Forgiveness… we have all been there. Whether being the one receiving it or extending it.
Nowadays, having a community is a luxury. There may be many reasons, but I have been thinking about how we don’t know how to be part of a community. Conflicts are inevitable when dealing with imperfect people with different backgrounds. Part of conflict management is forgiving one another for each other’s faults. I have also fallen victim to this. “Why should I forgive them? It is easier to cut them off”, or “I don’t need them in my life anyway”, I often thought. Allowing offense and unforgiveness to rule our life decisions rather than God and His Holy Spirit will make us miss how He is using unpleasant circumstances to our advantage (Romans 8:28). Understanding that forgiveness is not about the other person, but about me, has truly been freeing. If you read the passages about the consequences of unforgiveness, you will often find them directed at the person who has not forgiven (Mark 11:25). I think we need to rethink how we look at forgiveness. Forgiving someone is not synonymous with excusing someone’s wrongdoings. Even with us, when God forgives us, He is not saying that what we did was right; His word explicitly says what we did is wrong. However, even God forgives those. I now like to view it as one of God’s commandments to His children, and that’s the lens I will speak from.
In a conversation, Peter asked Jesus a question that many of us in the heat of the moment have probably asked ourselves. “How many times should I forgive [insert name]?” Peter suggests seven times. That sounds like a reasonable number of times to me. But when I flip the question back to myself as the one on the receiving end, I don’t know if I like the idea of someone keeping count of how many times I’ve wronged them, as well as knowing that after the seventh time, they wouldn’t need to deal with me anymore. Thankfully, Jesus responds to Peter, saying, “Seventy-seven times.” In other versions, we read seventy times seven. Either way, what Jesus was trying to explain here is that we don’t keep count; we forgive. If this isn’t clear, Jesus then expands on his point by telling a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven. I know what you are thinking: “What does the Kingdom of Heaven have to do with forgiveness?” I invite you to read the whole story in Matthew 18:21-35. But, essentially, in the Kingdom of God, we are expected to forgive because we have been forgiven by God, a bigger debt than anyone could ever owe us, and even if we tried to pay it, we would not have enough to cover it in our lifetime.
The debt that God covered for us was our sin. Sin prevents us from being in a relationship with Him. Romans 6:23 states that what we deserve for sin is death, but because Jesus died for us and we put our trust in Him, we can now live and be part of the Kingdom of Heaven. Every Kingdom/Government has its laws and regulations. In this Kingdom, those who have been forgiven, forgive. And through it we can reflect God’s character.
