Living Beyond Offense: 7 Days Exploring Forgivenessનમૂનો

Forgiveness Is a Merciful Decision

Forgiveness is referenced more than 100 times in our Bibles. After a survey of each occurrence, I have found that the Bible primarily speaks of forgiveness and its work in these three ways:

• Forgiveness is a merciful decision.
• Forgiveness is the merciful decision to release your offender of a debt.
• Forgiveness is the merciful decision to not retaliate against your offender in anger.

Together, these three biblical aspects of forgiveness can be summarized into this definition: Forgiveness is the merciful decision to release an offender of a debt and to not retaliate against them in anger.

Forgiveness Is a Merciful Decision

Prior to Jesus’s parable on the unforgiving servant, we find one of the most honest questions ever posed to Jesus. Peter, after hearing Jesus’s teaching on how to respond to someone who has sinned against you, asks, “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times?” (Matthew 18:21 CSB). Turns out, in Jesus’s day, there were even some rabbis that taught that God only forgives a person three times for the same sin. If that’s God’s standard, how or even why would a human forgive more?

Peter, understanding that Jesus has come to bring about a new Kingdom, goes above the cultural norm and suggests a generous seven times. He’s heard Jesus’s call to love his enemies, and he’s learned to pray to forgive others as he’s been forgiven (Matthew 5:43-48, 6:12-15)—so he feels going seven rounds before throwing in the towel should meet Christ’s standards. It’s the number of completion. Seems fair. However, his suggestion doesn’t even come close to the figure Jesus has in mind. Jesus responds, “I tell you, not as many as seven…but seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22 CSB). That’s the standard.

Every time you and I choose not to do the hard work of forgiving, we are doing the shortsighted work of forgetting. We are forgetting our initial pleas for God’s forgiveness when we first believed. We are forgetting a truth we must all accept: that we live in a broken world with fallen people, and that this truth calls for mercy. We are forgetting the mercy we need and the mercy we have received.

Beloved, we don’t forgive because our offenders deserve it. They don’t. We forgive because when we didn’t, God did. Though our sin was great, He made the merciful decision to forgive, releasing us from the debt without retaliating against us in anger. In mercy, He poured out the just punishment we deserve onto His Son and extended to us mercy. How can we not freely do this given the mercy we’ve received?