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Forgive, How?
by A. Gene Veal, Counselor
The most paralyzing element in the Body of Christ is UNFORGIVENESS.  Read this transcript of one of three teaching cassettes on the subject.   Ask Father for the eyes of your understanding to be enlightened as to what you have in Christ enabling you to forgive.

(Transcribed by Lynn Margason)

A New Person
If we had read the whole chapter, it would tell us basically where we stand. We are not going to take the time to do that. Let me instead, just tell you. Paul has been talking about the new birth. He has been talking about leaving the old world, and leaving everything that we were in, everything that he called the old man, or the old self, everything that belongs to sin and the race of Adam. And he says, something happened, you were taken out of that world, as it says in Colossians, out of the domain of darkness, and you were brought into the kingdom of the Son of God, which is the new self, the new man, the new creation. You were rebirthed, and having said that you were rebirthed, he begins to say, now let us begin to act out of our new source of life. If you are rebirthed, then let us now begin to become the people that we really are.

Or put it like this, the new birth, being saved, is a crisis. No one will deny this. It is a crisis. Tragically, so many believers, emphasize this crisis for the rest of their lives. They sing hymns about the crisis, they come to church every Sunday to think about the crisis…

The New Testament isn’t about the crisis. It is about the process that happens after the crisis. You follow? If you have now been taken out of one sphere and placed into another, that is a crisis. Paul couldn’t use a stronger term than the new birth: translated out of darkness, into life. That’s a crisis. But, now, for the rest of your life, step by step, plodding along, there is the process of working that out in your life: making it really happen, so that you become who you have been made.

I am no longer what I was. I have become a new person. So, let that newness now invade every part of my life: past, present, and all my relationships. That’s what the New Testament is about; and that’s specifically what this passage is about, it says, "you have become a new person". Now, let’s begin to conform you to the very image of Christ.

You see, as human beings, we say to God, let me shape up, let me change, let me get better, and then you can accept me. But, God says, oh, no, I’ve got a better plan, this is the good news, just as you are, unchanged, I accept you. I give you full pardon, and I give you the righteousness of Christ, and you are accepted to sit beside me in heavenly places. Now, let’s change you.

Be Who You Are
You see what I’m saying? First, of all, you’re accepted. You’re in a state of an acceptance, and while in that state, God says, now, let us change you. And the change that takes place, part of it, is shown in the verses I just read. He says there are areas of your life: bitterness, malice, evil speaking…he says these must be put away. Put away! That’s strong.

Then he says, now let’s be, or become that: tenderhearted, loving…let the change take place. You are in Christ; you are pardoned; you have been given righteousness, now let’s work it out. Let these areas of life be put away forever. They’re no longer you; they’re no longer compatible; it’s no longer fitting that you live that way, the way you used to, the way you would if you weren’t in the process of changing.

You live out of a life who is Christ within you. So, these verses are describing what it really means to have Jesus as Lord. Coming to church and saying, that Jesus is LORD, is a testimony, not of where you have been, but of where you are going, and of where you will go next week, for example. It’s not just something that happens at church, Jesus is LORD because my lifestyle changes; Jesus is LORD because of the way I think about life and people: it changes.

These verses about putting away bitterness and putting on love, that is what the fullness of the Spirit is. It’s the Holy Spirit’s power coming into me and enabling me to live the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Coming Out of The Lie
When we were out there in the world, we were part of what the Bible calls, The Lie. Not just a lie, but The Lie. It goes back to the garden of Eden, when the devil told the one Lie, The Lie that twisted and distorted the whole race. The Lie was: you shall be as God. If you’ll throw God off, and declare yourself independent, you’ll be as God. They believed that to be final truth, and that’s the foundation on which the whole world is built.

Now, come out of that. It says in verse twenty-one of that chapter, you didn’t learn Jesus that way; you learned truth as it is in Jesus. You learn a lifestyle that is completely opposite of every way in the life you came out of; it’s a new lifestyle. You have to learn it. You have to relearn life.

