Colossians 3:12-13
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
If love, as we saw yesterday, is a marker of Christianity, then forgiveness is the outworking of love. We love because God first loved us, and we forgive because God forgave us. Now, notice the force of the command in our text today, “…you also must forgive.” The whole idea of forgiveness is not up for argument or discussion. It is settled – we must forgive. So crucial is the requirement for us to forgive others that Jesus declared, _”For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14-15).
If, then, forgiveness is so crucial, what are we to do about people that hurt us so badly? This, I guess, is the difficulty in forgiveness. It seems as though we are giving people a pass who have greatly offended us. Yet forgiveness is not for the offender but for us. To be consumed with an offence is to continue in the imprisonment of bitterness, yet God would desire that we be free. Not only that, but when we forgive others, we get a glimpse of what it means for us to be forgiven. Jesus gave a parable in Matthew 18:21-35 to reinforce the necessity of forgiveness. The big idea in the parable was to show how offences towards God compare with other people’s offences towards us – there is absolutely no comparison. And so when we refuse to forgive, we, in a sense, do not appreciate just how much we have wronged God and how much we need to be forgiven. No wonder Jesus concludes this parable by declaring, _”So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”_ Thus we learn that unforgiveness imprisons us while forgiveness sets us free. Let me end by saying that I am not suggesting forgiveness is easy, far from it. We only need to look at the cross to see the cost of our own forgiveness – the life of God’s beloved Son. But just as God has forgiven us, we must also forgive.
Reflections
1. Who do you need to forgive today? There’s grace availed for you.
