Biblical Forgiveness
by Donald E. Higgins
Jesus said that He is the Vine, we are the branches, and without our abiding in Him, we can do nothing. John 15:5.
Certainly in all of the things required of a Christian, there is the need to forgive others. Would this important task in the Christian life fall into this category of the “nothing” that we can do on our own?
Many try to forgive, believe they have forgiven, but yet the matters of the past continue to haunt them, and residual effects of the hurt linger on. They have with all honesty, integrity and purpose, endeavored to forgive someone who has hurt them or maligned them. But, they have not used God’s method of forgiveness to do it.
Ephesians 4:31-32 sheds important light onto the this requirement of forgiveness. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (NIV) Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. (KJV)
We are to forgive one another in the same WAY, that God has forgiven us. Without Christ, God could not forgive us. He perhaps could have, but the WAY He chose to forgive us was through the completed atoning work of the cross.
I John 2:2. He (Jesus) was the propitiation, (atoning sacrifice) for our sins, and not ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.
When one realizes that God the Father looks at the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus as being sufficient for the sins of the whole world, we too can look at the cross and see that it was there that the sins of someone else, against us and God, were dealt with there too.
We then understand that no matter what anyone has done against us, no matter how serious or grievous it was, Jesus dealt it with at Calvary. It is therefore incumbent upon us to receive by faith in the atoning work of Jesus, not only for our own sins, but also the sin against us, was already paid for at Calvary.
When we see this, we can begin to understand that Jesus dealt with all sin, the forgiveness is complete.
It is then not our action of forgiving that releases us, but rather our act of believing (by faith) that it is paid for by Christ, which releases us, and sets us free.
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