Forgiving- Jesus’s Most Costly Lesson
Who amongst us has not been grieved by being mistreated by those we have so diligantly attempted to help ?
A grief that often turns our hearts black and causes us to focus on the hurt and in so doing clouds our eyes toward our fellow man. Thinking of him as a hurtful creature and one that is not deserving of our love and assistance.
Indeed few of us can claim to have never been touched by these most injurous feelings, and unfortunately many have allowed them to mire us in the mud of unforgiveness.
One of the most difficult things we are instucted by the lord to do is to truely forgive those that have wronged and hurt us. Yet in being unable, we can not move on to truely love our neighbors as Jesus has instucted us to do. For our neighbors means all mankind not just those we adore but also those who have hurt or wronged us.
I speak with many good Christians and find it that there are often those who find it all but impossible to put aside their grief in relationship to some hurt they have peviously received. Even many of those who professing to have forgiven someone who has wronged them are found often to be speaking the words of forgiveness and yet in the same sentence utter unforgiving statements regarding the matter and unjustly or hatefully judging the supposedly forgiven.
Who has even been more wronged than our Beloved Jesus. The perfect man who had come to offer us redemption and words of honor. Teaching us the way and filling us with the love that he possessed. Working miracles amongst us and filling us with the importance of loving all of our neighbors.
Walking amongst his world’s most unforgiven and lowly creatures and although tempted surely in a fashion that none of us could have ever endured and yet still remaining sinnless as he has done.
No one has ever been less deserving of being hurt and yet more inspiring and giving.
Why do I say forgiveness is his most costly lesson ? Who amongst us could say that he has even come close to being the total loving and giving man that Jesus became in his short stay amongst us ? Even non Christians readily admit to his existance and greatness in this respect. Yet being all that he was it was the very mankind he came to help who cruely treated him as no man before of since. Scourging him, insulting him, and finally mockingly hanging him on a cross to endure pain and humiliation as the hands of his beloved, an insult that few could ever begin to truely imagine or endure.
In the very midst of that unendurable pain he lovingly beseached his Heavenly Father to forgive those who had brought this about. Even giving them the excuse that "they know not what they do". How much easier would it have been to call down God’s wrath on those who had caused his torment - the torment that he was receiving at that very moment.
Do you dare suggest that there have been those who have wronged you more than we have done to him ? I sincerely doubt it. Yet he has set before us the perfect example of forgiveness. Set it before us at a terrible cost. With the blood of our sins steaming down his face and the agony of a
thousand deaths wracking his precious body, beaten so as to be unrecognizable as a man, he called forth the lesson that he had so vehemently preached to us - the lesson of forgiveness. His most costly lesson a lesson written in his very own precious blood.
Dare you knowing of this perfect and costly lesson put it aside ? Thinking that there are wrongs you have suffered that do not deserve to be forgiven with no hatred or animosity toward the doers of these wrong deeds ?
His perfect and most costly lesson should not be left in vain. For we can not expect him to forgive us our trespasses if can not forgive those who have trepassed against us can we ? Furthermore he has told us not even to try. So if you wish to someday enter the gates of heaven your learning of this most important lesson is mandatory.
Mathew 6:14-15 "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Again in Mathew 18:21-35.
Let not this his most perfect and costly lesson be in vain - work diligantly at forgiveness. For it will surely set you free, free to love all mankind as Jesus so inspired us to do, inspired us at a great cost to himself. Writing this most important lesson for us on the cross and in his very own blood.
† Yours in Christ †
Dennis C.
Christian Fellowship
Cocoa Beach, Florida
