Freedom In Forgiveness
Forgiveness is never easy. I know! I’ve been there.
There are times when it seems impossible, but forgiveness is a command of God and necessary to prevent anger and bitterness from taking root.
Hebrews 12:15 says, “Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you.”
Bitterness is like poison in the soul, and it’s one of Satan’s greatest weapons to neutralize our spiritual walk. For when we give into bitterness, we are no longer walking in the Spirit, and become powerless against Satan’s attack.
But greater is He who is in us, and when we understand the why and how of forgiveness and use the tools God gave us, we can do this!
Forgiveness does not dismiss the wrong the person did, nor does it approve it, or act like the offense never happened. But most importantly, forgiveness does not mean we have to continue in bad relationships, but we do need to forgive.
When we look at forgiveness in that way, it is much easier to do, don’t you agree? And we can do this even when the offender hasn’t repented.
You see, most of us struggle in thinking that if we forgive someone, we are letting them off the hook, so to speak. That is not the case. Forgiveness God’s way is giving it to God to deal with it judiciously.
The problem is that most of us want to do the punishing. We want to retaliate. Many times, dishing out even greater pain.
Romans 12:17-19 says, repay no one evil for evil….do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. When we take matters into our own hands, we disobey God and become the judge and jury.
Matthew 7:1-2 says, do not judge, or you too will be judged. In the same way you judge others, you will be judged…
This is another place where virtue love comes into play. When combined with the filling of the Holy Spirit, we have a powerful tool for which to forgive and conquer anger, hatred, bitterness, maligning, and revenge. You can read about virtue love here.
With virtue love, we trust in God’s perfect justice. The problem is many of us don’t trust that God will punish the offender the way we want, and therefore dish out the punishment ourselves. This leads to us being disciplined instead of being blessed by obeying God’s command.
When we forgive, we are not acting as if the offence never occurred, we simply leave the judging to God. And forgiveness does not mean we must restore the relationship to the same place as before. Many times, we must forgive AND remove the person from our circle of relationships. When this is necessary, we do it with grace and dignity, without anger, criticism, gossip, or maligning.
Whether we restore the person to our circle or not is based on their propensity to re-offend. God called us to a life of peace, so we can remove that person, and still love them with virtue love. In time, if they have repented and their behavior has shown change, we can let them back in, if we choose. If not, we still forgive, then go in peace.
But remember, God is a God of redemption, and with God anything is possible, but it starts with us obeying His command to love one another (John 13:34) and forgive just as Christ forgave us (Colossians 3:13).
There is so much more to be said about this subject, because learning to forgive and love with virtue love, along with suffering is how we grow spiritually. In fact, it’s the only way.
Suffering is a testing ground where we apply the principles we learned in God’s Word. Without suffering, we have no opportunity to apply them. We will be exploring this more in the future. But for now, take your troubles to God for He cares for you. And rely on the power of His Spirit to give you the strength to forgive and let God handle your problems with His perfect justice.
Want to know a secret? Blessing abound for those who forgive!
