A few thoughts on forgiveness….

This week we will be considering the call to forgive, clearly not the easiest thing Paul calls us to do as an outworking of love.

It is said that every text and email message is stored somewhere on a mass of servers around the world. I wonder how many would we regret sending, wish that we could recall and wipe out?

 

 How many do we wish that we might never have received, words said in anger, secrets betrayed, foolish comments or words that sought to seek revenge?

 

 The problem with one action is that it can so easily escalate into so much more, one hurt can lead to another and the impact can last for years.  How much of our world’s history has been dominated by and continues to be dominated by a lack of forgiveness and the desire for revenge?

 

Jesus says that we are to ask God to forgive us as we forgive others. To forgive as we forgive others, an implicit assumption that we do the second or that God’s example should lead us to forgive? 

 

Forgiveness, maybe one of the hardest words linked to Paul’s passage on love and yet probably one of the most understood biblical words.

 

In a world dominated by emotions, do we believe that we have to feel able to forgive and that we need some kind of emotional intensity to push us towards the act of forgiveness?  Do we think that if we forgive we are saying that something was ok, that the action or the words spoken are something we should just approve of?

 

If it is, then no wonder it is so impossible to do, but God doesn’t ask us to do anything that is impossible, so when God calls us to forgive, what does he mean by forgiveness?

 

It would seem that biblical forgiveness is an act and a decision. In forgiving it does not approve of what has happened or say that something was right. It does not encourage the same action or support it happening to someone else. But it is a decision and it is an act of love.

 

God’s forgiveness clarifies this so clearly. C S Lewis is quoted as saying: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

 

Psalm 103 v 12 paints a fascinating picture of God’s forgiveness – as far as the East is from the West. Takes some getting your head around this but basically it reinforces the truth that once forgiven God’s act of forgiveness removes the act that needed forgiving, never to be remembered.

 

 Interestingly, the scope of biblical forgiveness not only applies to our relationships with others, but also it apples to our relationship with ourselves. To forgive others, yes, but also to forgive ourselves. At times this maybe an even more challenging thing to consider?

 

To forgive – to keep no record of wrongs, to let go, not to hold to account, a tough one, but it changes lives and changes communities and it can change our lives as well.