Is unforgiveness our
right? - Greg Laurie - http://www.wnd.com/2014/05/is-unforgiveness-our-right/ and www.harvest.org
Pastor Greg Laurie warns, 'When we don't let go, we destroy ourselves on the inside'
If someone is engaged in habitual lying or stealing, we could rightly say that it is sin. But did you know that to refuse to forgive is a sin as well? If we don't forgive someone who has wronged us, then we are sinning against God.
First we need to realize that we need forgiveness. Then we need to recognize that we need to extend that forgiveness to others.
Some might say, "I am not going to forgive. You have no idea what has been done to me. I can't find it in my heart to forgive. It is my right to hold back my forgiveness."
But it is not our right to withhold forgiveness. When we don't forgive, we are essentially taking the place of God himself.
In her book, "The Hiding Place," Corrie ten Boom told the story of her family, who lived in Holland during World War II. The Nazis arrived and occupied the city in which Corrie and her family lived. The ten Booms, who were committed Christians, started taking Jewish people into their home and hiding them.
Eventually the Gestapo found out and warned Corrie's father that if they continued, they all would be arrested and sent to a concentration camp. But the family persisted in hiding Jewish people, so they were arrested and taken away. Soon after that, her father died.
Corrie and her sister, Betsie, were sent to a concentration camp known as Ravensbrück, where they were humiliated by German guards. Betsy became ill and died there, but through a clerical error, Corrie was released and lived to tell her story.
She spent the rest of her life traveling around the world, talking about God's forgiveness, how God had delivered her and how Jesus was the victor in the midst of dark and bleak circumstances.
A few years after the war, she had just finished a speaking engagement at a church in Munich when a man walked up to her afterward, extended his hand, and said, "How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein. How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!"
As she looked at this man, she recognized him as one of the prison guards from Ravensbrück. Not only had he been one of the prison guards there, but he had been one of the cruelest. She had just spoken on the subject of forgiveness, and here stood this man with an outstretched hand, thanking her.
He went on to explain how he had been a guard at Ravensbrück, but since that time he had become a Christian. He realized that God had forgiven him, he told her, and then added, "But I would like to hear it from your own lips as well, Fraulein. Will you forgive me?"
She did not want to forgive him. But as she stood there, she silently prayed for God's help. Then she described how, as she willed herself to take his hand, the forgiveness followed. She said, "For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then."
We don't feel like forgiving the people who have wronged us. But one of the reasons we need to forgive is that when we do not let go, we are destroying ourselves on the inside.
Of course, the question arises as to when grace becomes gullibility. When we forgive a person and then they sin against us - again and again - can we keep forgiving? Jesus told a story to illustrate an important point about forgiveness. He said,
"Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn't pay, so his master ordered that he be sold - along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned - to pay the debt.
"But the man fell down before his master and begged him, 'Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.' Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt" (Matthew 18:23-26 NLT).
Can you imagine if you owed the king millions of dollars and were pardoned right there on the spot? But the story continued. When the man left, he found a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars and demanded payment. Unwilling to give his fellow servant more time to repay him, the man had him arrested and thrown into prison. In the end, the king found out what happened and dealt with the man severely. Why? Because the one who had been forgiven of so much should have been a forgiving person. If he knew anything of what forgiveness was, he should have willingly extended it to others.
When we say, "I am going to withhold my mercy and my forgiveness," we are intentionally trying to make the one who committed the offense miserable. We want to make that person suffer. And we are essentially saying, "Vengeance is mine. I will repay." We are taking the place of God, and we have no right to do that. The Bible clearly forbids it: "Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' says the Lord" (Romans 12:19 NKJV).
All of us have sinned. All of us have broken God's commandments. Yet Jesus came to pay a debt that he did not owe because we owed a debt that we could not pay. Therefore, we should be willing to extend forgiveness to others. A forgiven person should be a forgiving person.
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