NOW THIS PENETRATING verse: “and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32).
Here Paul reaches one of those periodic climaxes. He told them what they were to put off: (1) “Put off your old nature . . . and be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (vv. 22–23). (2) “Put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God” (v. 24). (3) “Therefore, putting away falsehood” (v. 25). (4) “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice” (v. 31). These were the things to let go, and this to let come: “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” That last phrase is the high-water mark of morality in the universe: treat one another as God treats you in Christ.
How does God forgive in Christ? Lightly? “Oh, well, you’re only human. I can’t expect too much from you. I’m told I have the authority, so I’m letting you off.” Nothing could be further from God’s forgiveness in Christ. In Christ it costs God to forgive. The cross is the price that God pays in order to forgive sins. He offers forgiveness in a nail-pierced hand.
We are to forgive through a costly forgiveness. We must bear the sins of the one forgiven in our very bodies and souls. We too must offer forgiveness in nail-pierced hands—and hearts.
But God not only forgives with a costly forgiveness—He forgives with a generous forgiveness. He forgives with no conditions attached. He blots it out of the book of His remembrance. We stand before Him as though we had never sinned. We must forgive as God forgives—generously, completely, finally. If we do not forgive we break down the bridge over which we must cross—the bridge of forgiveness. The forgiveness which we get and give in Christ is the most beautiful and blessed thing this planet knows.
O Blessed, Forgiving God, make my forgiveness as tender and loving as Thy forgiveness. Let me hold no corners of unforgiveness in my heart. Let me bury anything in the sea of Thy forgetfulness—this to everybody, everywhere. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Unforgiveness is a cancer—I cannot afford to live with a cancer.