That’s why Jesus says you have to become like little children: brand new. You don’t know where you’re going; you don’t what really is ahead of you; you need someone to teach you. He said you’re born again; you’re like little children. You’ve got to relearn how to live life.

Being a Christian isn’t just adding Sunday to your schedule, it’s relearning how to live every moment of your life. It’s coming out of the distortion, getting out of the way I’ve thought about people, the way I’ve dealt with people, the way I’ve thought about myself in this world. My mind is renewed; I become who I really am in Christ in this process.

Grace?
How do you understand grace? Some people understand that since God is gracious you can sin and get away with it. No. That’s not grace. That’s phony grace. Put it this way: religion has the law, and the law says that as long as you behave OK, I’m satisfied. So, the law deals with our behavior, and I may hate it, but I’ll do it.

I may look like a good Christian; I’ll adjust with this mask so all the other Christians will think I’m a good Christian. But, grace doesn’t bother with behavior; it deals with your heart. Grace deals with your "want tos"; grace comes to where you want to be, and who you want to be, and changes you there. And when you are changed there, your behavior changes. But, it’s not a mask, it’s an expression of who you really are.

That’s what Paul is really talking about here. He says the grace of God has really come; the grace of God has invaded you. Now, let the grace of God change you, every day and every moment let the grace of God change you so that you can be who you really are. So the grace of God brings this about: not only the salvation that gets us out of the world, but the salvation that happens everyday.

Salvation?
Do you know the meaning of the word ‘salvation’? It means "wholeness". It means to be perfectly healthy. So, this salvation that’s taught us by the grace of God makes us healthy. It’s not just healing of the body; many times if you’re healed in your body, you have to be healed again; that sort of healing is not forever. That’s not the problem; sometimes the reason you are sick in your body is because you’re sick in your head. You’re sick in your head, because you’re sick in your feelings, and you’re sick in your feelings because you still believe The Lie.

The doctors will tell you that ninety percent of our diseases are psychosomatic. What they really mean is, that ninety percent of the time we need to be healed on the inside. These verses, "put away bitterness," "put away malice," "put away evil speaking", are speaking of a radical surgery on the inside, so that we might be healthy on the inside, filled with health and wholeness. So we will have radiant spiritual health, filled with God’s goodness.

Stop that!
Notice, "put away", I don’t know if you realize this, but in the Greek language there is an actual positioning of the words within the sentence that gives emphasis. In English we have to sound it, but they just put it the right place in the sentence so the emphasis will be there. So, in the Greek this was written in, it reads, "PUT AWAY!" When I read it, I have to shout it, but in the Greek just putting it in a certain place in the sentence was the same as shouting it.

The emphasis is almost as if to say, if you forget anything else, don’t forget this, "PUT IT AWAY!" It is strong language.

And then, in the Greek language they have a certain tense that we don’t have, and it would read like this: make a decisive choice; "do it, man, do it!" ; "make it happen!"

It means, don’t pray about it, don’t say, I’ll try; just do it!

You Must Choose
So, as a believer, I’m in Christ, and the life of God is in me, and even though the life of God is in me, I must do something! I must make a choice; it’s not a matter of praying about it, or trying, you don’t even need counseling about this. It says, get on and do it, put it away.

Bitterness for Example
What do I have to put it away? The godfather here is bitterness. The granddaddy of all is bitterness. What is bitterness? Bitterness isn’t really something that you do and then it’s done with; bitterness is a way of being. Bitterness is when a particular kind of unlove has gotten down so deep inside of us that it becomes a kind of state of our spirit. We sleep with it; we get up with it; we go through the day with it: bitterness is something buried deep inside of us; it’s a way of looking at life; it’s like when you put on a certain kind of sunglasses that change the shade of the world.

Bitterness is a certain kind of a glass in your spirit. Once this bitterness has a hold of you, it doesn’t matter who you look at, or where you look; it’s sour. It’s sour.

How does it happen? It can have happened a long time ago. As a matter of fact, by the time it’s full-blown it did happen a long time ago. Somebody hurt you. That could be a wide range of things. I want us to look at this seriously. I want you to take a moment to consider this. Paul is speaking here, he is suggesting that when they came out of the darkness, they still brought with them into the kingdom of light certain things. He’s saying, you dragged in things that belonged to the old life and you’re still bitter about it.

