Exhortation: On Forgiveness
We are never more like God than when we forgive
Every Lord’s Day we want to exhort you about some important issue that will not come up in the sermon, that we the elders sense needs saying, in real-time.
To exhort means to strongly encourage someone to do something, often based on some authority. DOING is important, because our faith is not just a set of mystical propositions, like every other religion. Christianity is based on the news that God did something - he took on flesh and became a man, in Jesus Christ.
And Jesus did not just teach; he LIVED life like us, experiencing all our trials, blessings, betrayals and even death - as a criminal, on a gory Roman cross. There he stood in our place, satisfying justice for everything we’ve done wrong.
Then three days later, God did something again - He raised Jesus from the dead. Christianity is not just a matter of talk, but of power, whereby wrong things are forgiven and made right, and whereby old dead things are resurrected and new worlds and relationships come into being.
Therefore whoever trusts in Christ now is cleansed and forgiven of all our sins, and we share in Christ’s new, resurrected life. The old has gone, the new has come.
So then, our exhortation today is simply this: be forgiven, and forgive. Be raised from the dead yourself, by being forgiven, and then raise your relationships from the dead, by forgiving.
You can be forgiven in full by putting your faith in Christ. If you have not, do it - receive God’s gift. Then forgive, as you have been forgiven in Christ.
Forgiveness is a promise that I will never bring up your fault again, to you, to anyone else, to God, or to myself. Instead I promise to love you, imitating Christ’s love at the cross that covered my million-times more sins.
Jesus is crucified, forgiving you, so forgive. Jesus is risen, bringing the era of new life. You do the same: make things new, by forgiving:
That decades-old resentment? Drop it in the grave. Let go of that church hurt. It’s true, there’s no hurt like a church hurt. Except the hurt of the cross, whereby grace found you. And yes, your parent should or should not have done that. Forgive them anyway.
For Easter is about new life and God’s glory, and we are never more like God than when we forgive.