…forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you
Ephesians 4:32 ESV
How hard it is to forgive, isn’t it? Even for us Christ followers, who know we have been forgiven greatly by our God.
The following are notes from a talk on “Forgiveness” that I gave to a small group of younger women many years ago (I was one of the “older woman teaching the younger” Titus 2). I’m sharing it for your own study, if you are struggling to forgive.
The Holy Spirit is our Helper. See what He reveals to your heart and mind for your particular situation.
1. WHO are the forgiven?
Have you received the radical reconciliation/forgiveness through our Lord Jesus Christ? Do you walk in it, live in the totality of the forgiveness in Christ?
LOOK at these Scriptures:
Colossians 1:13-14
Hebrews 8:8-12; 10:11-18
Until you rest in the finality of the cross, you will never experience the reality of the resurrection, which is Christ living in and through you. Unless you rest in the fact that Jesus did it all, you’ll be busy trying to pay off your debt – atone for your sins [get God to love you more or use you more or whatever] – that you’ll never grow and enjoy the personal relationship that Christ has provided for you.
(Bob George, Growing in Grace)
2. HOW do the forgiven forgive?
Simply stated:
By allowing the indwelling, forgiving Christ to forgive in and through you.
So it starts with a decision, but then there may also be a process.
Dr. Lewis Smedes writes on “Forgiveness” in his book, Shame and Grace.
Consider forgiveness as a personal drama with five scenes [I love that Smedes doesn’t express them as “steps” but rather as an unfolding “story”]:
Scene One: We blame the [offender]. We hold him or her accountable. If we do not hold people accountable for what they did to us, we will not forgive them. We may indulge them, perhaps, as if it did not matter much, or we may excuse them, as if they could not help doing they did. But we will forgive them only if we hold them responsible for what they did to us. [We need to see (and feel!) what it is that we are forgiving.]
Scene Two: We surrender our right to get even. We take our natural right to a balanced account--a right to fairness, mind you, that is all, only what we deserve--we take it in our hands, look it over, consider its possibilities, and then surrender it [to the Lord, I might add]. We agree to live with the score untied.
Scene Three: We revise our caricature of the person who [offended] us. When we taste our resentment, we roll it around our minds the way we roll a sour lozenge around on our tongues, and we taste it, our minds draw a caricature of our [offender]. We turn him into a monster who is what he did to us. We see him; we feel him; we define his whole person in terms of how he [offended] us. However, as we move with the forgiving flow, we gradually change our monster back into the weak and faulty human being he is (or was), not all that different from ourselves.
Scene Four: We revise our feelings As the frozen tundra of resentment melts, a tendril of compassion breaks through the crust. Sorrow blends with anger. Sympathy softens resentment. We feel emerging in our consciousness a hesitant desire for the other person’s welfare.
Scene Five: We accept the person who [hurt us]. In the last scene of the drama, we offer our [offender] the grace that God has offered us. We not only pardon him; we also accept him. We take him back into our lives as a fellow member of the human race. Chances are that we are not able to restore the special relationship we had before. But if we cannot be reconciled, it will not be our resentment that prevents it.
3. WHOM do the forgiven forgive?
“one another” –- Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13
“anyone” –- Mark 11:25
Husbands & Wives —1Corinthians 13:5 NLT
4. WHAT IF the offense/hurt assaults the mind and heart again?
a. Cast it again and again onto Jesus.
b. Say to your soul,
“Wait a minute, I died to sin [unforgiveness] and now I live by the Resurrected, Forgiving Christ!”
Dear friends,
may the Forgiving Christ so fill our vision and our lives
that He lives His forgiving life through us...one “scene” at a time.
*For More on the totality of forgiveness at the Cross, living from the resurrected life of Christ, identification with Christ {“I died to that…”} see chapters 2, 3, and 4 of my book (available on Amazon) The With-ness of our God: Relationship in Every Dimension.
Thank you so much for reading.
Please consider leaving a comment
with your own personal insight and/or experiences.
If you need prayer along this line, we are here for you.