Forgiveness...

Without a doubt, one of the hardest things in the world to do is forgive. We spend a lot of time in church talking about Christ’s work of sanctification in us. The Holy Spirit highlights sin and areas of correction and we crucify it. God digs deep into our heart and exposes selfish motives and personal sin, but where is all the talk about how to handle life when the sin wasn’t yours?

You may know how to repent of sin and turn towards God when there is wretchedness in your own heart, but what if your struggle is something that was done to you instead of by you. What do you do if the wretchedness was in someone else’s heart? What if that person who has wronged you doesn’t even know it, or worse, even care. How do we walk in forgiveness when it feels like life just keeps happening to you?

Bottom line…it isn’t easy. However, we do have an example to follow. Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” That last part is our hope in Christ. Whether we realize it or not we are guilty of offending God. Sometimes we offend Him with willful sin and sometimes we sin without even realizing it, but we still offend Him. So how does God handle forgiveness? God chose to walk out forgiveness to us by Christ dying on a cross and being the stand in for us. He can forgive us because He doesn’t see the sin, He sees Christ’s payment for it.

We have a God who chose to forgive us for not just what we have done, but what we will do to offend Him. That should be our example as well. We should “forgive one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Was the offense against you great? I’m positive that it was, but take the example of our God and choose to walk in forgiveness anyway. Don’t look at the offense to you, look at Jesus and His perfect payment for that offense.