Introduction
‘For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.’ Matthew 6:14-15
FORGIVENESS
Here are the terms and conditions for forgiveness. We must be willing to forgive others, as we received forgiveness from God at our baptism, Acts 2:38.
Having a forgiving spirit identifies us as possessing the nature of God who forgives, Ephesians 4:32 / Colossians 3:13. If we cannot forgive our people, then certainly we aren’t of the nature of God, and thus, not a candidate for heaven, Matthew 9:2-6 / Matthew 18:21-35 / Luke 17:3-4 / James 2:13.
When I was younger I was made to apologise to my brother for something I hadn’t done. Needless to say, I wasn’t very happy about it but as my parents left me no other choice, I had to apologise. I remember afterwards my brother just smiling and mocking me because he knew I didn’t do anything wrong against him.
Being accused of something you haven’t done isn’t a pleasant experience but when it comes to sin, we’re all guilty. You don’t have to look very far to see all the evil which is in our world, it’s all over our newspapers and television screens.
Sadly, when it comes to sin many people are in the habit of comparing their sins with others. However, we can’t compare our sin with others and say, ‘at least I’m not a murderer, I only stole some sweets from the shop’. ‘At least I’m not an adulterer, I only told a lie’, Romans 3:10.
No! God has no standard of sin, in His eyes, sin is sin and we’re all just as bad as one another, no matter what sin we commit, Romans 3:23.
God asks us to look deep within ourselves and admit our guilt because if we don’t admit guilt we can’t accept forgiveness, 1 John 1:8-10. Anyone who says they aren’t guilty can’t accept forgiveness because forgiveness is only for guilty people!
In other words, you can’t forgive innocent people if there’s nothing to forgive! As long as we insist on our innocence we can never accept forgiveness at the hand of God.
So God insists that we admit our guilt because He wants so much to forgive us and because He wants so much to live with us in loving fellowship, Isaiah 59:1-3. But there can be no loving fellowship unless our rebellion against God is dealt with and it cannot be dealt with unless we admit sin exists.
The Bible insists that Christ died for every one of us and that He died to rescue us from sin, John 3:16 / 1 John 2:2. Christ comes confronting us with our sin and tells us, that He is the way out! John 14:6.
Instead of shutting God out of our lives, we must let Him work with us and in us to deliver us from the power of sin that’s much too strong for us. When we admit our own sinfulness, we will readily be able to forgive others as God has forgiven us.
Stott, says the following.
‘Once our eyes have been opened to see the enormity of our offence against God, the injuries which others have done to us appear by comparison extremely trifling. If, on the other hand, we have an exaggerated view of the offences of others, it proves that we have minimized our own.’
The cross doesn’t make forgiveness easy, but it does make it possible, Luke 23:34.
We must learn to root out any bitterness we have towards others, Ephesians 4:26-27 / Ephesians 4:31 / Hebrews 12:14-15.
We must learn to bless those who hurt us, Romans 12:14.
We must forgive others as God forgave us, Matthew 6:12 / Matthew 6:13-14.