It is very possible that we held onto bitterness because of something that our father did to us as little children. It could be that we drag into this new life as a Christian some way our mother treated us. Do you understand? These are things that happened way back there when we were growing up. We were like little trees that were being formed and somebody pushed them and they got bent; so we grew up bent and bitter.

It could be so long ago that you haven’t even thought about it recently, but like the glasses you put on, it colors everything you see. Everything. It could have been something big. We may be speaking here of sexual molestation. We could be talking here of the most horrible things that could possibly be, or it could be things that if you really looked at them singularly, they weren’t really that bad. It wasn’t that much.

But at the time it hurt you; it was like a knife that was twisted in you and you grabbed hold of it. And you put it on video in your head; and you replay and replay that video over and over again. You are the star of the show. You are the one getting beat up. You are the one they said that about!

I don’t want to underplay it, because many times they did do it. And especially if it happened when you were a child: a defenseless, helpless, little child that had no way of stopping what was going on. But there it is, stuck in your mind, and it has colored everything you think about, as you brood on it, like a hen trying to hatch eggs.

Poisonous Meditation
It’s meditation. It is feeling that goes deeply into the injustice, the wrong of what happened to you. You have assured yourself on the inside that that was injustice, what they did to you was wrong. You’ve nursed it like a baby. You’ve held it.

That begins to produce a poison inside of you. Actually there is poison root; in some countries they use that root to destroy their enemies. That root is called bitterness. The Bible speaks of the root of bitterness; it goes deep and it poisons us; it distorts things. So much so, that now when we meet anybody in any situation who is remotely the same as the one that caused us that hurt, we act toward them with the same sort of anger and rage as we feel toward that hurt. You see what I’m saying? It’s a poison; it distorts me; I can’t think of life properly because of that thing that happened. It could have been twenty years ago; it could have been thirty; it could have been two hours ago; it could be anywhere in your past. It muddles our head; it makes us insane; we don’t see life as it really is.

It gets into our feelings. You wonder why it is that you can’t experience the joy of the Lord; you just can’t seem to do it. Many times it’s because of this bitterness.

Doctors will tell us this bitterness will even release a poison into our bloodstream which will actually bring sickness and disease and eventually kill you in the end. This is scientifically stated.

A Kind of Insanity
Bitterness is an insanity. But, in a sense you’d expect that, because sin is insanity. This is a particularly peculiar type of insanity: because someone hurt me back there, really hurt me, what do I do? I keep going back to be hurt again; I keep watching the video inside me so I can feel the hurt; I keep wallowing in it. I can feel the knife cutting through me all over; it never leaves me.

That’s really a type of insanity when I pick up the knife and I stab myself with it. There’s nothing I can do to that person to hurt them; but, every time I go back it hurts me.

And in many cases they don’t even know that I hate them so much; they don’t even know all this I’m going through. I’m doing this to myself. A fellow told me that a person came and was sobbing on his shoulder, saying, "Oh, forgive me, forgive me!" And the fellow asked, "for what?" And the guy said, "for seventeen years I’ve held a grudge you; I’ve had bitterness against you and I just beg you to forgive me…" And this person said, "Well, I didn’t even know it; I didn’t know anything about it all! It didn’t affect me."

Whatever I want to do to the person who hurt me, they are not hurt; I am. I go back and I go back, and I’m hurt and I’m hurt again. I mean, it’s no wonder that Paul says, "put it away!" Don’t hold onto it for a minute; be done with it!

But, bitterness has a way of getting into your tongue. It gets into your head; it affects the way you look at life and look at people. Paul brings in these other things that go along with bitterness: wrath. Wrath, that’s when you fly off the handle, you rage. Everybody knows wrath. It’s explosive; we all know wrath. We ask sometimes, "where did that come from?" It came from that fire that’s burning down inside you: that bitterness.

