week 7, Sunday)
Now God can forgive, for the forgiveness God offers is no longer a cheap forgiveness. It costs God to forgive. The cross is the price God pays to get to us in spite of our sins, “according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us” (Eph 1:7-8). This verse says “lavished.” The wonder and surprise of being forgiven could only be described by the grateful heart in terms such as “freely bestowed,” or “lavished.” It seems incredible to everyone who receives it! Divine forgiveness is a surprise. “How could God be so generous?” “God took me—even me!” It all seems so incredible, so undeserved. Of course it is! I find myself saying to myself after fifty-seven years, “This is too good for a ransomed sinner.” . . . All this and forgiveness and heaven too—it seems too good to be true!
In Christ
(Week 30, Wednesday)
Take Heed to Your Reactions
Luke 15:25-30
“Take heed to yourselves; if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.” (Luke 17:3). The emphasis here is upon the reactions, what you do when someone sins against you. For your reaction may color and corrode your whole life. The temptation will be to note and emphasize the person’s action, the sin against you. But Jesus said your reactions are more important to you than the other’s action. Your reactions can harm you, but others’ actions cannot harm you unless you let them. So the reactions are more important than the other person’s action. Be the Word of forgiveness and reconciliation become flesh and you are therefore unhurt by another’s actions.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 30, Friday)
Inward Conflict Chief Cause of Illness
Galatians 5:16-17
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. At the heart of mercy is forgiveness. We forgive everybody for everything. And we ask forgiveness. A mission college in India was on strike for twenty-one days and the college closed. An official in the college said a rude thing to a student. The student union, which the student represented, demanded that he apologize to not only the one student but the whole student union. Over that incident, the college was closed for twenty-one days. Ask for forgiveness and give forgiveness to everybody.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 42, Saturday)
Fundamental Tendencies: Forgiveness and Second Chance
1 Corinthians 1:26-30
There is a redemptive strain running through the universe. If a hillside is scarred by torrential rains, nature sets to work to cover the scars with trees and flowers. If a bone is broken, nature makes the broken place far stronger than before. Said a woman to a doctor, “With all these germs I don’t see how anybody could be well”; and got the reply, “Knowing the body with all its provisions toward warding off disease and to recover when diseased, I don’t see why anybody should ever be sick.” There is a fundamental tendency in the universe toward forgiveness and recovery, toward redemption. That fundamental tendency came to its highest manifestation in the cross, where God identifies with our sin, takes it, and offers us forgiveness in a nail-pierced hand. As God forgives, so we are to forgive. “Treat one another as you are treated in Christ” (see Luke 6:31).
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 50, Friday)