Skip to main content

Being Like The Most High

            Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (Colossian 3:13)

This is one of the terrible, frustrating things about God’s Word: it doesn’t use us as the standard. We were created in the image of God, and our sins are our attempt to be “like the Most High,” but when God tells us what being like Him actually requires, the fun is over.

And when the Bible reveals the cost God paid to forgive us, it’s even worse. Are we supposed to lay down our lives to forgive someone? It doesn’t often go that far literally, but in a figurative or spiritual sense, it does. To forgive requires that we tell ourselves “No!” when we ruminate on the wrong done and when we want to punish the person who did us wrong. What makes it even harder is when the person we won’t forgive didn’t even do something to us.

In order to forgive, no matter who or for what, we have to die to our hatred, our desire for revenge, and our grievance. Forgiveness isn’t about what the person did so much as it is about our response to them. It isn’t pretending that the person didn’t do anything, or freeing them of any responsibility for what they did. It’s about not letting what they did control what you do. It’s about not holding on to your hatred. Both can feel like we’re dying.

And the need to forgive can sneak  up on us. As I typed the paragraph above, a couple of sources of irritation came to mind, both connected to the same people, and both involving the same crime. My church discontinued prayer meetings until next fall. It also discontinued the coffee service until the fall. Minor things. Maybe. And I can sort of understand why they did both, but the whole “the whole world stops because it’s summer” thing irritates me. They don’t discontinue church services, or communion and they don’t tell us “We have enough money, don’t give anything again until Fall.” I’m not saying I’m being rational, but it’s the sort of thing we need to forgive.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Higher Thoughts

  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the  Lord . “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)           The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,   for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord      so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:15-16) If you read about the ancient gods of the various peoples, you’ll find that they think just like people. In fact, they think just like the sort of people we really wouldn’t want to be around. They think like the most corrupt Hollywood producer or, like hormone overloaded teens with no upbringing.   It’s embarrassing to read. I have a friend who argues that because God is not just like us, He is so vastly dif...
2 comments
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more