Forgiveness

I want to share something God reminded me about today while talking with a friend, and again during today's sermon. If the Lord made a point about bringing it up twice today on separate occasions, it must be something he wants me to think about, and to share.
It's all related to this verse:

"If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins." Matthew 6:14-15

About four years ago, I really felt like God spoke to me about forgiveness. I don’t remember specifically what verse I was reading, but I do remember coming very unwillingly to the realization that I needed to forgive those who had hurt me. I sure didn’t want to, and I felt very justified in my anger and hurt. Their actions hurt me more than I’d ever been hurt in my life. I did NOT want to forgive them. (The details here are irrelevant to the story.)

The Lord did not give up, though. He kept telling me the same thing: that if I didn’t forgive, then I was, in essence, saying that I was better than God. Not forgiving them meant that I was claiming to be better, wiser, and holier than God. Now, I never consciously thought any of these things, but I realized that this was exactly what I was doing.

In 2 Samuel, King David gets involved in some big-time sin, and when he realizes what he has done, he says, “I have sinned against the Lord.” He didn’t say he’d sinned against Uriah, who he’d had murdered after he committed adultery with Uriah’s wife; he said he’d sinned against the Lord. David repented and the Lord took away his sin, but there would be consequences, as there always are when we sin. When we sin, it does indeed have an effect - sometimes a huge one - on the person we've wronged, but the One we’re really sinning against is God. That realization kicked me in the gut. I had spent all this time thinking I was so justified in hanging onto this unforgiveness, and thinking humanly, that was true. But that’s not how God looks at it. It didn’t matter what anybody had done to me; I had sinned against God by not forgiving them. In that verse above, Jesus says plain and simple that IF we forgive people for their wrongdoings, then our heavenly Father will forgive us. But if we DON’T forgive people, then God will not forgive us. Ouch. I was in need of a big helping of forgiveness, so I had some major work to do.

It was SO hard to do, but I asked Christ to help me forgive them. At first, I couldn’t even pray that I would forgive them - I had to start by asking him to help me want to forgive them. I knew my unforgiveness was a sin, but I was hanging onto it tightly. I equate this to what they say in Alcoholics Anonymous about the first step being to admit you have a problem. I admitted to God that I had this unforgiveness and anger, and I stumbled through praying that I’d begin to want to forgive. Slowly that began to happen, and then I could pray that my heart would continue to soften and that I would be able to forgive them. I still couldn’t ever fathom how that could happen, but eventually it did. Was there a fairy-tale happy ending with us all skipping along together into the sunset? No. A couple of those relationships are permanently severed, but I have re-established a relationships with a few others. The important part is the change in my heart.

Not all of my friends and family understood why I did this. They love me, so my pain became personal to them, too. But Jesus tells us very plainly to love our neighbor AND our enemy. And as Christians, we ought to stand out from the rest of the world in how we show forgiveness. Christ came to take on our sins, so we could be forgiven and free; it’s only fitting that we pass along that love and forgiveness to others.