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FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness flows from humility. Humility is a gift from God when He causes us to see just how desperate our own hearts were before God and how desperately we need a Savior both now and always.

If Jesus Christ has forgiven you by His grace through the gift of faith: to trust in all He is, all He has done, and all He is doing, you are called to forgive as HE has forgiven you. He paid the full price for your sin and rebellion long before you were born. He purchased forgiveness for you by His death on a Roman cross over 2,000 years ago. 

Grace humbles you so that you may forgive and release those who have sinned against you before they even admitted it. Jesus Christ forgave those gathered around His cross mocking and cursing Him. They didn't admit, let alone confess the heinous nature of their sin before He forgave them.

Being forgiven by God, there can exist no condemnation for you. The Lord will never rub your nose in your "stuff" for He's taken it away. Your debt has been fully paid for and removed so that you can follow Him. You can be changed because you now belong to Him, you live in His grace as a state of being, and the Holy Spirit is now Life within you transforming you daily more and more to be like Jesus.

By the power of His Presence and Life within you (where once only sin and death resided) you can entrust the whole of life to Him and forgive those who have sinned against you, releasing them to the Lord as Stephen did as he was being stoned to death. 

"As they stoned him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” He fell to his knees, shouting, “Lord, don’t charge them with this sin!” And with that, he died. Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen." (Acts 7:59-60; Acts 8:1)

Forgiveness flowing from you to others is never a matter of their deserving your forgiveness but indicates that you truly believe God and are trusting Him for your salvation begun and brought to completion by His work in you. Forgiving others as you have been forgiven is a proclamation of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus being lived out in and through you.

Forgiveness opens the door for the Lord to move into the lives of those you forgave as Stephen's forgiveness of Saul of Tarsus released the Holy Spirit to bring about life transformation, repentance and faith in the one who would become St. Paul.

I couldn't ever hope to pay what I owed so how can I demand that others "pay what they owe" to me in the here and now? No one will ever be their own salvation. The Gospel is evidenced to be at work in a believer by the power of a changed life...a life of forgiveness and trust in God. He is able to save to the uttermost.

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