True Forgiveness
21 Nov 2009

All around us there is anger and cries for vengeance because of the lack of forgiveness.  Here is a little understanding that I have come to think about lately.

We are all subject, and some more vulnerable than others, to certain passions.  If we submit to a passion, but then repent and  put those passions under control, we are to be forgiven, and show forgiveness to those of like passions.  If we do not show compassion and forgiveness to others, we ourselves cannot be forgiven, since we do the same things.

What is forgiveness like? Well, here is a little parable that might help us understand, but now that I have it written down, it doesn’t seem so striking as it did when my head lay upon my pillow.

A woman put wood into her iron stove to heat the house. Her little four year old, being warmed and comfortable, began playing close to the stove. The woman warned him not to touch the hot stove, but he kept playing and getting dangerously close. After warning him the second time, she scolded him and told him he must obey her. Forgetting again, he got too close, tripped and a hand fell upon the hot stove.

Now he had done it! and an angry mother was coming toward him, yet weeping as she came. Was he going to be spanked and scolded? He knew he had disobeyed and that was a no-no. Crying not only from the pain, but from feeling guilty, he kept saying “I’m sorry! Won’t do it again!”

The woman picked him up, but was gentle, and said that it would be all-right, but that she had told him and that he disobeyed, and that maybe now he would listen to her. But she was tender in her care of the hand until it healed completely.

That is the feeling of true forgiveness. Parallel it to God and man in the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s warnings, God expelled them from the Garden. He was angry and hurt, but hoped that now man would listen to Him; yet He was tender in His care until He could call man back to be healed completely.

Forgiving is not condoning or indulging a person's whims and sins. If we forgive as Christ forgave, it involves actions on both sides. Christ forgives us if we repent and turn away from wrong doing, and then His Blood cleanses us. When we forgive, we lovingly discipline, teach, and bring back a person to a good relationship, but they in turn must turn from their wrong doing and live up to the principles set down that separates us from this world. And then the relationship should be as though it had never happened.

We should be learning to live the fruit of the Spirit and shunning the fruits of the flesh, but that is not what we are doing. We keep returning to the rudiments and studying them and never learning to live as we should live. We are going about saying we are so good because we are His children, and everyone else is condemned, and we spend our time trying to take the gospel to them so that we can feel safe because that is " what we are supposed to be doing... going into all the world".   But we should be about teaching everyone how to walk in the light as He is in the light, being ready to give an answer to those who ask. The manner in which we live should be the only gospel that we should be "pushing". Then the missionaries and preachers can go where the gospel is really needed to be taken, and they should have our whole-hearted support. ALL of us should shake the dust off our feet and leave those who "will not listen " to the judgment of our Lord.

It is not the “passion” that is to be under consideration, but the “lack of control” of passions that places us in the vulnerability of sin, whatever that passion might be.  And we know them all if we but admit the truth of the matter…. anger, not taming the tongue, backbiting, and so on to the more serious ones as adultry and murder (Read Galatians chapter 5).  No one person can be assured that someday he will not fall to the temptation that he so despises in others, because under the right conditions everyone becomes vulnerable, and can be pressured enough to break.