There's one thing I forgot to cover that we're expected to do before we forgive someone. Remember that when we forgive someone, it's not just a nice saying; something actually happens when we forgive. The burden of guilt is actually lifted from the persons shoulders so that we can be reconciled with them. So before we forgive them, we should have prayed about it asking the Lord to give us a forgiving heart and to give us His Words to speak to the person so that true reconciliation can occur. We should never depend on ourselves when we need to forgive someone, but always ask for God's help. We shouldn't wait till the last minute to talk to God about this either. This should be the very first thing we do when we realize that someone has sinned against us. I know I've posted this before, but will post it again here, as I copied a little prayer about this that to me was just perfect to use as a model for my own prayer:
O God, give me a heart of forgiveness, so that I may commune with You in the fullness of fellowship and joy and not experience the chastening that comes when You don’t forgive me because I won’t forgive a brother or sister in Christ. May I remember that for everyone who sins against me I have sinned multiple times against You, and You have always forgiven me. At no time has any of my sin caused me to forfeit my eternal life; therefore, no one else’s sin should cause them to forfeit my love and my mercy toward them. Amen.
We will be talking more about how God will punish us by treating us the same way we treat someone else that we should have forgiven, later.
Ok, what about unbelievers? What do we do about them? Remember, we're to forgive the way God forgives us and since forgiveness always starts with belief and faith in Jesus, unbelievers cannot truly be forgiven. What we need to do now is see what God says about how we are to treat unbelievers. I'm sure you can think of a number of things the Lord tells us about unbelievers, but I want to start with a general statement that defines our attitude toward them: Romans 12:18 —If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. * Of course, the "everyone" in this command includes unbelievers. This verse points out that there may be times when living at peace with others isn't possible and that's most likely when it involves an unbeliever. I love this verse because it again shows us that God doesn't expect us to do the impossible and that what He does expect of us, He enables us to do. This verse lets us know that we need to be realistic about people and realize that we don't live in an ideal world where everyone is going to get along well together all the time. This is something I have to remind our members about in the apologetics forum. It can get pretty rough in there and because we're believers, we tend to automatically expect other people to act with the same morals and values we do. But when you're dealing with an unbeliever, you can't expect that!
Unbelievers are the exact opposite of what we are. We're God centered and growing more God centered, while they're self centered and growing more self centered. When we were saved, the Holy Spirit came to dwell within us and poured out His love in our hearts so that we could love Him and others with His true love and not the worlds false kind. Because we have His love in our hearts, we're able to love others, even unbelievers with His love and that too is something that the Lord increases in us as we continue to grow. But an unbeliever doesn't have God's love in their hearts because they weren't saved and they don't have the Holy Spirit within them. Without that, they cannot love God or other people in ways that are acceptable to God, nor can they understand our values, morals and way of life because they can't understand the Bible and don't really want to. Like God says, they can't please Him. They're incapable of it, just as we once were. That's why God tells us in this verse that He wants us to live at peace with others "if it's possible". He knows that with unbelievers involved in a relationship, that may be difficult at best and at times impossible.
Next God tells us that we are the only one that can be counted on to do right in a relationship with an unbeliever. That makes sense when we realize that the unbeliever is incapable of even understanding our morals and values much less living them.
I know that about now everyone is probably thinking, "but wait, I have a friend that's not saved and they're good people...they don't cheat, lie, steal, or murder and they are good parents to their children etc. I'm sure you do, I know people like that too. There's a big difference in why we act the way we do and why they act the way they do, and that difference is foundational to everything they are and we are. I'm not going to get into this now though as it would take way too long and this isn't what we're studying right now. For the purpose of this study then I would ask you to simply accept what scripture says about unbelievers, and we can certainly look into this more when we're done with this one if you want too.
Let's look at how the world handles it when someone does something the world considers is wrong. Usually if someone does something wrong and they value the relationship with the other person, they'll admit what they did and apologize for it. Remember, I posted a little about apologizing already. Let me quote parts of it here in case you missed it:
Quote:
Now, about "apologizing". Apologizing is the worlds substitute for forgiveness.
