Forgiven

“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Col 3:13)

What a foundation is to a house, forgiveness is to a Christian. Forgiveness is where our relationship with God begins. He offered forgiveness to us before we even realized we needed it. The foundation of our faith is built with the building blocks of forgiveness and held together with the mortar of grace. Build what you may on top of that, but without it, the whole house comes crumbling down. We have nothing to say if we do not have the forgiveness of God. The library of Christian books is incredibly vast and the authors span two millennia. The books are seemingly innumerable, but without the forgiveness of God, put every pen down, close every cover. Our language is the communication of forgiveness. The Gospel is the good news of the forgiveness of sin. No forgiveness: No good news, no message to share, every book evaporates, or disintegrates, or, for Heaven’s sake, was never written at all. On that brutal, bloody day when Jesus was nailed to the Roman gibbet in front a mocking crowd of tormentors, he cried out his first words in that dark hour before even the sky itself turned black. Mingled with spit and blood his words were heard over the laughter and tears going on beneath his mangled body. For those who rejected, scorned and crucified him, he cried, “Father forgive them…”.

Now, listen to C.S. Lewis, “To be Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard.” I will grant you, Lewis gives us an understatement when he says, “This is hard.” Nevertheless, he is right. It is hard, and it is what it means to follow Jesus. The crucified savior, the risen Lord calls us to forgive just as God in Christ has forgiven us. Anything less is to forget what we are all about, what our message is all about, what our Faith is all about, what the cross is all about. You might say, “The person who offended me doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.” True, but then neither do you or I. Our forgiveness isn’t based on what they deserve, but on what we’ve received, not on their sin but on His sacrifice. You might say, “Forgiveness feels like letting them off the hook, and someone should pay for what they’ve done.” But Jesus would say, “I did pay. I paid for what they have done and for everything you have done.” The forgiveness that has been offered to us, he expects to be offered by us. If we forget that, if we want to receive the forgiveness of our Father but not extend that forgiveness as His children, we forget the foundation on which we’re standing, the price that he paid, the message and the mission that he has called us to. “Forgiven people are to be forgiving people.” After all, how can we call ourselves followers of Jesus, if we don’t actually follow his example and his command.