Love forgets....it does not keep a record of wrongs or past sins. Love forgives...it does not dwell on the past mistakes we have made. Love does not dwell on past failures or past sins. Our attitude towards those who have wronged us should be the same as God's attitude towards our sin. God forgives and forgets. This is not to say that there are no consequences for our sin. Either we suffer or innocent ones around us suffer because of our sin. However God in His Word forgives and forgets our sins. Therefore we should be quick to forgive others and forget the trespasses against us.
One of the problems we have in forgiving others is that we may not have accepted our own forgiveness. It is by faith that we believe that God has forgiven us and if we accept this gift of forgiveness we can then forgive others. I have heard it said that "we should keep a short list of our sins." In other words we should always confess our sins to the Lord and as for forgiveness. There is great freedom in realizing that our slate is clean and that we can go to God with a pure heart. If we allow sin to linger and do not ask for forgiveness this can separate us from fellowship with the Father. I can easily say that if we do not forgive others then we cannot enjoy fellowship with these same people.
In order to forgive others we must stop and think a moment about ourselves. We were forgiven by a gracious and loving God. How can we not then extend this same love to others? Our sins are many but we can go to the foot of the Saviour and He is quick to forgive us....again should we not be quick to forgive others? I think we all need a reality check. We are not perfect....we sin....we have within us a nature to sin...this is the reason we do others wrong.
What about those that do not ask for forgiveness? How can we forgive them if they are not humble enough to ask? In reading a great book by Frances Chan (crazy love) he talks about this and suggests that we forgive people even if they don't ask. It is all about realizing the inadequacy of man and extending forgiveness even when it is not asked for. This is love.
Life is much easier to live if we don't walk around with ill feelings toward others even though they have done us wrong. I go to yesterdays post with this thought....others treat us many times the same way we treat God. Therefore we should be like God in that we can forget our own feelings and extend love and forgiveness to others even if they do not deserve it. A great example is our children. They do wrong and perhaps they are too young to ask for forgiveness. We do not stop loving them and we look past their wrongs because of our love for them. Even if they are old enough to express sorrow for their inappropriate behaviour but don't we still love and forgive them. This should be the same for all men.
I have heard it said that I can forgive but I won't forget. This is not true forgiveness. Of course we will be cautious with one that wrongs us but we must open the door of fellowship and pray that this one will truly cease the activity that resulted in wrong behaviour. After all how many times did Jesus say to forgive others? I believe it was 70 x 7 or numberous times. Mankind is still under construction and he will mess up...but thank God we have a patient, loving Father who keeps no record of our sins...we should do the same.
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