Every single one of us has been hurt by somebody. Somebody, somewhere has been cruel to us, or hurt us, turned on us, or betrayed us. Most of us would be happy not to ever hear from these people again, or we’d like to hurt them back. While the world might say that such an attitude is normal or ok, God says that it is not. The Bible repeatedly tells us to forgive those who hurt us. Let’s take a look at some verses.

Matthew 18:21-22 describes a question by Peter to Jesus about how many times he should forgive his brother. He suggests a small number, but Jesus responds with a number 70 times bigger. Obviously, there isn’t a limit on how many times we need to forgive a person. What Jesus was saying was that we need to keep forgiving people, time after time. This kind of attitude is hard to have, most people get tired of forgiving people after a few times, especially if it’s something that the person does to us repeatedly. Regardless of how much we might not want to forgive them, we still need to do so.

In Matthew 6:14-15, Jesus tells his disciples if they don’t forgive men their sins against them, then God won’t forgive their sins. Let’s think about this verse for a moment or two. Jesus was pointing something very important out. How can we expect God to forgive us all of our sins against Him, and everyone else wrong we’ve done here on Earth, when we won’t forgive another person for his relatively minor sins against us? If the God of the universe is willing to forgive us for everything we’ve done wrong, shouldn’t we be willing to forgive another person for something they’ve done just against us?

Finally, Colossians 3:13 says that we should all forgive each other if we have quarrels with one another, just like God forgave us. We should follow God’s example and forgive each other. It also says that we should bear with one another. Not only should be forgiving, we should be patient with other people. Regardless of what they do to us, or how many times they do It, we should forgive them and pray for them.

Forgiving people can be one of the hardest things you do. It’s not something most people like doing, but it’s something we need to do. Forgive them, and don’t dwell on it. Don’t let a person’s treatment of you define your life. Don’t hate them for what they’ve done. Forgive them and pray for them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 10:36 am and is filed under Devotionals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.