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Agape Keeps No Lists
by A. Gene Veal


1Corinthians 13:5   (Agape) ... keeps no record of wrongs.

Philippians 4:2    I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord.


THE PROBLEM

Ver. 2. I beseech Euodias, and beseech Syntyche, The problem was a disagreement between two women, who were members of the church at Philippi, and who seem to have been at variance with each other on account of some temporal and civil issues.  It appears it had become a difficult task to reconcile them, although here Paul entreats them in the most tender and importunate manner to agree. Their problem may have involved wrong sentiments contrary to the church, since Paul is including it in this epistle.

that they be of the same mind in the Lord; Paul asks that either they agree together, and be reconciled to each other, considering the relation they stood in to one another, and to the Lord; or that they become of the same mind, and embrace the same truths, and profess and maintain the same principles their church does.

THE SOLUTION

The answer to the problem between these two women can be found in another writing of Paul, 1Corinthians 13: 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

       7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,    always perseveres.

Click here to read about album on DEALING WITH OTHERS.The love mentioned here is the word "AGAPE," God’s kind of love. When the world speaks of love, it refers to "EROS."  That love is said to be "blind" to faults of its object; however, one day its eyes are opened and everything falls apart.

Agape sees.  It not only sees the sins of its object, but it "covers a multitude of sins."  The Scriptures never use the word eros for love.  Eros is the kind of love that seeks for itself only the best, the highest, and the most beautiful.  Eros is a selfish love; a self-for-self love.  Agape is God's kind of love; a self-for-others love.

Note John Gill’s comments about the last part of verse 5: "the meaning is, either that one possessed of this grace of love does not think of the evil that is done him by another; he forgives, as God has forgiven him, so as to forget the injury done him, and remembers it no more; and so the Arabic version reads it, "and remembers not evil"; having once forgiven it, he thinks of it no more; or he does not meditate revenge, or devise mischief, and contrive evil against man that has done evil to him, as Esau did against his brother Jacob; so the Ethiopic version, by way of explanation, adds, "neither thinks evil, nor consults evil"; or as the word here used will bear to be rendered, "does not impute evil"; reckon or place it to the account of him that has committed it against him, but freely and fully forgives, as God, when he forgives sin, is said not to impute it; or such an one is not suspicious of evil in others, he does not indulge evil surmises, and groundless jealousies; which to do is very contrary to this grace of love.

I do not know what their disagreement was about, but you may note that in Philippians, Paul does not even discuss the matter of who may be right. Who is right is not even considered, only that they come to an agreement. Even a casual reading of 1Corinthians 13 would give both of these women the solution to the problem. They were bickering and backbiting. It was probably disrupting the church.

Agape, according to one version, "does not take into account a wrong suffered." Note the word "account." The word is a bookkeeping term. It was used by accountants in Paul's day to describe debts outstanding in the ledger books. "Does not take into account" means it does not take into account all that is owed me. It means not keeping a ledger of the debts due me.

Another translation of that is "Love does not keep lists." Now, what is it talking about? It is not talking about money, but it could include money. It is primarily talking about when someone has done you ill, when someone has deeply wronged you and hurt you, you don’t write that in the ledger and say, "One day you will pay for that." It does not keep a list of all the people that one day you will get even with.

I know of an actual case where an elder in a certain church was having problems. The pastor, in an effort to help the situation, took the elder to a meeting of the deacons and elders. He said, "Obviously you are having problems. Would you like to tell us about it?" The man had been waiting for this opportunity. Believe it or not, he took out of his pocket a black book. He turned to the front page and said, "This is my problem. On December 4, 19__, so-and-so said so-and-so to me and they have never apologized." And he went on, "January 6, 19__, etc."

Can you believe this? This man was in his 60’s, and he had kept a ledger over the years of everyone that had hurt him, everyone that had said a word against him in the church. And he said, "Finally the time has come that I am going to get even."

Now I don’t suppose there is another man in America that keeps a little black book of all the times someone has hurt him. But I suppose that just about every other person in America has a "black book" in the back of their head. That is what this is talking about.

Love doesn’t keep a ledger. It doesn’t say that so-and-so owes me because of what they did to me. It doesn’t keep a long list of wrongs done to me, waiting for the day that I can get even with them.  Agape doesn’t keep a book. Agape quickly forgets all wrongs done to it. That is what it is saying.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO KEEP A LIST?

