7. Can you forgive from your heart?
Last updated 21 May 2018
It may be easy to say that we forgive with our mouths, even try to believe it in our mind, but do we really forgive from our heart? ....To really forgive is to forget.
Forgiveness is a lot more than just saying that you are sorry.....
The word forgiveness means cancellation of all debt. In commerce, a debtor is one who owes money to someone else. The "someone else" is the creditor. When the money is totally paid, the debtor is released from being a debtor because he no longer owes the creditor a thing. Forgiveness is exactly that. A debtor is in a state of obligation to the creditor until that debt is redeemed. Another word for forgiveness is redemption. When the debt is redeemed the debtor is forgiven everything and he owes nothing. The creditor forgets the debt as soon as it is paid in full because it is erased from his ledger and it no longer appears before him.
Our God is in the debt cancellation business. When God forgives us for our sins we are redeemed and all our sins are forgotten by God! God not only erases our record of sin from His ledger, but He also erases us, the sinner of those sins! This happens the moment we accept His way of forgiveness. Jesus Christ's death on the cross is our wages for all our sin. Once we are in possession of God's forgiveness, we have both the debt cancellation of our sins and the removal of our name from His list of sinners.
Unforgiveness is a sin that separates us from God.......
When God forgives, He forgets. We sin whenever we do or think something which is offensive to God's character. Sin separates us from God the same way a bankrupt is separated from his bank. God can have nothing to do with a sinner. A bankrupt is someone who is unable to pay his creditors the debts he has accumulated. A sinner is a spiritual bankrupt, that is, one who has accumulated a debt of sin and can't pay. A sinner is one who is in a state of spiritual separation from God due to his debt of sin. We are born into this world as undischarged spiritual bankrupts in debt to God, due to the sin of our forefather Adam. Adam acquired the nature of a sinner for us by giving his allegiance to the Serpent in preference to God. Adam sold his innocent, naked soul nature to Satan in exchange for knowledge. The whole World system is built on this type of knowledge that Adam acquired for us. When Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he declared his independence from God, and gave his allegiance to the devil, not just for himself and for Eve, but for the whole of mankind that would be born from him.
We are all wrong! ...we are all sinners.......
We don't become sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. Sin is in our blood from our birth because we have inherited the sin nature from Adam. We come into this World with a nature that sins automatically and spontaneously whenever our will is violated. Sin is not just an action of behaviour but also the attitude of our heart. Sin is any act of imperfection, external or internal. Sin is an act of unrighteousness that offends God's character. God's character is Holy and His nature is righteous. Character is what God is. Nature is the way God acts.
When we sin, we do something that is opposite and opposed to God's way and consequently we offend His Holy character. God has His standard and His standard is His own Holiness. Holiness is best described as whole, perfect and totally complete in all things. Anything less than this is depravity in Gods sight. When we sin, we do it out of a sinful nature that has a depraved character. God did not create man to sin and God did not create man with a sinful nature.
Sin is the nature of Satan.........
God gave His first commandment to Man when He commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge. God told Adam that he would die if he ate of that tree. Please note that God did not say, "In the day that you disobey Me, you will die", but He did say, "In the day that you eat of that tree you will surely die." There was something in that tree that would bring death to Adam, spiritually and physically. There was something in that tree that would bring death, not just on Adam, but upon all that would be born of the flesh of Adam.
We need to take a fresh look at what sin really is and where it came from, before we can consider how God deals with it by His forgiveness and deliverance. We need first of all to be reminded that sin was on the earth before Adam was created. A previous creation of God had tried to make himself equal to God because of his great knowledge and his beauty. The result was that Lucifer corrupted his wisdom with his knowledge (Ezekiel 28:17) and then he declared himself to be equal to God. He claimed to be as God in his likeness (Isaiah 14:14).
We sin because we are born as sinners.......
Nothing Lucifer claimed could have been further from the truth and in that moment his nature was revealed as the nature of iniquity. Iniquity means evil, wicked and unrighteous, in other words the exact opposite to the true nature of God. This nature then is that nature which produces sin. Or to put it another way, all sin proceeds out of this type of nature, so we may accurately call it 'the nature of sin' or the 'Sin nature'. We are not constituted sinners by God because we sin, but rather do we sin because we are born into this world with this 'nature of sin'. A sinner produces sins because he has a 'law of sin' within him, that law of sin is this 'nature of sin'.
