Luke 7:44- 47 says, “Then He [Jesus] spoke to Simeon about the woman still weeping at his feet. “Do you see this woman kneeling here? She is doing for Me what you didn’t bother to do. When I entered your home as your guest, you didn’t think about offering Me water to wash the dust off my feet. Yet she came into your home and washed My feet with her many tears and then dried My feet with her hair. You didn’t even welcome Me into your home with the customary kiss of greeting, but from the moment I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You didn’t take the time to anoint My head with fragrant oil, but she anointed My head and feet with the finest perfume. She has been forgiven of all her many sins. This is why she has shown me such extravagant love. But those who assume they have very little to be forgiven will love Me very little.”
We are still talking about why we need to be planted in church. I heard someone say recently, there is no such thing as church hurt, just people hurt. There are people everywhere and people will be people. I thought it would be incomplete to conclude what we have been talking about without talking about forgiveness. If people are going to do people stuff, we must be ready, at all times, to forgive them when they do.
I am sure the apostle Peter understands exactly what it’s like to have to deal with people because the Bible says in Matthew 18:21, “Later Peter approached Jesus and said, “How many times do I have to forgive my fellow believer who keeps offending me? Seven times?” Sounds like Peter was ready to chop some ears or throw hands! He was counting the number of offences and running out of fingers to count them on!
Matthew 18:22- 35 has Jesus’ response which says, “Jesus answered, “Not seven times, Peter, but seventy times seven times! The lessons of forgiveness in heaven’s kingdom realm can be illustrated like this: “There once was a king who had servants who had borrowed money from the royal treasury. He decided to settle accounts with each of them. As he began the process, it came to his attention that one of his servants owed him one billion dollars. So he summoned the servant before him and said to him, ‘Pay me what you owe me.’
When his servant was unable to repay his debt, the king ordered that he be sold as a slave along with his wife and children and every possession they owned as payment toward his debt. The servant threw himself facedown at his master’s feet and begged for mercy. ‘Please be patient with me. Just give me more time and I will repay you all that I owe.’ Upon hearing his pleas, the king had compassion on his servant, and released him, and forgave his entire debt.
“No sooner had the servant left when he met one of his fellow servants, who owed him twenty thousand dollars He seized him by the throat and began to choke him, saying, ‘You’d better pay me right now everything you owe me!’ His fellow servant threw himself facedown at his feet and begged, ‘Please be patient with me. If you’ll just give me time, I will repay you all that is owed.’ But the one who had his debt forgiven stubbornly refused to forgive what was owed him. He had his fellow servant thrown into prison and demanded he remain there until he repaid the debt in full.
“When his associates saw what was going on, they were outraged and went to the king and told him the whole story. The king said to him, ‘You scoundrel! Is this the way you respond to my mercy? Because you begged me, I forgave you the massive debt that you owed me. Why didn’t you show the same mercy to your fellow servant that I showed to you?’ In a fury of anger, the king turned him over to the prison guards to be tortured until all his debt was repaid. In this same way, my heavenly Father will deal with any of you if you do not release forgiveness from your heart toward your fellow believer.”
Yep, that’s straight from Jesus. Forgiveness is a big deal to God. Now we sometimes confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. Forgiveness is releasing the person from the debt that we think they owe us. When we are wronged, sometimes we feel like the person who wronged us owes us something. You hear people say things like, “They owe me an apology!” Forgiveness wipes the slate clean. Why? Because we know much like the servant who owed $1 billion, we have been forgiven much. So out of our love for Jesus and because we don’t want to be separated from our fellowship with Him and His Presence, we forgive others too. We have been forgiven much and therefore we must love much.
To be unable to forgive is to say, “What I did wasn’t even that bad compared to what they did to me.” We assume we have been forgiven little and therefore our love for Jesus is limited. We close ourselves out of the wonderful relationship God wants to have with us. Simeon, in Luke 7 above, treated Jesus as meh. He was super casual about having the Lord in his house. But the woman who recognised just who Jesus was to her, did not care about what she looked like or what others thought or would think, she chose to honour and love Jesus. When we forgive others, even when our family or friends don’t agree, we are choosing to honour Jesus.
Is forgiveness saying what they did is okay? Nope. God forgives our sin, but He never says sin is okay. We forgive so we can be forgiven (Matthew 6:14). We want to be forgiven because we love Jesus and we don’t want to build a wall between us and God where Jesus died to build a bridge.
So it doesn’t matter how wrong they were, for the sake of your own heart and your walk with Jesus, you need to forgive people. That’s the only way the family of God works. That’s the only way we can keep showing up to church on Sunday; we forgive each other. People will be people, and you are a person too. Yes, people have to forgive you too, nobody is perfect! So yes, people will be people but it is up to us to decide beforehand that no matter what happens, we choose to honour God’s word and we choose to forgive.
Does it mean we are perfect at it? No. Sometimes we want to throw hands, but we are guided by Holy Spirit living in us and not our fleshly impulses. We may have to go home and scream where no one can hear. Get the anger out. Squeeze a stress ball. Cry it out if you must but ultimately we forgive. The Bible is clear that offences will come in Matthew 18:7 (a few verses before Peter asks his question BTW). The Bible also tells us that we can be angry, but in our anger we are not allowed to sin (Ephesians 4:26). Being angry is often a sign that a boundary (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual) has been crossed or that we perceive it so. However, it is never a sure sign that the other person is in the wrong. Yep, we are always right in our own eyes until God pulls us aside and says “Hey…” and then we are like “oh… yeah You’re right.” I am sure I am not the only one having those types of conversations with God. So, we forgive because God commands us to!
Love and blessings,
Melissa Tsingano.
Heavenly Whispers Blog 
Leave a comment