What does it mean to keep a list?   It keeps me from forgetting. That is the whole point here, obviously. It makes Agape part of my memory system.  Keeping a list is remembering.  It is deliberately remembering, mulling over all of our resentments, all of our bitternesses.  We don’t let them go. We hold on to them.

You know what I mean. When you can’t sleep at night, you go over the lists. "One day, one day I will get even." Some of you won't know what this is unless you go back to when you were without Christ. This is one area that should be dealt with very quickly when you come to Christ.

As I shall point out, this is the worst thing in the church, resentment, holding a grudge, bitterness, that private history that we keep in our memory bank, the vault where we treasure it. We have hoarded away all the hurts of life in a secret room in our heart. We often go down and unlock the room. There is our treasure, where we are keeping it for our private use.

We go back over those secret moments in our mind. We live them over again and say, "He said that. He said it. He hurt me. She did it. And I bled for weeks over it." We turn it over. We treasure it. We mull over every detail of the memory. We go back to the hurt and we enjoy it.  Why?  Why would we enjoy going over the hurt?

We have pleasure, not so much in the hurt, but in the resentment we feel toward the one who hurt us. Do you understand what I am saying? We need that hurt that fuels our resentment, and that is what we love, our resentment. I resent him, I hold on to it, I love it.

WHY DO WE HOLD ON TO RESENTMENT

Why do you cling to it so?  Because you always feel superior to the one you resent. You look down on them. You are up. They are down. You despise them. How do you get that out of it? Because what is resentment but telling yourself over and over again, "They were wrong. I was right. And that is the only reason, believe me, that is the only reason that I want to get even. They have got to admit they were wrong, because they were wrong. They have to tell me that I am right, because I am right. I’m the better of the two of us."

I love that. Oh, I love that. I’ll keep my vault of treasured resentments. I’ll put up with remembering the hurt, because it makes me feel I’m the right person who has been wronged by the wrong person.

It also gives me much pleasure because I think I am God anyway. I can sit on my throne and plot my judgments. I can fantasize how one day he will pay for it. Until then I will withdraw from him the most precious thing in the world - my friendship. I will get revenge. I love it. Do you understand what I am saying?

The keeping of lists, that’s the reason we do it. Why keep a list otherwise? There is pleasure there. We become movie makers. Of course, we are the star. In our movie we are wronged and hurt. We remember how it happened. So we make the movie exactly. This isn’t fiction. This happened.

I remember as I make the movie. This is how it happened. This is what he said. This is how I felt. This is the way I looked. Poor me. As a movie maker I can make the end of the movie. Oh, the end of the movie, where I see him groveling before me, apologizing and saying, "I was wrong. I was wrong." And then I play the movie over and over, again and again. By now, some of these are "old movies."

We love to think that one day we well achieve it and he will say that I am right. For that prospect I will nurture the hurt and enjoy the resentment.

WHAT MAKES RESENTMENT SO BAD?

What makes resentment so bad? It is because it is deliberate. It is a planned and plotted hoped destruction of another human being. You see, compared to this, bragging becomes nothing.  In other hurts listed in chapter 13, we suck people into our own emptiness, but this goes further. This is going out to get them. This is spending my days thinking about it. This is preserving the memory to be sure I don’t forget.

I wonder if we realize what sin is. We all know some memory verses so well that we don’t really know what they are saying. Like Romans 3:23. Do you know that one? "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Now what does that mean? What is sin? Well, you sin against God. Now, honestly, how do you do that? Where is He so you can sin against Him? In many ways He doesn’t seem too upsetable. Seriously, what is sin?

I came to a shocking realization. Of the many lists of sins in the Bible, lists of things that God says He hates and abhors, in my count there are maybe two that in any way could be said to be solely against God.  Consider this list in Romans chapter one: They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

It says they are "god haters" and that is sort of against God. Every other one is a sin against another human being. You can’t sin against God effectively without first sinning against another human being. In that way you get at God. Right?

HOW DO YOU SIN?

What does it mean "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God?" Come short of the glory of God? What is the glory of God? For years I had a mental image of a fluffy cloud that had light coming from it and that is the glory of God. For some reason I had fallen short of that, what ever that means. What did you see?

