Matt.6:12,14,15 –
“And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
This could possibly be the most disturbing passage in the Bible and there it is right there in the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive me of my sins just as I forgive those who sin against me. Wow! If that is true maybe all of us need to take another look at forgiveness. Jesus connected our forgiving others to His forgiving us. If He forgave me for all I have done and and literally died for me and suffered the ramifications of my sin then He expects me to forgive others in the same way. I have to be very honest here, I don’t always do this. As a matter of fact i tend to hold on to offenses that have been thrown my way. I need His help, supernatural help, to forgive others the way He has forgiven me. This is how Barclay describes this.
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.’ The literal meaning is: ‘Forgive us our sins in proportion as we forgive those who have sinned against us.’ In verses 14 and 15, Jesus says in the plainest possible language that if we forgive others, God will forgive us; but if we refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive us. It is, therefore, quite clear that if we pray this petition with an unhealed breach, an unsettled quarrel in our lives, we are asking God not to forgive us. If we say: ‘I will never forgive so-and-so for what he or she has done to me,’ if we say: ‘I will never forget what so-and-so did to me,’ and then go and take this petition on our lips, we are quite deliberately asking God not to forgive us. As someone has put it: ‘Forgiveness, like peace, is one and indivisible.’ Human forgiveness and divine forgiveness are inextricably intertwined. Our forgiveness of one another and God’s forgiveness of us cannot be separated; they are interlinked and interdependent.”
So maybe this supernatural ability to forgive is connected to the cross. I have to go back there regularly, actually daily, and remember the horrible price the Lord paid for my forgiveness. He was betrayed, beaten, and crucified in my place. If that was not enough the Father put my sin on His only Son. The Father turned away from His Son in that horrible yet glorious moment. He prayed for me, “Father forgive them”, so that I can have the power to forgive like Jesus did. This is the work of God.
