Forgiven

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Forgiven! No word in all the English language quite speaks to the heart of man as does this one word. Pause for a moment and pronounce the word several times: forgiven, forgiven! Forgiveness involves three areas of relationship, all intertwined. A problem in one area results in problems in the others.

Forgiveness involves your relationship with God, your relationship with your fellow man, and your relationship with yourself. The big difference though is that when it comes to our relationship with God, we must ask for forgiveness, while we must learn to extend it to ourselves and to others.

To forgive means that you have been wounded, that your fundamental rights have been violated, and that you are willing to give up your right to redress or to compensate for what has happened to you. Writing to the Ephesians, Paul said, "Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you" (Ephesians 4:32 kjv). That phrase "even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you" becomes the model of our learning to forgive each other.

Because God has forgiven us, we have no right to refuse to forgive others and ourselves as well. The true nature of forgiveness demands that the act or transgression be put completely away as though it had never happened. Again God’s forgiveness is the model. "As far as the east is from the west," wrote David in Psalm 103:12, "so far has he removed our transgressions from us." Scientists have measured the distance from the north to the south pole–12,420 miles–but the east and the west never meet.

True forgiveness puts the deed aside as though it had never taken place. "Well, I’ll forgive you this time, but if you ever do this again, we are through." Is that real forgiveness? It is merely an indefinite probation–the breach of which brings the full weight of the law for the first offense. Forgiven–what a beautiful word!

When the widow of a country doctor looked over the books of her deceased husband, she discovered that he had written "Forgiven–too poor to pay" across the page of many who owed him vast sums of money. She, not having the grace to forgive so much, went to court to collect. The judge threw out the case. "What has been forgiven in the doctor’s own handwriting," he declared, "cannot be collected by another." When the righteous Judge of the Universe forgives us, what right have we to try to make another pay? Yes, how beautiful that word–forgiven.

Resource Reading: Philippians 2:1-11