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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.

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