We know that death was included in the tree of knowledge, which would come upon Adam if he ate, but we seem to have missed the fact that sin itself was also part of the same package. When Adam ate of the tree of knowledge, he at the same instant ate of this 'nature of sin' and it became a part of him. The nature of sin was incarcerated in the tree that God referred to as 'The tree of the knowledge of knowing good and knowing evil'. Had that not have been so, then God would not have said, "In the day you eat thereof you will surely die."
Sin is a law within us.........
Death is a consequence of sin. No sin means that there can be no death. The wages of sin is death, not the wages of death is sin. The 'sin' that was in that tree was the 'nature of sin' which Adam acquired on the day he ate and it became a permanent part of his nature, and the natures of all who would be born out of him right down through the ages to you and I. The nature of sin is the nature of Satan. When we are born into this world we make our entrance with a law of sin in our make up. We are born with a nature that sins quite naturally, without any special effort on our part. We are sinners because we are born as sinners. We are in a perpetual state of sin because of our nature. The only way we can be delivered from our wretched nature is through death.
If only God could die our death for us, on our behalf, our problem would be solved. The wages of our sin would be paid in full and we would be released from our debt to Almighty God. This is exactly what God has done in the person of His Son, Jesus.
When God forgives He forgets!.......
God's way to forgive man is by way of debt cancellation. The way God cancels out all our sin is to come to Earth as a man, in the person of His Son and die as a live sacrifice to pay the entire debt of all the offences of man in full. The wages for our sin is death. Jesus died for us, in place of us, and paid the wages for us, enabling God to cancel out all our debt to Him. God has effectually cancelled out all our offences for all time. All means all - past offences, present offences and future offences. The death of the Lord Jesus is one death upon the cross nearly 2000 years ago, to pay the debt for all.
If you are in doubt about the aspect of future sins being already forgiven before you have committed them, please consider this question. How many of the total number of your sins that you will commit in you lifetime, were in the future to the Lord Jesus back then when He hung on the cross? Your answer would have to be, "All of them." God's forgiveness is absolute forgiveness. When God forgives, God forgets all that He has forgiven. God not only forgives us of our sins, He also forgets them.
The Lord Jesus is the only one that has the power of forgiveness......
For those of us Christians, who still struggle at times with God's absolute forgiveness, we need to be assured to this extent, that even if we were to die today, and appear before God, and try to apologise for many sins that we consider may not yet be fully confessed or dealt with; God would answer our apology with 'What sins?' God would pull our file from the Lamb's book of life and show us a blank sheet.
God remembers our sins no more because He doesn't see them any more. God is neither deficient in memory or sight, but He sees something else that is blocking out His view of our sins and our life as a sinner. He sees the precious shed blood of His Son poured out at the cross blotting out all that we have done to offend Him. The Lord Jesus is the only one who can forgive man anything because He is the only one whose death was acceptable to God to pay the wages of sin that man had accumulated. The Lord Jesus is the only one that has the power of forgiveness, we don't. The opposite to forgiveness is unforgiveness.
God's forgiveness is a perfect and complete forgiveness......
Our type of forgiveness is not God's. His is whole, perfect and just. Our's is by name only, and how impossible it is to forget when someone has hurt you deeply. Unforgiveness is still a big problem today in the hearts of many Christians. We can say we forgive from our mouth, even believe it in our mind, but it is not in our heart until we remember it no more. When our faculty of emotion no longer responds with waves of anger, bitterness or resentment in response to the hurt that is associated with a debt of offence, then our heart is free because our heart is not offended any more by the recalling of such an incident.
Forgiveness is impossible with man but possible from God. We do not posses the power to forgive anybody anything to this degree of heart forgiveness. In some matters of little consequence to ourselves, we may eventually tend to forgive and forget in time, but where there has been deep hurt and emotional scarring, we have not the means or the faculty to forgive and forget. And if we can't forget then God judges our so called forgiveness as unforgiveness.
Unforgiveness is the cause of many diseases.........
Many suffer in the world today, with crippled bodies from arthritis and other similar types of ailments and diseases, brought about by a spirit of bitterness and resentment. These are often the result of yesterday's hurts and tragedies remaining in an offended heart of unforgiveness. This hardens the heart of the inner man and produces all sorts of blood and bone related complications in the physical body. The cost of such physical suffering is vast. Many there are who have unwittingly allowed unforgiven offences to fester into resentment and bitterness. Outside of Christ there is no no way for us to be able to forgive but the Christian has an advocate; that is, he has an attorney in heavenly places that has the power of forgiveness. The Lord Jesus is our attorney. Only the Lord Jesus has the power to forgive and remove offences. We don't.
