Love to Forgive - The importance of forgiving others.
What is Love
So what is love? Is love a feeling you get? Is it what you see portrayed on TV? There are so many definitions of what love is, that it makes one’s head spin. Obviously you are studying the bible, so you are seeking God and His ways so this implies you think God’s way is the right way. Now the question is do you know what God’s love is like? Our perception of what true love is molded by our experiences and we tend to form our definition of love based on that. If you had a strict father that failed to express love through kindness, that would have a powerful effect on how you respond others. The devil knows this and uses this to twist our perception of God’s love, yet God does not sit passively and hopes you figure what love is about by yourself. I want to give you some pointers on what to look for so you can recognize the true love of God in your own lives and see how God’s love is amazing and then express it to others!
Benefits of Love
What are the benefits of love? Love is that which maintains and restores relationships. A perfect example is Jesus coming to earth and dying on a cross so that we can be restored to a right relationship with God for all eternity. Who can grasp the depth of what Jesus did for us? We were saved from the overwhelming wrath of God and eternal death to now being able to come before the God Almighty and He can call us beloved! The price Jesus paid is beyond our ability to comprehend, but not beyond our ability to appreciate. Think about when you say, “thank you” to Jesus and God? If you trace the expression of thankfulness to its root within you, you will find the Holy Spirit there and then you are touching God’s true love within yourself. Have you ever seen someone experience forgiveness from God where it is like a thousand pound weight is lifted from their shoulders? That is what God’s love feels like and it is a far cry from what is portrayed in society. So the benefit of love is that it brings life.
Grace - Unmerited Favor
In the bible you will see references to a “hard heart” or a “heart of stone” and this is referring to a spirit being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. When someone sins it knocks their moral compass of kilter, yet they think they are still morally pointing to true north. Eventually they can be pointing due south still thinking they got it all together. They are right and everyone else is wrong and that is the deceitfulness of sin. A perfect example is when someone says something like, “How can something that feels so good be wrong?” Usually such a statement is made for things like having sex outside of marriage. One thing you can’t separate from love is truth and truth can’t conflict with itself and in the true love of God there is no hypocrisy. So in the example I stated where someone says how can something that feels so good be wrong knowing that God says don’t do this, they are saying their own experience trumps God’s wisdom. That is the fruit of a hard heart that tosses God’s wisdom to the curb. If you have such attitudes in your heart, then lay them down at the foot of the cross and let Jesus take the weight of such thinking from your shoulders and experience a freedom in God’s love.
This leads us to the concept of grace. By definition grace is “unmerited favor.” When God saved us, we did not deserve it. There was nothing we could do to please God, because once we are stained with sin there is no way out. That is why you hear the phrase, “We are saved by grace.” Sometimes it takes people years to really understand what this means because they have a part within themselves that says they are good. Your understanding of what the love of God is like is directly tied to your perception of yourself as good. To the degree that you think you are good is the degree you are off from truly understanding God’s true love. Understanding God’s grace for you is key to understanding love and then in turn expressing it to others. If you think you are good within yourself, you will show little empathy to others because you have become blind to your own fallen nature and you accept sin as normal and so you become callous to the effects sin in others. The grace of God enters our lives and softens our spirit so we may again see the truth and walk in the truth.
To emphasize the role of Jesus in administering God’s grace to us, here is an excerpt from my own testimony.
When I was a brand new christian I had a dramatic encounter with God one night. That night as I lay by myself on my bed I had a holy visitation. I could hear a drip, drip, drip, drip. I also kept seeing a post stuck into the ground. This was no figment of my imagination, for it happened three or four times! This puzzled me. The last time it happened, I said to myself, "I'm going to look up this time and find out where it (the drip, drip, drip, drip) is coming from."
As soon as I looked up, I could not see my room anymore. It was blacker than night all around me. I was not expecting to see what I saw! It was the Lord Jesus. He had His arms stretched out on the cross. His upper body had great muscular definition which tapered down to His hips. His hair was medium length and had a slight curl.
The dripping I heard was His blood falling to the ground. And the post in the ground I saw was the cross He was hanging on. I could see the nails in His hands and feet. The only light I saw was behind the cross and as soon as I saw that light I said, "That's God!" The light was pure, soft and white and I could feel the living presence of God as I looked into the light. The light (God) comforted me.
I knew Jesus was watching me. He didn't verbally say anything to me, but I could hear what He was thinking. And as I heard His words, flashes of light would emanate from his head. The light was the same as the light behind the cross. And this is what He said to me, "I love you, you are my beloved son." He then bowed his head and I saw His spirit leave His body.
