Forgiveness

Call To Prayer

Title: Forgiveness

By: Simon Maina Nuhu

Date: 14.06.2024

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.  (Matthew 6:14-15).

The subject of forgiveness is quite a significant one to all believers. God wants to remind us about this very crucial act of obedience to His commandments in order to fulfil the righteousness of His standard. Forgiveness in the sight of God goes way beyond confession and word expression but also practical demonstration with peace in the heart. We need to understand that the basis of the new covenant and the gospel through Christ the mediator (1 Timothy 2:5) was founded on forgiveness. Still, for it to happen there must be reconciliation with God in peace. We all were in times past, sinners, ignorantly hurting God through our reckless ungodly lifestyle and our trespasses to each other. God in His mercy, made a way of reconciliation through His son to bring us back to Him. As Gentiles in the past, many times we hurt others through our utterances, our verbal expression, our sentiments, our cynical behaviours, our ego and selfishness etc intentionally or unknowingly.

Today, even as believers (washed and sanctified), we need to understand that we are still not fully immune from hurts such as heartbreaks, disappointment, rejections or diabolic activities from people of the world. In fact, we should expect even our fellow believers to hurt us, including our pastors, elders in faith or our parents, friends, people we so much esteem and love. Forgiveness is never a one-time act of obedience to God, but a consistent act because God forgives us countless times even after we experienced salvation. Therefore, to adhere to God’s provision of making peace, we must begin to see forgiveness with a proper perspective.

There are many worldly concepts of forgiveness through the eyes of knowledge of good and evil, through philosophy, and traditions of men. Sadly, believers borrow the idea of the world about forgiveness. However, it is recommended that one sees it through the perspective of God in the Scripture. One common error that the world sells to Christians is ” forgive but don’t forget”. That is not the mind or idea of God concerning forgiveness, because He forgives our sins without a book of remembrance (Hebrews 8:12, Jeremiah 31:34) and He wants us to be like Him (Matthew 5:48). No wonder Saint Paul also says “… Love keeps no records of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:5). The obvious consequence of such ideology is that one keeps an archive or record book of their offenders, and as a human, most definitely one day you shall be tempted to do a quick check on those records or archives, and such gives the Devil a strong chance to remind you once more of how severe their offences were to you, eventually you might not be able to resist the pile of bitterness that comes with it.

Beloved of God, we need to put on the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5), so that we can be able to frequently forgive our offenders. It is difficult to forgive if we dwell in the flesh.

Prayer point:

Let’s thank God for His word and ask Him to help us forgive without attaching conditions.