To Live, Forgive

We all want to know,
How to really truly live,
Jesus Christ came to show us,
We must really truly forgive.

***

To live, forgive. It’s as simple as that. It’s also infinitely hard a concept.

Forgiveness is a double-edged sword. In theory, it’s easy to forgive. The practice is harder, and it requires at least two things: the routine giving of the matters of bitterness over to God, and the practice of actually doing what only our behaviour can do for us; actually do it. Just do it.

We forgive because we can. We refuse to believe the world’s rhetoric that ‘they don’t deserve it’, and ‘don’t be weak!’ Forgiving someone isn’t being weak; God will soon show us the power we have over the situation (and them) to make the choice to forgive; the extension of undeserved favour – which is exemplified in none other than Jesus Christ our Lord.

We forgive because we can. Only God can give us the power, which is a risk of faith, a trust in a hope that only the Bible speaks of. God gives us power to do the forgiving, and we are bequeathed the power each day ensuing – as we engage in making it a matter of public record; the person, the situation, absolved.

We have taken responsibility for what we, alone, could do: to obey God.

We have made a statement about our past that speaks hope into our future.

We have surrendered what we could no longer and never did control.

And only because we aligned with the truth that God alone holds and presides over, we were blessed in our patience, because we found that God would exact judgment over anyone who chose their own pathetic power over his eternal vestiges of grace.

We learned by raw and pain-ridden experience that forgiveness was not only appropriate for our future, it was appropriate in order to get out of God’s way.

We learned that we had no right to think judgmentally; we usurped God’s role, for the sin done against us was done more directly against the Lord who created us. Our sin against them – that for which our recognition has made it easier to see two sides and, hence, forgive – was a sin that we did against God, first and foremost.

***

We can forgive. And because we can, we should. It’s not God’s will that we withhold something that never belonged to us: the right to judge.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.