Forgiveness: Our Broken Bones for His Whole Ones


Jane_Doe
 Share

Recommended Posts

How do you forgive the unrepentant?   Or even the repentant?  How do we love the unlovable, reach the unreachable, or seemingly do the impossible of forgiveness?   These are questions we each struggle with.  On some level we feel that if we forgive a person, then the judge and the jury all go home with all charges dropped.  We feel that obligated to plant our feet on the witness stand and point our angry fingers—and that if we don’t, the guilty unrepentant perpetrator will just “get away with it”. 

But that’s not how forgiveness and repentance work at all. 

It is impossible for us humans to absolve sin.  We cannot choose to drop the charges and let the perpetrator go free.  No, only Christ can absolve sins.   Whether or not a perpetrator goes free has nothing to do with whether or not we stand up and point the angry finger.  Our witness statement of their crimes has already been given, because Christ knows everything about us and feels every blow wrecked upon us.  Christ is the one who plants His feet at the witness stand for us, and with perfect knowledge bears testimony of the pain—the pain both you and He feels.   We are not obligated to angrily do what Christ is already doing for us.

Christ offers us so much.  He takes the burden of the witness stand from us.  He gives of the assurance the guilty will have a perfect trial, and that we don’t have to judge a person’s heart ourselves.   We don’t have to: He’s got us covered.

What He offers us is Healing: the taking away of our pain, mending our broken bones by replacing ours with His.  Christ allows us to become stronger through His strength.  But He will not force us in any way: we must choose to accept His gifts, including the Gift of Healing.  That’s why Christ commands us to forgive: to let go of our angry broken bones so that we may receive His whole ones in exchange. 

That’s why we forgive: to become whole again through Christ’s power.  We don’t forgive to decide whether or not a person has to pay a price for their actions—that’s Christ’s job.  We don’t forgive because a person because of the status of their repentance—again, that’s Christ’s job to judge, not ours.  We forgive because Christ asked us to accept His Wholeness for our brokenness. 

Edited by Jane_Doe
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Forgiving others who wrong us is hard but it feels like the whole weight of the world is lifted from us when we do. It's like we get a taste of what true love for our neighbors really is. The hardest person I've ever had to forgive is myself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Zarahemla said:

Forgiving others who wrong us is hard but it feels like the whole weight of the world is lifted from us when we do. It's like we get a taste of what true love for our neighbors really is. The hardest person I've ever had to forgive is myself.

Amen!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep - the twin pillars of the plan of salvation: Forgiveness, and repentance.  Repentance saves the sinner, forgiveness saves the sinned-against.  

There is a little bit of overlap here and there, where repentance will bless the one harmed, or where forgiveness will bless the one who did the sinning.  But that overlap is not required, and not always there. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

The biggest step in forgiveness is our conversion to Christ.  The simplicity of the doctrine is that Jesus has suffered and paid for the sins of all.  Not just ours but everybody’s.  The difficulty in forgiving is in holding on to the temptation that Jesus really did not pay for and suffer (completely redeem) all that was necessary for those that transgress against us or those we love.  What-ever we do in our heart and core of our soul to refuse to recognize that Christ has suffered enough and more for such things is what we do to spoil our conversion to Christ and somewhere deep down think and believe justice has not quite been fully served or satisfied.  It is this refusal and denial of the Christ that that makes who-ever the committer of such judgment and who give harbor to such thoughts and beliefs commits themselves and their eternal soul to the greatest sin possible and puts whoever seeks any degree of revenge directly in league with Satan.

We may think forgiving is hard????  The only possible reason to entertain difficulty is our own lack of understanding and belief in Christ – which is for me sufficient motivation for me, to fast and pray for divine help and assistance that such thoughts and temptations do not have permanent place with me but that I can be converted (again and again and again and again) to Christ.   I spend a lot of time convincing myself that I can and will be overjoyed with even the most vial person to have ever been borne – should they show up someday at church (soiled as they may be) – let alone the Celestial Kingdom.

It is this one principle of forgiveness that has convinced me that there must be a Christ for there to be any hope of justice or just payment for sin and transgressions of eternal law.  And that forgiveness and conversion to Christ are inseparable principles – one cannot be even possible without the other.

 

The Traveler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share