And Anger
Then it says, anger; then what’s anger? Anger is akin to bitterness. Anger is in the person that doesn’t let it show; you can tell by the look on their face that they’re mad, but they’re nice, you see. They don’t let it out. Wrath is explosive, but understand me, anger is implosive; it goes inside. Some people explode outwardly and some explode inwardly. They never let it out. That’s anger; it’s a condition of mind; it’s a rage. If you offend them they’ll hold it for three weeks because they’re angry.

Clamor
And clamor? What is clamor? Clamor is basically uncontrolled shouting. Loud arguments, no control over your tongue, beating people up verbally: that’s clamor.

Evil Speaking
Evil speaking is deliberately saying something with a view to hurting someone else; it’s enjoying passing on gossip; it’s that delicious feeling when I know something about that person I don’t like and I can pass it on and I can watch the another person’s face light up and hear them say, "you don’t mean it? I’ll say; he’s such a lovely person."

That’s evil speaking: you enjoy gossip that’s going to do harm to others. Also it has in it the idea of not speaking, it’s when you listen to something about your worst enemy and you love every minute of it; so, you are listening to somebody else report the evil speaking.

In fact, that word evil speaking in the Greek language is almost a transliteration of the word blasphemy. Evil speaking in the Greek means blasphemy. That means you don’t blaspheme only God when you say evil about somebody else. Do you realize that?

Malice
Malice? What’s malice? Malice is a settled determination to do harm to others. They hurt you and you’re going to get even. You may only get even in your dreams, you may lay awake at night and fantasize about what you’d like to do with them.

You know, that’s sick; Paul’s given us a pretty rotten list; and you know what Paul says about this? Put it away! Put it away!

Old Baggage
Let me say this now, Paul was speaking to believers who had dragged this stuff in from their past, so a lot of this is unfinished business. We came in not because of what we did or didn’t do; we came into this life by the grace of God. We’re in. God says let’s clean up unfinished business now.

You brought too many cases in with you; too much baggage. It might go back to business relationships or family relationships that are buried back there in the past. The Holy Spirit could be bringing them to your mind right now; the small things.

Paul said something quite strange in Colossians, where he said, "husbands, do not be embittered at your wife." That’s a strange thing, to hold bitterness toward the person you love. But it’s possible. It’s possible that I can feel resentment against the person I love; this person that I’m married to.

It goes beyond the marriage; it can destroy the whole body of Christ where you meet and worship. We love one another as believers, you’re my brother or my sister as believers in a double sense: we’re created beings that belong to the same human family and in another sense, we’re both washed by the blood of Jesus Christ and as such we’re both members of the family of God.

And so it’s amazing we can hold resentment toward one another. We can hold this kind of bitterness toward our brothers and sisters in Christ? And husbands and wives? Why? Why do we continue in this insanity: going back to a hurt and thinking about it and letting it hurt us again? Why do we do such things?

Back to the Lie
Go back to that lie, remember? You shall be as God. In Genesis 3. The whole human race is founded on that; it has everything to do with the world and the expression of "you shall be as God." That lie, from before I came to faith in Jesus Christ, seems to invade this Christian life; it has invaded everything that I’ve thought about.

You can be sure that you can find it in your life, the idea that you can be as God. Well, what does God do? God is in control. So, if I think I’m God, I may not say so, but, it’s the lie that makes me believe that I can be in control. I’ve got to be in control of your punishment, you see? You hurt me; do you know what you did to me? You dared to say what you said. You dared to do what you did. You hurt me and I’m in control. You did it; I felt powerless at the time; you offended me; but let me tell you, now I am in control.

This is the idea behind being determined to be in control. Now, I will bind you to that thing that you said and I’ll never let you forget it. I’ll bind you. I’m in control. I’m God. I’m God! I’ll make you hurt as much as you hurt me, or even more. How shall I do that? I am going to lock the door of my life so that you’re locked out. You see? I won’t include you in my fellowship anymore; I lock you out. You cannot come in. And, I will try to influence as many other people as I can so that they will lock you out, too, just as I’ve locked you out. I’ll try to get you dismissed from the human race, because I am God, you understand. I am in control.

