Thoughts on Forgiveness
I just wanted to share something I heard a week or so ago, I think it was in a chapel here at Judson but I can't remember for sure.
The speaker was talking about forgiveness, and brought up the passage where Jesus says that we should forgive 70x7 times or whatever it is. And the speaker made the point that it may not be that we are supposed to forgive someone for that many different things, it may be that we have to be continually forgiving the people who have hurt us. It may be making a choice each time we want to be angry at them to forgive instead. I thought this is a very interesting point. Often people use the phrase 'forgive and forget' but forgiveness does not equal forgetting. This is something I actually thought when I was younger--that if I didn't forget the things that I'd forgiven it meant I was a bad person. But that's not the case. In fact just because we forgive someone once doesn't meant that we won't have to forgive them again for the same thing later on. Forgiveness is a choice that we have to make over and over again.
I'd never really thought of it that way. I always thought that the passage was referring to forgiving someone for many different transgressions (and sure it probably DOES mean that) but it also refers to forgiving a person multiple times for one pain they may have caused.
The speaker was talking about forgiveness, and brought up the passage where Jesus says that we should forgive 70x7 times or whatever it is. And the speaker made the point that it may not be that we are supposed to forgive someone for that many different things, it may be that we have to be continually forgiving the people who have hurt us. It may be making a choice each time we want to be angry at them to forgive instead. I thought this is a very interesting point. Often people use the phrase 'forgive and forget' but forgiveness does not equal forgetting. This is something I actually thought when I was younger--that if I didn't forget the things that I'd forgiven it meant I was a bad person. But that's not the case. In fact just because we forgive someone once doesn't meant that we won't have to forgive them again for the same thing later on. Forgiveness is a choice that we have to make over and over again.
I'd never really thought of it that way. I always thought that the passage was referring to forgiving someone for many different transgressions (and sure it probably DOES mean that) but it also refers to forgiving a person multiple times for one pain they may have caused.
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