On Forgiveness

From a blog I found on facebook:

"A good marriage is indeed the union of two good forgivers." --Ruth Bell Graham
 
"So what is forgiveness? Guinness argues that forgiveness is “not a virtue, a merit, or a heroic act…[but] simply treating others as God has treated us and passing on to others what we have received so much more generously than we could ever give.”

Can you really forgive without acknowledging what you’ve been forgiven? Can we really hope to offer grace to others without understanding the grace that we are offered through Jesus Christ? There is a humility and an ownership that comes from recognizing our own shortcomings. If you stop to think about it, you can see that God (the All-Loving, Holy, Creator of the universe) forgiving you is a bigger deal than you forgiving anyone anything. After all, you aren’t holy and you aren’t all-loving. And neither am I. Yet He forgives us. How then can we justify not forgiving others? I love the parable Jesus told about the man who was forgiven some astronomical debt, but proceeded to choke and then imprison a debtor of his own who owed him very little. We may be horrified by the hypocrisy, but we do the same thing. Because we have been forgiven an astronomical debt, and yet we harden our hearts and refuse to forgive. The parable should illuminate our own hypocrisy and point us to our responsibility, as followers of Christ, to forgive.

And it sounds limitless, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. May I be sober-minded and rely on Christ in me, to forgive any and every offense. Clearly, no one could do this in their own strength. It’s laughable. It’s utter nonsense. But as Paul wrote, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13 NIV 1984).