The sweet, sweet savor of control. I’m going to make you hurt for what you did to me. Why do we do it? What is the insanity that makes us do this?

Victim Mentality
We become the victim, that’s what it is. If you hadn’t said what you said twenty years ago, I’d have a happy life now. I wouldn’t have become what I am; it’s your fault; it’s what you said that did it. You realize that because of what you said my whole life has been a living hell; you did that! We ought to be laughing at such a statement. This is what really happens inside; we may not say these things out loud; we may not use our tongue to say these things; but, it is our heart.

And if you’re saying in your heart, I know what he’s talking about; I know what he’s saying is true; you’re hurting. Because of what your father did to you; because of the injustice that was perpetrated upon you; you might even think, hey, you can’t expect me to get my life together after what was done to me. In fact, after what my parents did to me, you can never expect me to live a holy life. They are responsible for the way that I react to things.

Well, let me just say in passing, they are not responsible. They’re not! That would make you less than a human being. We’re all responsible. When you say, she makes me mad, let me tell you, you’re just choosing to get mad at her. You weren’t made mad by her; no human being can make you; you’re free. But, I do know how you feel: you feel like a victim; you feel like the injured party; you feel like there’s no justice; and you come with all your crippled living and the sins that have accrued because of what they did. And you say, pity me, pity me. Don’t ask me to forgive them, they are to blame for my life being messed up. My wretched life is their fault.

Seeing Evil
I hear someone else say, I’m not going to forgive, I’m going to hold this. You see? By remembering this, I’m protected, I’m going to make sure that this never happens to me again. I’ve been caught once; but, I’ll never be caught like that again; I’m going to remember the pain; I’m going to feel the injustice, and I’ll smell it coming a mile away and I won’t be hurt like that again. I’m going to build a wall a mile around me that nobody can get into because I won’t be hurt again like that.

You see we keep our list of offenses, and we can remember every one of them. You see it distorts.

Twisted
Do you know the meaning of the word "wicked"? There’s two English words that come from the same root, "wick" and "wicker". Have you noticed something about candle wicks and wicker chairs? They’re twisted. You twist chords together to make them. Wicked means twisted; it means distorted. The idea of wicked is not so much in the act of what you do, as in the fact that your whole life has become twisted and distorted: twisted away from God’s beautiful holiness.

You’re twisted away from God’s beautiful purpose for you and if you hold bitterness in your heart, you become wicked, twisted, in all your relationship, in all your thinking.

What is Forgiveness?
Some people don’t forgive because they have wrong ideas about forgiveness. They say, if I forgave that person it would be giving in to them. They hurt me; you’re asking me to forgive and give into them? That means I’m the doormat; they’ve hurt me enough; I’m not going to forgive them.

Now, think about this. I’m talking to the deepest part of you about how you operate minute by minute. How do you think about forgiveness? What is forgiveness? Is it giving into evil? Is it doing that? There’s something inside of me that says I can’t admit defeat; I’m not going to call a truce. That person hurt me; I’m not going to let evil win; I’m going to control their punishment. You see?

Or is forgiveness just saying, "let’s forget it." I go to that person that I’ve held this grudge against and I say, "well, I guess I over reacted and it wasn’t really important anyway." Have you heard this? It happens a lot. Someone comes to you and says, "please forgive me; I know I really hurt you the other day by what I said or what I did" and you say, "oh, that was nothing, that was nothing, just forget it."

Aren’t you trying to be a bit of a holy angel when you say that? Why not admit the truth and say, "Yes, it did hurt me. But, I forgive you." If you don’t admit you’ve been hurt, then you can’t forgive. If you don’t admit that you’ve been hurt, how can you forgive them, and if they ask you to forgive them, you say, "it’s nothing, that’s OK, think nothing of it." No, no, no. If you don’t admit you’ve been hurt, you can’t forgive them. And if you didn’t forgive them you’re living in unforgiveness. You hear me?

This forgiveness isn’t going to a person and saying I guess you were right after all. I’m not condoning what the person did. If I’m going to condone what the person did; if I’m going to say that I over reacted and there was really nothing there at all, then I feel like I’m betraying myself. You see there is something there inside of me that says someone has to pay, injustice has been done. I have been hurt. Someone has to pay.

