Real Forgiveness

We survived the "crazy busy" weekend, but I'm really missing that "lost" hour of sleep this morning. I rested a lot yesterday, but it didn't translate over to this morning very well. I almost always wake up about 30 minutes before my alarm clock goes off, regardless of what time I set it for. Today, the beeping of the alarm clock almost made me "jump" out of the bed!

I want to attempt to finish going through the Lord's Prayer from Matthew 6 this week.
Matthew 6:9-13 (NIV)
This, then, is how you should pray: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come,your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."

We made it down to "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors". If you are like me, you've quoted the Lord's Prayer on numerous occasions in your life. I've often said it at a graveside funeral service or with a family in crisis. When we work our way down to this part of he prayer, to me it's like a call do a whole new level of commitment. Up to this point, we have been dealing a lot with "vertical reconciliation", surrendering our "will" and our "rights" to our loving father. Now we begin seeing a call to "horizontal reconciliation".

We are confronted with the question "how do you want to be forgiven when you fail in your walk with God?" We have a fast answer..... we want complete forgiveness, the kind where Jesus "cast our sins as far as the east is from the west". We want Him to remember our sins no more. We want reconciliation with God, with no remembrance of our sin on his part. We don't want God hanging it over our heads, ready to drop it on us again when we fail the next time. That's what we want, but that may not be what we get.

Now we have to deal with "horizontal reconciliation". The principle here is unmistakable..... we will be forgiven based on the distance we are willing to go in forgiving others. Now before anyone gets amped up about this, let me give an illustration I read while studying this.....

T. Diggs from Community Bible Church in MA, wrote in his blog "we tend to hang ‘guillotines of forgiveness’ over the heads of those in our lives. We remember. We withhold. We don’t reconcile. We don’t fully extend the hand and embrace the forgiven. Forgiveness – okay. Forget – probably not, but we’ll see. Friends – never. This small phrase should give us tremendous pause. If I pray this, then I am asking Him to forgive me in the exact same way I forgive others. Am I sure I want to pray this? Because I better get it right. Eternity hangs in the balance. My eternity depends on His forgiveness of my sins, His willingness to forget them, and His love for me that is so deep that He now calls me ‘friend.’ (John 15:14, 15). That’s crucial – because to be called His friend means that His forgiveness has reached its natural end."

T. Diggs nailed it! When I read his description of the "guillotines of forgiveness" that we hang over those we have supposedly forgiven, I was deeply convicted. It's easier for me to forgive the "sin" someone commits against me, but I tend to struggle more in forgiving the "sinner". In other words, I have the guillotine ready and a "trigger happy" finger just waiting for them to wrong me again so I can drop it on them. What a miserable picture and representation of biblical forgiveness!

Since we know God's Word is true, we must consider this "next level" kind of living. It scares me to think about God "tolerating" me instead of totally and completely forgiving me and even calling me His friend. There are so many people that I have "spoken" forgiveness to over the years, but in light of what I've learned, I may not have done it biblically.

In order to forgive like Christ forgives, I recognize that I can only do it with His power at work in me. It goes right back to the first part of the Lord's Prayer.... we have to see Him as "our father", whose perspective from heaven is different than ours, whose holiness is the benchmark by which we are to measure our walk, and whose will requires requires our daily surrender. It's only then that we can begin to experience and demonstrate true forgiveness.

Have a BLESSED day and Live For Jesus!

Whatever It Takes,
Chip