Month: November 2016

One of the attributes of love we read about in 1st Corinthians 13, is that “love keeps no record of wrongs.” We sometimes get paralyzed in moving toward forgiveness by the fear that, if we forgive, we will get hurt again. And we may. In fact, it’s likely to happen. Forgiving does not mean discontinuing caution or “playing dumb” about who the person is who injured us. We may be in an abusive relationship with a spouse or parent who berates with their words. Until they get help and address the core issues, they will hurt you again with their words.

But forgiving does not bring an iron-clad guarantee against future injuries with it. In fact, loving… and forgiving… always leaves us vulnerable. But to never forgive… or to never love…. simply makes our hearts hard. We have to risk the possibility of future injury even when forgiveness has been offered and received.

And remember also. Forgiveness does not mean reconciliation. There are some people we desperately need, for our own sake, to forgive but reconciliation takes two. They may refuse your offer of forgiveness. And if they are unchanged in their spirit or personality they will probably hurt again.

That being true, we are still not “off the hook” when it comes to the biblical mandate to forgive as we have been forgiven. But for the sake of our spiritual and mental and emotional healing, we must “keep no record of wrongs.” Love and forgiveness are bad record keepers. We must continually choose both to love and to forget where our attempts to love have not gone well or resulted in injury. If we live continually bringing up the past, the present will never be free. We must “keep no records….” Lose the files. Delete the injury from our hard drive.

God’s promise to forget our sins is actually an assurance that “our sins will no longer be counted against us.” This is what the cross guarantees for us. Our sin has been totally scrubbed clean… the past, present and future… and will not be reckoned against us again. It’s not that God could not recall what we had done. It’s that He promises to choose NOT to do that.

And that’s what we must do. Losing the scorecard of injuries against us is not a mental exercise but a choice of our will. We decide to forgive and forget.

And then we will be totally free.

FOR MEDITATION: For I will forgive their wickedness and their sins will I remember against them no more.      Hebrews 8:12

FOR REFLECTION: What painful memories need to be deleted from your memory bank?

It’s a controversial thought and idea but I believe there is truth in it that needs to be probed. I believe forgiveness has levels. I think we can hang on to “conditional” forgiveness that is not complete… it does not lead to complete freedom. I believe it is possible to come to terms with an injury caused by someone else; even coming to the point of beginning to “forget” the injury. But it’s not complete until something else happens. Allow me to explain.

When Joseph’s brothers betrayed him… sold him out of an empty cistern to a caravan of nomads who sold him in Egypt… Joseph began another kind of journey. This journey was not one marked by geography. His journey was into the dark cave of unforgiveness. I believe it is true that Joseph spent two years in an Egyptian jail to learn how to forgive his brothers.

The image of being “imprisoned” by unforgiveness is very biblical. This is exactly the picture Jesus painted in Matthew 18. We are our own jailers when we won’t forgive. Forgiveness is the key that throws the door open wide. But Joseph’s schooling in forgiveness did not end when his prison sentence did. He had to first face down the now decades-older and guilt-imprinted faces of his brothers.

Now Joseph stood before them, not a terrified teenager about to be abandoned, but as second in command to the most powerful man on earth! And had he wanted, Joseph could have immediately executed these brothers who had brought him so much pain.

But he didn’t. He had learned the secret of forgiveness. He “let them off the hook” though he was not finished with the experience. You see, he had not totally forgiven them. He had forgiven to the point of deciding not to get even, though he could have and no one would have known and no one would have blamed him. But he forgave, and then went one step further into total forgiveness:

He blessed them. We read this compelling account in Genesis 50, as he declared, “You meant this against me for evil, but God meant it for good.” (Gen 50:20) He reassured and blessed these brothers who had cursed and abused him. That’s what Jesus did as well when He prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them…” and then shed His own blood for those who hated Him without cause.

We, too, find the path to total forgiveness and total freedom when we learn to forgive from our hearts…
…and bless the ones who cursed us.

FOR MEDITATION:  Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you….   Luke 6:28

FOR REFLECTION: There is a hard law. When an injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.

A hunter was looking for game too near the edge of a dangerous cliff and slipped off the side. His gun and other gear slid off the side of the mountain as he tumbled along behind it.

Launching out over the precipice he reached out, in desperation, and grabbed a tree root that had grown out of the side of the cliff. Hanging on for dear life as his gear clattered below him several hundred feet, he started screaming for help: “Is there anybody up there?” His voice echoed in the emptiness. Again, “is there anybody up there?” This time, a voice came back. “I’m here.” “Who are you?” “I am God.” The man asked after a moment of stunned silence…”Can you help me?” “Yes,” came the Voice. “But first, you have to let go of the root and I’ll catch you.”

The hunter looked below and then back up into the sky where the Voice came from. And then he asked, “Is there anybody ELSE up there?”

Sometimes, in the desperation of our hurt, our anger, our despair… we grab on to a root. Not the root of a tree; a root the Bible calls “the root of bitterness.” And we hang on like our life depends on it.

In reality, our life depends on letting go of it! When we hang on to injuries done to us maybe within the hour or ages ago, we are doing the opposite of the counsel of God’s Word. We must let go and trust God to catch us. Clinging in desperation to our “root” of unforgiveness is never going to save us.

Letting go, in faith, will every time.

FOR MEDITATION: See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up causing trouble and defiling many.    Hebrews 12:15

FOR REFLECTION: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in us.” — C.S. Lewis

A woman went to her pastor to complain about her struggles with her husband. She began to pour out a litany of items that caused her grief and had hurt and made her angry over the years. Finally, the pastor said, “Do this for me. Go home and write down everything you can think of that upsets you about your husband, and bring it back in the next session.”

She agreed and returned a week later with a page full of complaints. The pastor looked quietly over the list for a few moments and then asked, “Do you know what I see?” “Yes,” she replied. “You see what a terrible husband he is and how much he has hurt me.” “No,” said the pastor. “I see a list of all the things you haven’t forgiven your husband for.”

The definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13 has a part that says, “love keeps no record of wrongs.” True love is lousy at bookkeeping, at least on the deficit side. It remembers the good things but allows the bad to slip into a sea of forgetfulness… of forgiveness.

Just as Christ “cancelled the handwriting of ordinances that was against us” at the cross, allowing our sins and offenses to slip into the ocean of God’s grace and forgiveness, so we are to “forgive one another” as Christ has forgiven us.

Fully. Freely. And forever.

FOR MEDITATION: And He took them out of the way, nailing them to the cross.   Colossians 2:14

FOR REFLECTION: While forgiveness does not mean we have to forget the offense that happened (that would be impossible if our brains are intact) it does mean we forget to hold them against the one who injures us. Lose the list. Find the grace.

We have all found ourselves in circumstances in life when injury, betrayal or unexpected and undeserved pain confront us. In those situations we have a choice… to live in perpetual pain and bitterness over the injury caused us or to release the person who hurt us… along with the pain… and forgive

This is no easy decision. But it’s really a matter of deciding whether to live in the past… or the present; whether to live in the torment of memories that won’t go away… or to press the delete button and let them go.

But it’s also a matter of obedience… of doing what Jesus calls us to do. Or do we try and address the issues with our own wits in our own way.

Over the next several blog posts I want to encourage us to do the former. Because it’s the way of the cross. The One who calls us to this is the One who “endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself” but forgave us anyway.

He calls us to the same because He showed us how to walk there. We can do this because He did.

And because, for our sake, we must.

For Meditation: For if you forgive other people when they sin against you your Heavenly Father will forgive you.   Matthew 6:14

For Reflection: Knowing true forgiveness means giving to another what we most need ourselves.