And outside of Christianity, the gospel, I really can’t forgive.

Psychiatrist Don't Know How
You know, it’s interesting that people in the world, I’m talking about unconverted psychiatrists, are coming to the conclusion that their clients need to forgive. They say, "forgive, forgive, it’s the only way out." That’s what modern psychiatry is coming to today, but they are lost, they don’t know Christ, they don’t have the Holy Spirit. You read their books and you try to find out how to forgive, and they don’t know. They have no foundation, there’s no sanity to it. So, they say, "well, you forgive; you just forgive." The religionist, the legalist, the psychiatrist may say you should forgive, but they can’t tell you how to forgive, and those that can’t tell you how to forgive just don’t say anything about forgiveness. You follow what I’m saying?

The Foundation of Forgiveness
Only the good news offers me sanity; only the good news can tell me the "why" behind forgiveness. Because you see, God in Christ Jesus has forgiven us. That’s why He says, forgiving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you. There’s a foundation, a reason why we forgive: that is that God has forgiven us.

Have we ever plumbed the depths of that? We creatures have sinned against God. And I don’t mean in something we did on Thursday. I mean, sin is a basic choice to be independent of God. So, when you repent of sin, that doesn’t mean that when you come to the front of an altar and you start saying, in 1988 I did this, and I’ve got to be forgiven of that. No, no! That’s not what we’re talking about. That’s only what you did; sin is the set of your heart.

Only Sinners Sin
The reason a dog barks is because he’s a dog; he isn’t a dog because he barks. The reason you sin is because you are a sinner; sinning doesn’t make you a sinner. You sin because you are a sinner. You see, you say, I’m going to run my life, I’m in control. That means everything is wrong; there’s nothing right. It isn’t that I’ve done a few naughty things to God; I have set myself against God as His enemy; I am hostile toward God by my nature. And even when I am doing good things, they are wrong things because they were done by a wrong person. Even a right thing is wrong if it is done by a person who is wrong. Does that make sense?

I sinned, I was hostile to God and His purposes; as far as I was concerned, it would be a better universe if God wasn’t there. Would you understand me if I say there are people in church every Sunday who are doing their religious thing and they’re calling on God to say that it is a good job they are doing? It’s not saying God is all and in all, it’s saying, look what I am doing for God and He’d better be pleased with it because it’s a good thing I do. This is sin.

Full Repentance
So, repentance is not only a repentance concerning evil, it’s a repentance of good works, too. When you repent, you repent of your whole being.

We have sinned against God; what does God do? God takes the initiative and He comes to us! Think about that. God comes to us; the offended, the one we sinned against; the offended party comes and takes the place of the offender. He takes our place. By the strength of His choice of love, He chooses to become the victim. And He bears all the hurts we have brought upon ourselves because of our sin against Him.

He not only takes our sin, He not only takes our all of our hostilities against Himself, He takes all the grief and the sorry and the ill that our choices have brought upon us, and He brings the whole lot to Himself and then He fully pays for it by the shedding of His blood. He swallows it up.

And He rises again from the dead with the good news of reconciliation: that He has achieved our pardon; we are free; we go free! And we not only go free, but He gives to us His righteousness so that we can stand before Him as if we never have sinned and as if we are completely righteous. "Your sins and your iniquities, I will remember them no more."

And I ask, what did I do for that? Nothing. In fact, if you try to pay for it, you lose it for as long as you try to pay for it. It’s incredible.

Jesus' Parable
The parable of Jesus for example: do you remember the parable where this man had hired some laborers early morning and then he hired some laborers late morning and then he hired some laborers around noon and in the afternoon? When the man went to pay them at the end of the day, the workers who had only worked an hour were paid a whole day’s wages. The ones who had worked all day saw this and thought, well, wait a minute, this must mean we’re going to get a lot of money; oh, this is going to be good, if he pays the ones who worked only an hour for the whole day, then what will he pay us? But, you know what happens? They all get paid the same! And those that worked all day said, that’s not fair, we worked all day. They only worked for forty-five minutes and they’re getting paid as much as we are.

