Resources

Back to Forgiveness Contents Page

"Forgiveness"

Forgiveness - A Prologue

A series that explains the practicalities of forgiveness

 

Before you get into the detail of this series, we want to give you a summary of what you will work through from the view of the offended and the offender in the pages that follow.

Because it is a subject that is so often misunderstood, and you possibly come to these pages with preconceived ideas, we wish to lay out as simply as possible, the basics of what the Bible teaches overall, about forgiveness.

The following is adapted from one of the meditations on the Sermon on the Mount on our sister site, www.ReadBibleAlive.com

                             ................................................................

 

The call to forgive, which we often find on the lips of Jesus, is a call to have a right response towards your offender when they come to you saying sorry and seeking your forgiveness.

At that point Jesus expects us to forgive as an expression of the realization that you too are a sinner and you too have been forgiven by God and so you too need to have a forgiving attitude towards the repentant sinner.

When someone wrongs you, there are two aspects to your response to them: a) holding a right attitude towards them and b) forgiving them when they say sorry.

Now we really do have to understand these two aspects because many Christians confuse the first for the forgiveness.

When someone wrongs us, the worst you could consider them is your enemy, and Jesus has taught us to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44). So whatever that person has done to you, you need to obtain God's grace to come to a place of love for that person (not what they did) and have a desire for their good, which involves them coming to repentance over what they did, because until they do they have an unresolved issue before God for which He will hold them accountable.

You may think what we have said so far is difficult, and we'll show you in the pages that follow how that can be, but to make it easier we need to learn to call sin, sin.

Now if we just say about what they have done, “Oh, it's all right,” we actually demean sin and we demean the reason Jesus went to the Cross. No, what this person did was sin, and they need to repent over it, but that doesn't stop you coming to a right attitude over them, which is to want their best and that includes doing everything possible to help them come to repentance.

Now please note that so far we haven't said anything about you granting them forgiveness, because you can't do that until they have repented.

We emphasis you can have a right attitude towards them but you cannot declare forgiveness for sin where the person has not repented. Why do we say that? Because God does not forgive until there is repentance! Check it out in the Bible.

You granting forgiveness is to be a ratification of what God does in heaven, and you can't do what heaven won't do! God readily forgives on the basis of what Jesus has done on the Cross when a person repents. If Jesus' work on the Cross covered absolutely everyone and brought automatic forgiveness, why do many people still go to hell (and the New Testament clearly teaches that!)? No, God doesn't declare forgiveness until there has been repentance.

Forgiveness is conditional on repentance but when repentance comes, forgiveness is freely there from God and it is to be freely there from us. In the meantime, pray for your offender, recognize their sin, pray for them and hold a good attitude.