Lately I've been really fed up. It's seems that no matter who much of your best you give very little of it is reciprocated. Especially when it comes to being forgiven. Go to any work place in America and among those folks working there who profess to having some degree of relationship with Christ or God and you'll also find them backstabbing coworkers, lying to get ahead, getting a little payback for those who've crossed them. Casting fellow co-workers into social exile because they don't quite fit in to their concept of the better class of individual.
Moving on to family and friends who give you the silent treatment or refuse to have anything to do with you again over some offense they won't even talk about. Or the ones who decide they will forgive you but only after they have dealt out some from of punishment equal to our crime. Or even better they'll forgive you but they'll never let you forget what you did or what you are. The list goes on and on of the ways this perverse view of forgiveness exampled largely by a group of people who profess to understand Jesus and will go on about just how forgiven they are by him.
To follow his example and to truly forgive as he forgave us means to forget. He says if we confess our sins and ask his forgiveness he is sure to forgive and cast our sins into the sea of forgetfulness never to be remembered again. That means if I offend someone I need to say the words "will you forgive me"not I'm sorry you caught me or I'm sorry if it will shut you up. If I forgive someone I must forget the offense and never bring it up again. I don't need to mead out a form of punishment first, not talk to them for weeks on end, or exclude them from all contact telling others what they did that I had to forgive them for. Telling everyone I see how they can't be trusted and turning anyone I can against them until i feel the lesson has been duly taught. I don't go and get some from of payback and then when it suits my mood forgive. No if I'm to follow Christs example I must forgive and forget as if it never happened. Its hard, dam hard and I not going to get on my high horse and act as though I succeed every time. Sometimes its a real knockdown drag out fight within my self to let it go and move on as Christ would have me do. It's just that it becomes that much harder when all that effort is given to people who often times don't and won't appreciate it and won't reciprocate it when it's you who needs the forgiving. Its even harder when those same folks go to church, with their crosses around their necks and come against you in the work place and in life as if you are somehow less deserving of the level of forgiveness Christ displayed on the cross. Bosses who blacklist employees and then go to church basking in the glow of the mercy and grace they are unwilling to extend to their fellow employees. Narrow is the way and few their are that find it.
So all this has got me asking the question what if Jesus suddenly decided to become the image so many of us Christians have projected of him in everyday life? What if he decided he was going to extend to us the exact measure of grace and mercy we have given to others over the course of our lives? What if every time you went to talk to him at a time when you needed him most he decided he needed to remind you of the scars in the palms of his hands and feet. Showed the scars on his head and back. Re-mined us of how we spit on him and cursed him while he was dying for our sins on the cross? It's good he doesn't It's good that the record of his crucifixion in the bible is about proof of who he is and what he did for our sake's and not about what we did to him. It would be nice if we could, all of us in the Christian community stop and take stock of how we treat each other in life and work harder to extend the level of grace and mercy he gave to us. I'm not saying we all need to be perfect because we can't. But these days it doesn't even seem like we even try or care.
Moving on to family and friends who give you the silent treatment or refuse to have anything to do with you again over some offense they won't even talk about. Or the ones who decide they will forgive you but only after they have dealt out some from of punishment equal to our crime. Or even better they'll forgive you but they'll never let you forget what you did or what you are. The list goes on and on of the ways this perverse view of forgiveness exampled largely by a group of people who profess to understand Jesus and will go on about just how forgiven they are by him.
To follow his example and to truly forgive as he forgave us means to forget. He says if we confess our sins and ask his forgiveness he is sure to forgive and cast our sins into the sea of forgetfulness never to be remembered again. That means if I offend someone I need to say the words "will you forgive me"not I'm sorry you caught me or I'm sorry if it will shut you up. If I forgive someone I must forget the offense and never bring it up again. I don't need to mead out a form of punishment first, not talk to them for weeks on end, or exclude them from all contact telling others what they did that I had to forgive them for. Telling everyone I see how they can't be trusted and turning anyone I can against them until i feel the lesson has been duly taught. I don't go and get some from of payback and then when it suits my mood forgive. No if I'm to follow Christs example I must forgive and forget as if it never happened. Its hard, dam hard and I not going to get on my high horse and act as though I succeed every time. Sometimes its a real knockdown drag out fight within my self to let it go and move on as Christ would have me do. It's just that it becomes that much harder when all that effort is given to people who often times don't and won't appreciate it and won't reciprocate it when it's you who needs the forgiving. Its even harder when those same folks go to church, with their crosses around their necks and come against you in the work place and in life as if you are somehow less deserving of the level of forgiveness Christ displayed on the cross. Bosses who blacklist employees and then go to church basking in the glow of the mercy and grace they are unwilling to extend to their fellow employees. Narrow is the way and few their are that find it.
So all this has got me asking the question what if Jesus suddenly decided to become the image so many of us Christians have projected of him in everyday life? What if he decided he was going to extend to us the exact measure of grace and mercy we have given to others over the course of our lives? What if every time you went to talk to him at a time when you needed him most he decided he needed to remind you of the scars in the palms of his hands and feet. Showed the scars on his head and back. Re-mined us of how we spit on him and cursed him while he was dying for our sins on the cross? It's good he doesn't It's good that the record of his crucifixion in the bible is about proof of who he is and what he did for our sake's and not about what we did to him. It would be nice if we could, all of us in the Christian community stop and take stock of how we treat each other in life and work harder to extend the level of grace and mercy he gave to us. I'm not saying we all need to be perfect because we can't. But these days it doesn't even seem like we even try or care.