And Jesus was telling the story. He created these characters; He puts into the mouth of the owner to say, that’s right, it’s not fair, isn’t it fun, it’s not fair. And if I choose to be open hearted and generous and unfair, then why do you get upset?

God is gloriously not fair; fantastically not fair. Because, if He was fair we’d all be in hell.

Amazing Grace
You see, we received that which we did not earn. We have been paid for what we didn’t deserve to be paid for. He comes and He freely pardons us. We don’t lift a finger. He gives to us the righteousness of Christ. We are accepted into the immediate presence of God to be as close to God as God. To be called His children. And we heard that incredible news; that good news that God has done that. And all I had to do was come out of denial and admit, that’s right, it’s me you’re talking about and I repent.

That is I have a total change of mind! I no longer am taking a position of hostility; I come surrendered and I’ll receive and obey the gospel and take that which is the character of God as he puts it into me. And as I turn, faith happens, all for free. To stand in the presence of God. He doesn’t even discuss the cost; He doesn’t say, well, let’s have a little talk now about last week. No, He doesn’t even discuss it; He doesn’t discuss the past. He meets us with open arms.

The Past is Past, Now Be
Now why do I say all that? I say that because Paul says in our text here that that is the foundation of all our dealings with Christians. It doesn’t just say, it would be a good idea for you to do this. It doesn’t say, it would be a good idea for your mental health if you would forgive, like the psychiatrists are telling us. By the way, that is true, it is good. That is true. You’ll be more alive in your head if you forgive, but that’s not the foundation.

The foundation is forgive each other just as God in Christ has also forgiven you. That’s our foundation. And don’t forget the "be" there; it says "be kind," "be tender-hearted", "be forgiving". In fact the word "forgiving" there means "be someone who dispenses grace." You are to be a benefactor.

If I’ve got a million dollars in my pocket and I’m walking around just looking for the people who need it, and I slip them a hundred here and a thousand there according to their need; I’m a benefactor, a bestower. That’s the idea in the Greek: a bestower. So, I go through life bestowing what I have received.

No More A Victim
Suddenly, I’m not anymore this poor victim who feels hurt and who is out to protect himself from others. I’m no longer a victim. I’m seated with Christ in the heavenly places; I’ve been forgiven, do you understand? I’ve been forgiven.

And I’ve not only got forgiveness, I’ve got so much left over that I can give to you. That’s the idea. The word "be" in "be kind", "be tender-hearted", is in contrast to "put away" and "put it away". "Be" is another tense in the Greek. It means get into this for the long haul. This is long term. As a matter of fact, we’d do better to translate it as "become". Instead of "be kind", it says, "become kind." You don’t become kind overnight. You take bitterness and you get rid of it, and you become kind. You become tender-hearted. You become…you learn a lifestyle taught by the Holy Spirit. To forgive.

Teaching Cassettes
By the way, I want to mention to you that we have cassettes on the Fruit of the Spirit. The Fruit of the Spirit deals with kindness and goodness and love and joy. I’d like you to have those cassettes if you’d like to have them; just let us know and we’ll send them to you right away.

You bestow this fruit of His Spirit upon people. You get the idea; it’s a long process. It probably means that you’re going to repeat this process many times.

When it comes to bitterness we’re to get over it, be done with it. But in this dispensing of grace, many times, you’re going to have to choose to repeat these, because of who you are in Christ you choose to be kind, you choose to be tender-hearted, you choose to forgive in the light of what Christ has done for you.

You see, Paul is not talking about behavior here. He’s talking about who you are.

Assume Your Identity
Who are you? You’re a child of God. You’re pardoned. You’re a friend of God. His child. Well, then, in the light of that, let that begin to work out, be who you are. Be becoming who you are.

I mean I’m coming to assume who I really am as I act upon how He has acted upon me. What is kindness? Well, as I said that’s another cassette, but it basically means be useful, be helpful, that is, I’m no longer a busybody fussing with other people’s lives, I’m available to serve them now. I’m kind. I’m a person who is looking out for others and their needs.

