Forgivness

Forgivness

What does the bible say about forgiveness? There are many verses in the bible about forgiveness but today ill mention just a few that stand out to me.

Mathew 6.14-15 nasb Jesus says,
For if you forgive others of their trangressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others , then your Father will not forgive your transgressions

This is a poweful enough verse by itself for why we should forgive, although lets check it out a bit more.

I am very blessed that i have never really had anyone do anything extreme towards me where it had made it a struggle to forgive them, my wife on the other hand had a very troubling experience when she was younger, I wont go into it in detail but long story short a very maniuplative older man had gained trust of her family and started dating her sister, lots of bad things happened and by the end the whole saga her family had turned against each other and was on the edge of collapse, by Gods grace and answer to prayer they came together and talked about it as a family finding out this man had been telling them all differnt stories and manipulating them all. They were able to all forgive this man and grew stronger as a family from it.

Ephesians 4.31-32 says
Get rid of all bitterness , rage and anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one and other , just as in Christ God forgave you.

Forgiving someone shouldnt have conditions( like only if they admit they did something wrong) some cases the person may not even known they have offended you. Other cases maybe so bad that you cant even be in the same room as the person , either way we must forgive them if we yearn to obey God...It doesnt mean we have to have them in our lives and be their friend , in some cases it would be a very bad idea to have them in our lives, though we can always ask God to forgive them no matter what! Holding on to anger and resentment toward someone only harms us in the long run, once we have forgiven, God will start the healing process in our hearts so we can move on and enjoy life.

And remeber Jesus gave the ultimate example of forgiveness by coming to earth in flesh and dying a horrible torturess death to forgive our sins!

Also if we do wrong by anyone we should be very quick to apologize to that person and ask God for forgiveness, even if they will not forgive us, we should pray for forgiveness and pray for their hearts to be softened to eventually forgive us..

Ephesians 4.26 nasb
be angry and yet do not sin, and do not let the sun go down on your anger

Thanks for reading and God bless you all and i pray that if anyone has troubles with someone that God may soften your heart to forgive..in Jesus name

Short clip of John Piper on forgiveness