Monday, October 3, 2016
516 - Forgiving Nature
Spirituality Column No. 516
October 4, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Forgiving Nature
By Bob Walters
“For I will forgive their
wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
– Jeremiah 31:34, quoted in Hebrews 8:12 and 10:17
God has it right. The act of forgiving is far more freeing, beneficial,
therapeutic and righteous – to all parties - than holding a grudge.
Forgiveness - not in the sense that “we are forgiven” but
that “we forgive others” – would be on anyone’s biblical top ten list of
evident, virtuous fruits of a human soul connected to the Holy Spirit, blessed
by Jesus and dedicated to God. Who
doesn’t look at a forgiving person and think better of him or her, or even call
that person Godly?
Our forgiveness of others brings peace to us and harkens
mercy for others. Forgiveness is the
most effectively self-medicating of all Godly-inspired virtues: we can ordain
it, control it, offer it, deliver it, live it and rest in it.
Funny thing, though: forgiveness only works if we forget it. And sins – yours, mine, ours – are hard to
forget. I’ll remember something I’ve
forgiven and mentally catalogue that sporadic virtue as a salvational hedge
against what I know is my personal litany of past sins, missteps,
embarrassments, offenses, annoyances and general wickedness. Then I notice I haven’t truly forgotten and
start over.
Thankfully there are many folks who, far better than I, control
their pride, anger, fear and appetites. Thankfully, I happen to be married to
one.
But, as much as any one of us may
occasionally keep track of Kingdom-sanctifying virtues – “good works” as they say
– the problem with cataloguing our forgiveness of others is that it requires
remembering the sins we forgave. Most
likely and perilously, remembrance undoes the blessing of forgiveness in the
first place.
God’s forgiveness
is different from ours because God is perfect and sinless. God’s character is the ultimate righteousness
and glory. His love is divine. Good is defined in all His being. His Kingdom has pearly gates and golden
streets. God sacrificed to the point of
death and then defeated death to forgive you and me.
Mankind, on the
other hand, lives in fallenness, duplicity, chaos and has intermittently good intentions
and recurring devious designs. When we
do forgive we don’t typically have sacred skin in the game; we just let go of
anger. God didn’t “just let it go”; Jesus
died to cover our sins and was resurrected to give us hope.
The fact is humans
can’t adequately forgive; we aren’t equipped for it. Only God can forgive, and
only through our faith in Jesus can we gain the peace and love true forgiveness
brings. God’s forgiveness is eternal and
final; ours is temporal and fragile.
Want to truly
forgive? Remember Jesus and forget the
offense.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes the surprising number
of people who deny Christ and declare some variation of “I can’t forgive God.” That’s really, really backwards.
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