The Importance of Forgiveness.

Christianity isn’t just a religion about having your sins forgiven, it is also is a religion about forgiving others. Jesus said in Matthew 6:14-15 “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 yours.” Forgiveness demonstrates the heart of God. When we are forgiven by God, we must forgive others from our hearts. When we fail to do this we are not forgiven ourselves. Jesus Christ died for our sins, but we must be willing to obey God and be like Jesus if we want to go to Heaven. Salvation is free, but we don’t get a free ride. Just because we are saved by grace, this doesn’t give us a license to sin, and unforgiveness is sin.

To demonstrate that we ourselves are forgiven we have to conform ourselves into the image of Christ’s character, read Romans 8:29, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” It’s impossible to go to Heaven not looking like Jesus Christ in your character. This is not a physical appearance conformity, but a conforming of our character, and one thing that Jesus was is forgiving.

When we fail to forgive others from our hearts we are demonstrating the nature of Satan not God. It shows we really don’t know God because God is love. We aren’t necessarily forgiven ourselves because we forgive, but unforgiveness just shows that we may not really know God. You may have to ask yourself the question “Why don’t I want to forgive this person? If the Bible tells me I’m not really forgiven until I do, then why don’t I make the choice right now to forgive them.” Forgiveness not only frees the person from the debt they owe us, but it also frees ourselves from the condemnation for not wanting to forgive them in the first place. Forgiveness is a choice and we can chose to forgive someone, even when we feel we can’t. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and even when we feel we don’t want to, we can exercise our wills and forgive that person or people. This is Mike.

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