Yesterday's Bible Study |
In this verse from Proverbs, we are reminded of the importance of forgiveness. If we do not forgive others' sins against us, and instead bring them up again and again, we can eventually lose valuable relationships in our lives. On the other hand, when we truly forgive each other, we are able to love each other well.
We are all pretty much guaranteed to be deeply hurt by another person. The converse is also true; we are very likely to hurt another person. We will often need to seek forgiveness and give forgiveness, as painful as the situation is. When we decide to offer forgiveness, we are seeking love. We are saying that we will overlook how someone has hurt us because we value them more than the pain they have caused us. Even more so, we recognize that we have been forgiven as well.
As Christians, we cannot rightly harbor unforgiveness in our hearts. This is because we have already been forgiven for so much. Jesus sees all our sins, and He went to the cross, carrying them on His back to Calvary. He decided to overlook how He was wronged so that we could have a chance at a relationship with the Lord. We live in the eternal promise of His forgiveness--we know that He will not hold anything back from us because He loves us so much. |
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When we don't forgive other people, it drives a wedge in that relationship and between us and the Lord. Refusing to forgive is, in essence, saying that what Jesus did on the cross was not enough for that person who hurt us. Jesus takes our pain seriously, and when He died on the cross, He was taking into account the many, specific ways that people would hurt us. Because of this, harboring unforgiveness is essentially rejecting the power of the cross to forgive all sin.
When we do forgive, however, we experience grace. We help the other person find relief from the pain that their own actions caused themselves, helping them get free from guilt and shame. We also get a tangible reminder of how the Lord forgave us. Forgiving other people lets us experience grace from the other side and frees us from anger, frustration, and bitterness that can fester and ruin our relationships. Forgiveness is an inevitable part of life, and it has made our relationships with the Lord possible in the first place. Because of this, we should be willing to forgive others.
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