Exodus 34 and 36 tells me what the glory of God is. It is LOVE. It says that you have sinned in that you have fallen short of loving human beings as God loves them. That is sin. You can’t just sin against God. Other human beings are involved.

Why is that? Because of who man is. Man is made in the image and likeness of God. You hurt man and it is an insult against the God Who made man IN His image. Have you read Genesis chapter nine? It makes a big deal about murder. It goes on about how horrible it is to murder. Why? It ends up saying, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man."

That is why an evolutionist doesn’t know what to do with it. If we are just sophisticated animals, then why can’t I kill my neighbor’s son who turned over my garbage cans. I killed the racoons that did that. Why can’t I kill him? Well that is different. Why is it different? I’ll tell you why, because I believe in the God of creation and when He made man, He made him in the image of God. He didn’t extend the ape-ness. When God made the monkeys, He said that’s it. There was a Divine pause and then God said, "Now let’s make man (different from every other created being) in Our image."

Now I have a reason for treating man with more respect than animals, he is different, made in God’s image. I have a foundation for my faith now.  I have discovered that the person sitting beside me is awesome, precious, far more important than I thought they were. They were made in God’s image.

I know of a fellow who copied a Piccaso painting. He said it was easy to do. He took his copy to the art store and said he would like three or four thousand dollars for it. Of course, he couldn’t get it, even though it looked very much the same. It had the wrong signature at the bottom. You see, you have a signature on your life. Even if you are a person who is not born again, you have the same signature on your life. Signed by God.

Well, if I destroy a piece of art that has the signature of Rembrandt, I have insulted the name of Rembrandt. I have said it is not worth a thing, burn it. I haven’t said anything about the painting itself as much as I have said something about the artist who painted it. If they find a Rembrandt in terrible condition, they will pay thousands of dollars to restore it. Why?  It has his signature on it. The signature gives it worth.

I come to my fellow man. He is an awesome creature with God’s signature, made in God’s image and likeness. God says, "If you touch him, you touch Me." When I insult my fellow man, the whole of God rises up against me. Proverbs 16 says there are things that God hates and detests.  Number one on the list is an arrogant look. That is, I look down on my fellow human being and God says, "You don’t dare do that. I made him in My image."

Now, do you realize what I am saying? When God defines sin, He defines it as every way that I act toward you in UNLOVE, act toward you other than the way God would act, any action towards you treating you as a piece of dirt, as nothing.  God says, "That’s sin, because when you touch one of these people, you touch Me."

Yes, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but not in the way that we thought. That is why we mistakenly think that we can love God and despise our fellow human beings. You can’t do that. That is why Jesus said, "If you love Me, keep my commandments. Don’t just keep telling Me you love Me." The way you sin against God is by somehow beating up on a fellow human being, and the way you ultimately love God is by loving other human beings.

DAVID’S SIN

David puzzled me in Psalm 51. A year after he had sinned with Bathsheba, God speaks to him and he calls for God’s mercy and confesses his sin. He said, "Against you and you only have I sinned."  Oh, come on David, that is a cop out. You are gliding over it. You sinned against Bathsheba, Uriah, Israel, all those who trusted you. You say you only sinned against God?  No.

Oh, but he did. He is far more correct than my statement. If I had said that he sinned against another human being, I would have missed the point. When he touched Bathsheba, he was sinning against the God in Whose image she was made. When he murdered Uriah, he was sinning against the God Who made him. Oh, David, you are right. The way you sin against God is to sin against people who have His signature upon them.

THE PHARISEE’S SIN

That is why Jesus was so angry with the Pharisees. God put the Pharisees in the time of Jesus so there would be a stark difference between Jesus and the best that religion has ever attained.  Why was Jesus so upset with the Pharisees? Hear me on this. He was angry with the Pharisees because they loved God, and oh, how they loved God. They arranged their entire life around loving God. They loved God but they despised people. Jesus thundered against them the worst words that are in the Bible because they loved God and didn’t care about people.

Jesus on the other hand, loved people and was accused of not loving God. Do you see that? Look what Jesus said when He took a helpless child and set him in the midst of them, "He who receives such a helpless one, receives Me. He who receives Me receives Him Who sent Me." Do you know Who you are receiving? You say it is just a kid. He is saying that in the face of that child is the Trinity. If you receive that child, you receive Jesus. Receive that child and you receive the One Who sent Jesus. Do I know who is sitting next to me?

