I Forgive You!

Is it possible to remember and forget at the same time? Yes, God does that!

He never forgets us.

“See, I have engraved you on The Palms of My Hands; your walls are ever before Me.”
Isaiah 49:16

Does God forget anything? Yes, He does.

When we repent and ask for His Forgiveness, He forgives us and forgets our sins.

“For I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more.”
Hebrews 8:12

There’s just one “catch.” If we want to receive the Joy of God’s Forgiveness, we must forgive those who have hurt us.

Jesus was very clear.

“But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Matthew 6:15

Sometimes we attempt to heal old wounds by trying to forget the ones who hurt us. However we find that difficult to do. They are a real part of our history. To eliminate them would be eliminating a part of ourselves.

What if we forgave like God does? What if we made a conscious effort to remember those who hurt us?

See them for a moment, as you may have held them in your memory, chained to their sins.

If you could release them, would you? Or is it possible, you have become the prosecuting attorney, judge, jury and prison warden, who would never consider releasing them because of what they did to you?

The sobering question is not how much they sinned, but rather how much have we sinned in not releasing them?

But wait, you might say, you don’t understand what they did to me. They never said they were sorry. They never asked my forgiveness.

The ones who were crucifying Jesus did not ask forgiveness from God or Jesus. Yet, even as they continued to sin and hurt Jesus, He said,

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Luke 23:34

Did they really not know what they were doing? Their actions seemed deliberately focused on causing pain and death. Yet Jesus saw them, not as the sum of their actions, but as the sum of all God created them to be.

Forgiving as Jesus did means forgiving while being hurt. Sometimes it involves forgiving long after we are hurt.

Forgiving as Jesus did means being willing to see the other person at their best, not at their worst.

Forgiving is an act of faith by which spiritually, (not physically) we bring someone else to God’s Throne of Grace, and pray they will seek God’s Forgiveness, not ours.

We sacrifice our desire for an apology. We commute the sentence of how much hard labor they will have to do to pay for their sins against us. And finally we pardon them completely, trusting God to restore them to all He created them to be.

Grace is a Gift of God that comes both to us and through us. As God does with us, we can remember the one He created. And with God’s help, we can forget their sins.

“It does not depend, therefore, on human desire or effort, but on God’s Mercy.”
Romans 6:19

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!”
2 Corinthians 5:17