Author: jstchurchofchrist

“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” (Matthew 6:14,15).

IN ORDER TO SEEK GOD WITH HONESTY AND INTEGRITY, WE MUST REMOVE ANGER AND RESENTMENT FROM OUR HEARTS. There is nothing that will keep us away from God more certainly than a failure to forgive those who have wronged us. Jesus said simply, “If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:15). It is only the merciful who will receive mercy (Matthew 5:7; James 2:13).

A truly merciful spirit involves more than the grudging forgiveness of others when they come to us and beg for grace. Jesus called upon us to be people of such character that we will not rest until broken relationships are mended, even if we have to be the ones who take the initiative. Whether the relationship has been broken by our own sin, the other party has sinned against us, or there are sins on both sides that need to be forgiven, in all cases we are to seek out the other person and do all we can to repair the breach (Matthew 5:23,24; 18:15). Paul wrote, “If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18). And mark it well: “if it is possible, as much as depends on you” requires the doing of much more than we think is “necessary.” If God had thought of nothing more than what He “had” to do, He certainly would not have given His Son’s life to make possible the mending of our relationship with Him. It was, after all, we who had broken the relationship, yet His love did not complain about having to do more than was “necessary” to fix it.

But we should be extremely careful. In our conflicts with others, we may be wrong about who it is who actually needs forgiveness. If we think we’re generous enough to confer forgiveness, we need to beware of pride and faulty judgments. Our view of what needs to be fixed may be seriously out of sync with the way God sees it. So having a forgiving spirit means not only that we’re willing to forgive the other person; it may mean adjusting our concept of what is actually broken about the relationship. Humility may mean reversing the direction of the forgiveness — seeking the forgiveness of the very person that we, at first, thought needed our forgiveness.

“No prayers can be heard which do not come from a forgiving heart” (J. C. Ryle).                                            

––Gary Henry, wordpoints.com

“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).

BETWEEN NOW AND THE TIME OF OUR DEPARTURE FROM THIS LIFE, THERE IS A “RACE” THAT HAS TO BE RUN. And frankly, the image of a race is mainly an image of pain. Anyone who has ever run a footrace of any distance knows that before the end finally comes, every muscle in the runner’s body cries out for relief. And the longer the race, the more tempting it is to simply quit running.

A great cloud of witnesses. When we run as God’s people, we are doing something that many, many others have done before us. And the writer of Hebrews describes those who’ve gone before as a “great cloud of witnesses,” a stadium full of supportive spectators cheering us onward with the hearty cry, “You can do it!”

Lay aside every weight. In addition to supporters, we also happen to have a spiritual adversary whose purpose it is to defeat us. We must not let him have his way. The “sin which so easily ensnares us” must be laid aside. It’s a simple matter. Either we decide to lay our sins aside or they will be our undoing.

Run with endurance. We are not in a sprint but a marathon. For all we know, it may be many years before the time comes for us to rest. But remember the “cloud of witnesses”? One of those witnesses is Paul, who wrote toward the end of his life, “I have finished the race” (2 Timothy 4:7). He did it, and we can do it too.

But there’s no chance we’ll do what Paul did if we’re not motivated by what motivated him: the glorious prospect of being with Christ forever. He said he had sacrificed every worldly thing that ever mattered to him: “that I may gain Christ and be found in Him . . . that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:8-11). Any goal less powerful than this will fail to keep us going. We must fix our hearts upon our Lord and determine that we are going to run the race, come whatever may. There can be no question or equivocation about it. So let us not merely study or think about running the race. Let us run the race.

“To believe in heaven is not to run away from life; it is to run toward it”

Joseph D. Blinco

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com