Day 13: Forgiveness
Introduction
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Colossians 3:13
The forgiveness of our sins is a foundational tenet of our Christian faith. We have all sinned. We deserve punishment, but in love, God sent Jesus to die on the cross to pay our sin debt. As believers, we rejoice in our forgiveness! We frequently thank God in our songs and prayers for the forgiveness we receive through Christ and rightly so.
But what happens when we need to extend forgiveness to others? The need arises every day on some level, usually multiple times a day, and frequently for the same offense. Maybe our spouse is unkind, our child is disrespectful, or a friend betrays us. Perhaps forgiveness comes easy for these small offenses. We forgive and move on without too much difficulty.
But at some point, we each face a forgiveness opportunity that seems impossible. Perhaps the offense against us is criminal: someone steals from us, abuses us, assaults us. Or maybe it is deeply personal, our character is attacked in a public and destructive way, or our spouse betrays us. How can we forgive when we are deeply wounded? We find our answer, friend, at the foot of the cross!
When we are hurting it is easy to forget our own sin that needed forgiveness. In our pain, we forget that Jesus purchased our forgiveness with His own blood. He died so that we could receive forgiveness for our sins. Forgiveness means that someone has to die. Jesus died physically; we die to ourselves.