Insightful Musings on theScriptures
by
Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67
Good morning, dear people.
Wow! Just as I began this little greeting, the clouds must have opened up all of a sudden, because BOOM!—there was an explosion of bright sunlight out my window that looks toward the creek. Phooey! It’s already dissipated. That’s life.
Lots on my list. I better not start reading it off. But I’d better get on with pursuing some urgencies.
Have a great day. Love, Dad/Ray
26 January 2012
Passage: Matthew 18:15-35
Focus: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.” Matthew 18:35.
“From your heart.” The residue of unforgiveness allowed to remain in the heart of a believer has a serious contaminating affect in the whole of one’s relationship with God and quality of witness. Jesus makes it clear that the forgiveness we receive is conditional to the forgiveness we render. If I eagerly receive it, but bitterly withhold it, I revoke my receiving.
It is important to see and understand the divine reasoning here. The hinge is the heart. If I fail, for example, to forgive from the heart, it is clear evidence that I have not completely received in the heart—that area of the real internal me—the planting place and fruit-bearing ground of the Spirit of God in my life. What is sown is what is reaped. Like begets like. Forgiveness planted cannot legitimately produce unforgiveness. Duh! If I lay claim to the former and yet produce the latter, something is amiss somewhere. “The fruit of the Spirit is love”—not unforgiveness. So let’s get it straight—God’s Word confirms that unforgiveness and bitterness are absolutely incompatible with the Spirit of Christ. Ephesians 4:32 through 5:2 speaks profoundly to this matter. “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
I am painfully aware that there are difficult practical details in seeing this principle of the Kingdom play out in real life. Indeed it cannot be achieved by means of pure human muscle. That’s why we so desperately need Him. Whatever you do, DON’T GIVE UP!
"The only petition in the Lord’s Prayer that has a condition is the one on forgiveness.”