HAVE YOU FED JESUS?

See Matthew 25.  When the righteous are gathered before Him, He welcomes them into the Kingdom and tells them that when He was hungry they fed Him, when He was naked they clothed Him, etc. They asked when they did this and He said that when they did it to the "least" of His brethren, they did it to Him. He didn’t say they did it "for" Him. He said they did it "to" Him. Do you see? What you do to your fellow man is what you do to God. If you missed it the first go around, He goes to those whom He says did not feed Him and clothe Him, those who did not do that for their fellow man. How can anyone miss this point?

He says that if you treat people as God would treat them,  you are doing it to God. If you hurt this person or neglect them or forbid them care, you are doing that to God. It couldn’t be clearer.

BACK TO RESENTMENT

Now, what do we have?  Here is a man who sits down with a human being in his mind to plot revenge, to plot how to hurt that man, to seek ways of his destruction, and he keeps such thoughts in his treasure house, on a list.  He chooses to look at that man and exclude him and say that he is untouchable, he is not worth knowing.  Such plans constitute the most dangerous, the most frightening course of action a human being can take, because in so doing I have taken on God in a most negative sense.  Do you understand what I am saying?

Seeking revenge, making a list, leads me into an UNREAL world.  I put a man on my list, because he has done something against me, or said something about me; I determine it is time to get out my book and write his name, and remember what he did.  At that moment I paralyze that man in his tracks in my mind.  From that moment on, as far as I’m concerned, he remains imprisoned in that moment. I won’t let him do anything else. I don’t care what he does, he could die for me and I will say he benefited from it. That man can do no more right. Once he is entered on my list, I have condemned him to that one thing that he did. I put on the glasses of revenge and everything he does now is distorted and twisted to look like what he did before. Do you see what I am saying?

Remember? You have done this, haven’t you? Somebody hurt you and from that day on they could do no right. Once you held revenge or resentment, everything that person did added fuel to the fire.  And this view of them isn’t true, of course.  Absolutely, it isn’t true. As I said, you enter into a world of unreality. Your brain becomes addled. If you are holding revenge or resentment you are slightly insane. He might have done that to you, but that is not the way he is. He has done a lot of normal, good things since then, but you can’t allow yourself to see that. You can’t.

WHY DO WE DO IT?

And why do we do that?  To justify our resentment. We have to prove to ourselves, "See, he can’t do anything right. That’s the way he is. He is not worth it. That’s the way he is and the sooner I get even with him, the better." See the insanity. It is induced in order to justify our keeping this resentment going, waiting for the day of reckoning.

Why? "If ever I do make it up, he will pay for this." And how will he pay for it? We will pull out the list. "I have been wanting to talk to you about this for a long time. Do you remember what you said? Come on now, don’t hedge. Do you remember what you did?" And I present my biased view of that time and everything he said and did.  And I will not make up with him until he admits that he was wrong and I was right.

Then we rub our hands together and say, "O.K., I’ll forgive you now. Ha-ha-ha." That’s not forgiveness. But that is what Eros wants. Why? Because as I was reaching for the highest and the best, (which, of course, is the Eros kind of love: my good pleasure, my security, my happiness) I was hurt. All I wanted was what is natural, to be looked after. It is such a worthy request for such a wonderful person as I am. You did that?  Eros is hurt. I have been put down. I have been dismissed. For such a crime, they have got to pay. That is why Eros must do it that way. It is worth a lot to hear, "I was wrong. You were right."  Eros will wait for that. That is worth a lot in Eros language. Until that day comes, I will just show the movie that proves I was right.

CONTRAST AGAPE

Agape has the nearest expression of its glory in the full gloryClick here for albums on THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT. when it forgives. For if I say, "God is Agape," I think His fullest glory as God is when He forgives the sinner. And when a man will forgive as God forgives, then I believe he has understood the glory of God and will flow in Agape at both the simplest level of the Christian life (for it is ABC stuff) and has begun to live in what Jesus meant when He said, "I have shared with them the glory that you have given to Me." Learn to forgive as only God can forgive and you enter into His glory.

