Forgive, As God has Forgiven You

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. (ESV)

colossians 3:13, esv

Bearing with one another. If you have been married for more than a few days, you have discovered the need to bear with. The phrase literally means to put up with. Relationships require this. And as you are bearing with your spouse, your kids, your coworkers, you may have cause for complaint. (Let’s be honest…you will have cause for complaint). Somebody’s gonna hurt somebody else.

What do you do when that happens?

One word.

Forgive.

We are most like beasts when we kill. We are most like men when we judge. We are most like God when we forgive.

william arthur ward

Our readiness and willingness to forgive is a distinguishing mark of being a Christian. At the heart of our personal relationship with God is the reality that we have been forgiven. So how do we forgive? As the Lord has forgiven you!

When you are hurt by someone else, before you zero in on what they have done to you, zero in on what Christ has done for you. It is easy (and natural) to fuminate (yes I made up that word…it means to ruminate with an attitude) on how someone else has hurt you. It crawls up in us and makes a nest in our mind and a runway in our hearts. When that happens, every departing flight from our hearts lands on bitterness. Our attempts to hurt the other person inevitably end up hurting us.

Here’s how God describes himself in Exodus:

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

exodus 34:6-7, esv

Merciful. Gracious. Slow to anger. Abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin (which incidentally are the three words used for sin through Scripture…God forgives it all!).

Do you forgive like that? Why not? Who in your life must you forgive today? What’s keeping you from doing it?