Tender-hearted? That really speaks for itself: it means my heart doesn’t have any calluses on it. My heart isn’t made of old leather; I can feel for others; I can have empathy. In other words, I’m compassionate; I just can’t walk past suffering; I can’t. I’m tender-hearted with them.

A Sad Joy
In that sense, the believer will never know true joy until after the Second Coming. You know what I mean? I have joy, yes, but when I see the world in the state that it’s in, there’s always a pain there, a sorrow, a sadness; I enter into that like Jesus who was a man of sorrows, who sobbed over Jerusalem. That’s tender-hearted. In the Greek it says He sobbed with great convulsive sobs. "O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, how often I’ve prayed for you and I would have gathered you…" Why didn’t He say, well if you want to go to hell, then go to hell, I know it’s predestined anyway? He didn’t say that. He sobbed, He wept, He sorrowed.

The Joy Set Before Him
There’s a point where in this world you will never know the joy that you will know in the final day of the resurrection when you enter into His glory. But, see, Jesus is tender-hearted. Actually, when He stood over Jerusalem like that, He was saying goodbye to them; He was saying it's over. He sobbed, He wept, convulsively sobbing. Tender-hearted. I can’t look on others without feeling their hurt. And probably, keeping to what we’re talking about, there’s never a place where that showed up more than on the cross. When He said, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." 

Doesn’t that demonstrate a sense of hurting for those that were hurting Him? In other words, He was feeling the hurt that they must have to do this terrible thing. He was feeling their hurt more than His own hurt. "Father, forgive them." He was more concerned about their hurts that they were bringing on themselves for hurting him than for the hurt that He was feeling. So, instead of praying, "O Father, I’m hurting, please stop this," He said, "Father forgive them."

That is the ultimate of tender-heartedness. I can’t walk past hurt even if the hurt is on them because of what they’re doing to me. I don’t want them to hurt. I’m more concerned for them. These words the Holy Spirit uses here are the opposite of bitterness and malice and rage and anger. This is not looking out for number one; this is looking out for one another.

Forgive
Then, the big word, "forgive". Be the benefactor. Yes, you were hurt; you see forgiveness must begin by saying you were hurt. Go back there; if it was in the past, agree, yes, I was hurt, yes. I’m not saying blaming. Your parents really did hurt you perhaps; but maybe they didn’t know what they were doing, or maybe they did, but the idea is that you are going to forgive the hurt, but you must start by recognizing, yes, you were hurt.

I face it. It may have been unjust; I say it was unjust. It may have hurt; I say it did hurt. I face it. Don’t get all sloppy and slushy as a Christian and say, "Oh, it’s OK; it’s all right."  No, it hurt.  But, you see, I am not the victim, I choose to forgive.

Forget?
You might say, well, I don’t think I can ever forget. Well, I’m sure you never will forget, that’s not the idea. Forgiveness is not some sort of divine amnesia.

Forgiveness is getting rid of the poison. You might think of it like a scar; yes, the scar is still there, but there’s no poison in my body because of that wound. It healed. There’s still a scar; I still remember the injury, but there is no poison.

Forgiveness is releasing it; it’s gone. I mean, God forgives us. It says, He will not remember our sin against us. That is not saying that He forgot it; it means He will not remember our sin against us. That’s forgiveness.

Justice Done
How do you release it? You just simply realize that when Jesus died for your sins, and my sins, that He also died for the sins of that person and what they did to us. Justice has been done; it was done to Jesus Christ. That sin that that person did against me was one of the sins that Jesus died for. I forgive as I am forgiven. As Stephen was being stoned to death, he said, lay not this sin to their charge.

Well, whose charge was it laid to? What can we say? This sin can’t be overlooked. God isn’t going to just set sin aside. Justice is meted out in Jesus Christ.

I don’t have to act insane and pretend it’s all right and it’s OK. No, somebody has taken care of this. I can forgive my brother in Christ as Christ has forgiven me. Justice has been done. In the blood of Jesus Christ. People who did me such harm; I release them; it’s between them and God. I release them. That releases me. AMEN!

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