In another sense, it would be true to say, if I have truly seen Agape forgiveness, if I have received of that forgiveness, really seen it and know that I am forgiven from the hand of God, I AM STUCK. To see it is to do it. When a man says he has been forgiven and turns around and does not forgive his enemy, I have to say he has not seen it, nor is he forgiven. That is what Jesus said.

Agape keeps no lists. Agape has a terrible memory when it comes to remembering wrongs committed against it. Agape has one goal, that is to help, and to heal, and to bring salvation to everyone it contacts.

HOW DOES AGAPE FORGIVE?

How does Agape forgive? Much could be said, but let’s go through it simply. It is the most important thing in the world. I don’t think it could be summed up better than it is in the story of the Prodigal Son, because that story was introduced for the Pharisees who were criticizing Jesus for being with sinners. The Pharisees said, "There is joy in heaven in the presence of God, when a sinner is finally cast into hell." (this can be found in their contemporary literature) "God delights in damning sinners." To that statement Jesus gave the story of the Prodigal Son and in that story there is a reference to their expression, only with a difference. Remember ? He said, "There is joy in heaven when a sinner comes home." He turned it to the truth and was saying, "God is not like you think He is. He is the God of infinite forgiveness."

When the Prodigal Son came home, he was a shameful disgrace to his father. He had sinned against every decency of the culture of that day. Remember, he wasted the money that really belonged to his father in the big city with riotous living , finally ending up in the hog pen. He was probably a slave because he did not have shoes for his feet. He then comes to himself remembering his father. (Thank God he did not remember his elder brother.) He said, "I have a good Dad and even the servants in my Father’s house have plenty and to spare."

He came home expecting to be made one of his father’s "hired servants," not a regular servant. The hired servants lived down in the village wherever they could find a bed, not on the farm. "I will ask him if I can be one of his hired servants, then he will perhaps call me first when he needs extra servants."  That is what he came home to say. "I will get something, but it will be a pittance, not much, just something."

Instead he meets with Agape love. Agape love that was seeking, searching, had been looking for him for years and had in no way harbored resentments, but was only waiting for an opportunity to pour itself undeservedly, unreservedly upon the son, which it does.

Now how was that expressed?  As he was about to say "make me a hired servant" the father stops him. "I won’t have any of that nonsense." The son is met with Agape. Look how the father goes about this. Next thing we see is that he "sent" for the best robe. Father and son had met together "a great way off."  Why didn’t they go back together and get the robe? They were going back home. Why not just go back together and get the robe for him when they reached the house?

Because his dad meant, "I have forgiven you, but you don’t look forgiven. You are in rags. You don’t smell forgiven. I am sending for the best robe. Then I am going to put it on you. I am going to put shoes on your feet (because in that culture shoeless feet meant you were a slave) and then we are going to walk through town and the farm yard and everyone will see you dressed just like me, with the shoes of sonship on your feet and no one, NO ONE, will know where you have been."  THAT’S GOD. THAT’S AGAPE LOVE.

He did not blab it all over town. He said, "Son, this is just between you and me. When I forgive, only you know what I have forgiven you of and let’s not talk about it anymore." He put a ring on his finger. The ring in those days was like wearing an American Express card on your hand. That was the way you bought things in the store. It was a signet ring; it was a signature. You planted it into the wax and it would leave your promise to pay the debt. His father was paying for everything. This was saying, "I know you walked off with all the cash, but I will pay for everything because you have nothing with which to buy anything."

Then they came home and the elder brother showed up with sourness and anger. He is just like Eros; all upset. He is not getting what he wants and he is seeing his wicked brother getting what he never got. He starts the movies all over in his mind. He has been playing them over and over.

Do you remember what the father said to the elder son? He said, "He was dead. He is alive again. We don’t talk about it." See what I mean about no lists? The father had not been keeping a list. The elder brother had. The father said that he did not even want to discuss it. Agape takes my past sin and says, "It is dead." "Today is a new day," says Agape. "The past is dead. You are alive again. It is time for a party." Eros goes bananas at that. "Hey, I have my list here. Somebody is going to pay." Father says, "I’ll pay it." It is over. It is paid for. It is done. A new beginning.