Loving by Example
Jesus is the full measure of God’s love to us. Without Jesus, all is lost. As Jesus was looking at me on the cross I knew in my spirit that He looking at my past, present and future sins and He choose to pay the price for them. It is one thing to intellectually know Jesus paid for our sins, but it is another thing to actually see Him pay for them in front of my very eyes.
If Jesus is God’s example of true love, what can we learn from Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross? Think of what Jesus prayed on the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” That was the moment in eternity that God forgave us because Jesus asked. In the midst of the agony of the cross Jesus put us first! The core of what Jesus demonstrated was selflessness.
In our lives, do we put others first? It may be easier to see how we put ourselves first by considering all the fighting, bickering, harsh words and abuse that occurs in our families. You can trace every one of these acts back to a root of selfishness. Imagine what happens when multiple family members are acting selfishly. The reason why the divorce rate is so high is because of selfishness. Selfishness is the antithesis of love.
What do you have control over? The answer to that question is yourself. That presents us with a conundrum where there is no good thing in us because of sin, but God asks us to be selfless? That is where the grace of God helps us to walk in His of perfect selfless love. So it is a symbiotic relationship you have with God in that you have a free will and He has the strength to enable you to do His will. God will never force you to do anything against your will, so you must say “yes” to God.
So if you want to eliminate harshness from a relationship, examine yourself and ask what selfishness you are harboring and take steps to let go of the “me first” attitude and then ask God to help with that you can’t change in the other person. One of the best ways to resurrect a relationship is to learn how to forgive. We tend to hold on to wrongs committed against us and continually meditate on them in our minds. It is like licking a poison popsicle and thinking the poison won’t affect the rest of your body. Unforgiveness can spread to all of your attitudes and make you a very sour person. The more you hold to bitterness the more it will drag you down and likewise, the more you forgive the more God’s blessing are made manifest and you are lifted up.
How to forgive
Forgiveness is an act of the will. You choose to forgive or you don’t. The bible teaches when someone comes to you and asks for forgiveness, that we should grant it without any strings attached. In the world it is a common attitude to attach conditions to forgiveness like the other person needs to understand the depth of pain they caused you. By doing so we are being presumptuous and trying to do the Holy Spirit’s job of convicting the world of sin. Do you trust God that He will teach them in His perfect way what they need to know? In other words, revenge and forgiveness just don’t mix. Yet we taint the forgiveness we give in many subtle ways because we are being selfish because we look at ourselves as the center of the universe and the other person has violated our sense of right and wrong. In God there is no condemnation for those in Christ through the sacrifice of Jesus’ death on the cross. You never hear the word “but” when God forgives you like, “I forgive you, but....” So why should we insert conditions when we forgive? Would you feel like you are forgiven if you had to carry a 100 pound backpack as a condition of receiving forgiveness? So don’t withhold forgiveness for those who ask and let the quality of your forgiveness be pure.
Leave a Blessing
God doesn’t stop there with forgiving your sin, He leaves a blessing. The apostle Paul wrote, “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Have you ever noticed that after you have sinned, repented and asked for forgiveness, God leaves you not only with forgiveness but also with a blessing like wisdom? God is not rewarding sin, but He is demonstrating His nature to you so that you can walk by example. God takes the ashes of your sin and causes good things to come forth. The mark of a really mature Christian is to do likewise. When someone sins against you and repents, don’t just do what is required through forgiveness, but also leave a blessing. Think of it from the other person’s point of view to be forgiven and then receive a blessing! Who cannot be amazed at such love?
It’s so Hard
Let’s consider the emotional inertia within ourselves that resists what I have been telling you. You may say in your heart that what you ask is hard to do because you don’t know how deep the hurt goes down within me. God knows how deep it goes and it is learning to let go of the pain and letting God handle the responsibility of administering discipline to the other person as He sees fit. If someone has sinned against you, you have the option to require justice of them, but you will then be in the position where you will be judged by the same standard and you will not survive such a judgement against you!
The wound that is within is not the issue you need to deal with, but the source of your healing which is God. There is no wound that God can’t heal, so it really becomes an issue of you letting go and letting God do His work in you. Ask yourself which is harder, holding on to pain with no hope of healing or a momentary pain of letting go with the promise of God’s comfort? You may have lived in the darkness of your pain for such a long time that you have forgotten that the love of God is there for you in that dark place. “There is no hope,” is the lie the devil wants you to keep believing in order to destroy your faith in God. The best way to find out if God’s promises are true is to put your full weight on them and see for yourself if God is faithful to His word.
Conclusion
My encouragement to you is to learn how to express love to others through God’s example of Jesus on the cross. As God has forgiven and blessed you, so forgive and bless others just as apostle Paul wrote...
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:31–32)
Also...
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1–13)