Unforgiveness blocks out God..........
Many times, we Christians find our way into the presence of God blocked by unforgiven offences which we are harbouring in our hearts. Most times we are completely unaware of the problem. Other times aware perhaps, but totally unable to be rid of the offence, no matter how hard we try. Yet right here is one of the greatest secrets of the Christian life in forgiveness. We have the right to call on the Lord Jesus as our attorney to act for us, on our behalf and forgive all that is offending us. "All" means all that we are suffering from as a result of what others have done to us, or even what we have done to ourselves.
The amazing thing here is that when we ask the Lord Jesus to act for us on our behalf and forgive others, it works. He can cleanse our heart completely from all the effects of all that has offended us, to the extent that all hurt and all resentment is removed by evaporation It is a great thing to know the Lord Jesus as our advocate or attorney (1 John 2:1), not just in theory but in experience.
God can forgive others for you.......
I recall from my own experience a very great problem I had at the time I was first saved. I could not forgive a certain person no matter how hard I tried. This troubled me more and more and went on for several months, until one evening, I could not handle it any more and I broke down. At first I got angry with God but truthful. I said to Him that it was totally impossible for me to forgive this certain person. I said that I cannot forgive this person because every time I think about this person I am filled with anger, bitterness and resentment. The Lord Jesus spoke to me in my heart and said, “ I know you can't, but I can, if you will just permit me to act for you. I have been waiting all this time for you to stop trying and to start trusting and come to me as your attorney, so that I can act and do for you, on your behalf”.
I responded and asked the Lord Jesus to be my solicitor and to forgive so and so on my behalf. I told Him I could not but I knew He could. The next moment my eyes were filled with tears. All the anger and hurt ran out and just evaporated. That was 24 years ago and I was free from the very moment I chose the Lord Jesus to act for me and forgive on my behalf. The key part was my being absolutely convinced that I did not have the ability to forgive and forget from my heart.
The act of Forgiveness is God's business not ours........
Forgiving is really God's business from His office of Grace. Grace means that God does for me what I cannot do for myself. The power to forgive and forget deep hurts is impossible with man. Only God has the power of forgiveness. The forgiveness of God is so clean and so absolute. It is very difficult for us to comprehend His forgiveness. His way is so much better than ours. He requires the shedding of the blood of another before He can forgive anybody anything. To forgive mankind his debt of sin, God required the blood of a acceptable sacrifice to be shed. This sacrifice had to be a man without any sin. God needed a righteous man to die as a sacrifice to Him for the sin of all mankind. None could be found on this earth, for all had sinned and fallen short of the expectation of God for righteousness. So God came from Heaven to the Earth Himself to do that job for man. He came in the person of His Son. He came as Jesus of Nazareth. God required a man to die for man.
Jesus is our Attorney! ...one who is qualified to act for us........
God did not come to the Earth to prove Himself as God, He came to the Earth to prove Himself as a Righteous Man, to die as a sacrifice for sin and to give us His Life. When Jesus died on the cross He Forgave all sin. He Himself is the one who is the forgiver of sin. It was He alone who lived the Righteous Life and then laid it down, so that all who accepted Him would be released from their debt of sin. The Lord Jesus acted on our behalf to secure our redemption and in so doing He became our Attorney. Today, Jesus is the only Risen Lord on the throne and He is the only one who has the power of forgiveness. But because He is also our Attorney, He can act on our behalf to forgive others their sin against us when we ask Him too.
Jesus can cleanse our heart from all hurt and offences.....
When we instruct the Lord Jesus as our Attorney to forgive someone, He will do so on our behalf and it is right here that we benefit tremendously. What happens immediately after the Lord Jesus forgives that someone, for us on our behalf, is this: the Lord Jesus cleans out our heart by removing all our anger, hatred, bitterness and resentment towards that person. The end result is just as if that person had never done to us all that which we held against them. This is truly a marvellous and miraculous thing. Believe me it works, but only when you have come to the end of the road of trying to forgive someone from yourself. When our Heart is cleansed by the Lord Jesus in this way, many of our diseases, sickness and ailments will just evaporate also. It is unforgiveness with its associated leeches of bitterness and resentment that is the primary cause of many diseases and sickness in Christians today.
