Counter Culture: Forgive One Another — Wednesday
Ephesians 4:32
And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ. (NIV)
The theme of this week’s message and devotionals is forgiving one another. But if you’ve read the last two devotionals, you may have noticed that, while we’ve talked about forgiveness, we haven’t yet discussed forgiving one another. The reason I chose to discuss God’s forgiving character first, and how God forgives us through Christ second, is that in order to understand why we need to forgive, we have to first understand why we ourselves need forgiveness. I find it interesting that in today’s verse, Paul uses the phrasing “just as God also forgave you.” Paul doesn’t tell us to forgive others because it’s a good thing to do or because it’ll make us feel better. He tells us to forgive because God has forgiven us. Therefore, we too should exemplify God’s grace by showing that same grace to others.
I’ve heard it said before that “we don’t choose how people treat us, but we can choose how we respond.” One of my favorite books is Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand. It tells the true story of a prisoner of war who was mercilessly beaten and abused for years. By the grace of God, he was rescued from the prisoner-of-war camp and returned to the United States to resume his life. However, he chose to drown his sorrows with the bottle and battled anger for most of his life. But thanks to a Billy Graham revival, he eventually met Jesus and discovered the incredible forgiveness and grace of God. Because of this, many years later, he returned to the prisoner-of-war camp and was able to look his captors in the eyes and forgive them. My short synopsis barely does the story justice—it’s amazingly powerful, and I encourage you to read the book. As we see from this incredible story, when you realize and truly understand what Jesus did for you, it empowers you to share that unfathomable grace with others.
Wednesday’s Reflection
“Forgiveness is one of the most beautiful words in the human vocabulary. How much pain and unhappy consequences could be avoided if we all learned the meaning of this word.” - Billy Graham
