The Toughest Person to Forgive
What a gorgeous day! Hopefully you can get out today and enjoy it a bit. First things first – this Monday is Memorial Day, and we’re marching in the parade again – so check out those details below.
Last Sunday, we kicked off a new series on forgiveness called Easier Said Than Done. We heard about what forgiveness is, and why it truly is ‘easier said than done’. It costs a lot, as we learn to absorb the cost in forgiveness. We have a lot to learn to embody forgiveness as our way of life, in the way that Jesus taught and showed us.
But one comment after the service struck me, and I wanted to reflect on it. Someone said to me,
“You know what the hardest part of forgiveness is for me? Forgiving myself.”
Indeed, it can be.
What’s behind this though?
I think the answer is actually fairly simple:
we just don’t trust God enough.
If God forgives me – and has truly forgiven me – what right can I have to hold onto it? Isn’t that going against what God himself has done? Isn’t that not trusting in God for his forgiveness.
If the death of Jesus on the cross truly ‘erased the record’ that stood against me, who am I to try to scribble it down again? Isn’t not accepting God’s forgiveness just a form of rejecting Jesus’ death for me?
Isn’t that like saying “God might have erased the record against me and forgive me, but I know better than God…”? Isn’t that something Adam and Eve would have done?
Isn’t that just like us?
If God is able to forgive us, and we say that we trust God, then why can’t we let go of it and ‘forgive’ ourselves?
Maybe we don’t trust God as much as we thought.
Maybe we think we’re better than we really are.
Maybe we still think we can hang on to that little sliver of perfection that doesn’t need God’s forgiveness.
Maybe we still can’t wrap our hearts and our heads around the fact that it is by God’s grace, alone, that we are justified (we just read Romans, after all!).
If God has forgiven us, all we need to do is trust him.
After all, as Paul says in Romans 14:4,