That is what was done with you. Exactly. You were greeted by the arms of God’s love. He wept. He cried. He says, "You are home. You are forgiven. But no one is going to know about this." So He gives you His own righteousness through the blood of Jesus. He declares you His own son. He presents you to the universe as if you had never sinned. He receives you into His presence as if you were Jesus Himself. Someone may say, "We’d better talk about your sin." God says, "Forget it." God has never rehashed one sin you have committed. Forget it. It is over. It is done. Forgiven. Forgotten. We start again. It is a new day. That is forgiveness. That is how you received it.

HOW CAN YOU FORGIVE THAT WAY?

You say, "How can I forgive like God forgives." Actually, you don’t have a choice. A certain king found out about a man who had embezzled a fortune, enough money for several lifetimes. He called him in and the man fell on his face and begged for time to pay it. The king had compassion and forgave the entire debt. He freely forgave him, undeservedly, no questions asked.

The man met someone that owed him $20 and he grabed him by the neck and threw him in jail and said he is not getting out until he pays every penny of that debt. The king heard about it and had that man who had done this after being forgiven so much, thrown to the tormentors.

Jesus asked, "Do you understand? Do you get the message?" Every sin you've ever committed is entirely wiped out, completely forgiven. So, when someone says a bad word about you and you say, "I’ll never forgive them," do you see what you are doing?  Do you know what I mean when I say that if you have ever seen forgiveness, you can’t do that?  The man in Jesus' story had never understood his forgiveness. He probably thought he had pulled a fast one on the king. He did not understand forgiveness.

How do I forgive? I forgive you exactly as God has forgiven me. It is when I have seen Agape that I can become Agape. 1John says, "We Agape because He first Agaped us." So, you come to me. You have sinned against me. How shall I forgive you? FREELY. And since I don’t keep lists, I don’t even want to talk about it. There is no point in it. And I promise you, I will not blab it around town, either. I’ll put the coat on you and give you the shoes. I promise. When an elder brother comes and wants to talk about the list and asks, "Do you remember what I did?" I will tell him to hush. That is dead. A new day has begun. That’s how you forgive... FREELY ... FULLY. It is the greatest power in the world: AGAPE LOVE.

I CAN’T

Click here to read about album FORGIVE - HOW?You say, "I can’t do that." You can. Remember, that is what the disciples said when Jesus told them to forgive even if it was seven times a day. They said, "Pray for us. Give us faith. We can’t do that. We need help." Jesus then said this verse that has been completely taken out of context and misapplied over and over. "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and cast into the sea’ and it will obey you." I have heard this preached so as to say that with faith you can get automobiles and houses and all kinds of things. It has nothing to do with that. It is Jesus' answer to a question.

The disciples said they could not have the kind of faith that would allow them to forgive a man seven times a day. They asked for more faith. Jesus answer is, "No. I won’t give you any more faith. Because if you have as little faith as a grain of mustard seed, that is the beginning of the beginning of all you need. It is enough. All you do now is "say" to this ugly thing that is growing in your life, this resentment, this little room of horrors,  "Be removed and cast into the sea of forgetfulness and it will obey you."

You say, "I don’t feel like it." Of course, you don’t feel like it. It has nothing to do with feelings. It has everything to do with the Agape, committed Love of God. I simply say, "I forgive you."  And it shall be cast into the sea of forgetfulness.

You say, "but it keeps coming back." Of course, it does. The resurrection has not taken place yet. It keeps coming back, but don’t forgive it again. No. When that feeling of "how could he have done that to me" comes up, stop in your tracks and say, "I have spoken forgiveness, back there, half an hour ago, I did it. He is forgiven. I will not consider it anymore." And in an hour’s time, when self-pity comes to you and says, "He did it to you," you stop what you are doing and say, "One and one half hours ago I dealt with this and it is done. He is forgiven in the name of the Lord Jesus."

Gradually your old projection room of horrors will get the message. Throw away the photographs. Throw away the old movies of bitterness. You will then begin to flow in an ease of forgiving.

THE EXAMPLE

"To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.  When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." 1Peter 2

As He hung on the cross, He prayed, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."  That is the ultimate of forgiveness. If this is what Christ did and Christ lives in you, then this is what you will do as you live FROM HIM.

TO LIVE IS CHRIST


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Last modified: May 31, 2005