Saying your "sorry" and actually repenting of sin are two very different things. Someone can simply be "sorry" they got caught, or sorry they're going to have to pay the consequences of their sin, in fact they may not even believe in God or sin. If they do, they can even just be "sorry" that they're going to be in trouble for not doing what they knew they were supposed to do. They don't hate the sin, they're just sorry about it. All they're doing when they say they're sorry is telling you how they feel. They're not even telling you why they feel that way, which as I just showed could be for many different reasons! They aren't promising anything or doing anything about the sin when they say they're sorry either - as with repentance which means that they hate the sin and won't do it again and then they ask forgiveness and a promise is given that the sin won't be brought up again.
Let's look at the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow over a wrongdoing (sin).
2 Corinthians 7:8–11 —Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— *yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. *Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. *See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter. *
One kind of repentance comes from God and leads to life so there's no regret in having confessed and repented of the sin, but the other kind comes from the world and leads to death. There's two obvious examples of both kinds of repentance, Peter and Judas. Judas repented, was full of regret, the worldly way and killed himself, whereas Peter repented, also full of regret, weeping, and then assuring Jesus of His love accepted His forgiveness and went on determined not to sin that way again.
If we look closely at the two different ways of repenting, we see that one is self centered and one is God centered. The world's way if obviously the self centered one. Unbelievers repent, or "feel badly" that they did something wrong for selfish reasons. They might be sorry they got caught, or sorry they have to pay the consequences of the wrong, or sorry that someone else found out about it, or sorry about what it'll do to their reputation now, or how it might affect their personal life, business life, etc. or what they may have to give up or not get because this happened, or they may be sorry that it will affect their friendship. That sounds close to what we might feel, but it's really not. They're sorry because of the loss to themselves, not because of the hurt to the other person. For the unbeliever, it's all about them.
For us, it's all about God. We're sorry because we've hurt our Lord, or displeased Him in some way and desperately want to make it right.
As you can see from this, there is simply no way that the unbeliever's repentance is nothing like ours and won't lead to the same good results. So it's up to us to do our best to find a way to settle things so that we can continue to live in peace with them.
Before I get into exactly what to do with an unbeliever, let's take care of our own hearts. God says we're to forgive them, so there must be a way we can do so, even though they can't really repent. The way we do this is by forgiving them in our hearts. This is how we are told to deal with a great many sins against us so that we're not constantly running to other people to rebuke them. (I heard that sigh of relief!
) BUT, in the cases of serious sins against us, forgiving them in our hearts does not let us off the hook. We still have to rebuke them and forgive them to their face if they repent.
Let me show you what the Bible says about this.
1 Peter 4:8 —Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. * This is actually a quote from
Proverbs 17:9 —He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends. * So the only sins we need to actually confront someone about are those that love can't keep covered up. Or in other words, when it is in the other persons best interest to be told about their sin because if we do not do so it would break our fellowship with them. Just as God doesn't pick on us for every single sin we commit every day, neither should we pick on other people for their sins. We see this in parenting and in marriages too.
All this means then is that when a person sins against us in a way that perhaps hurt our feelings but that we are not going to allow to break our fellowship with them over, we forgive them in our hearts, by going to God in prayer about it. We go to the Lord and tell Him that the person hurt us and we don't want to have any bitterness or resentment in our hearts toward them because of the sin, and ask Him to help us with that. Then we simply tell God that we because we love them, we forgive them for their sin. That's it. It's not forgiveness like we'd grant to someone who has committed a major sin against us, but then they don't need that kind of forgiveness as it's not a big deal. Let me think of an example...
Sometimes I say things I don't mean. Especially when I'm in a lot of pain. I tend to snap at my husband then and can get quite mean, using a mean tone of voice, although I don't mean to. I try hard not to let that happen, but sometimes when the pain's really bad and I've been trying to hold myself together for a while for the sake of my grandchildren, when they leave, out of relief that I can now "relax" and take my pills, I'll have let down my guard and will slip up.
Like one night when the kids and grandkids had been here visiting all afternoon and for supper, I was in really bad pain and trying hard not to show how bad it was. I could barely walk. They knew I was in pain...I couldn't hide that and wasn't trying to. I simply didn't want to cry in front of them as that would upset the little ones, and I was about to do so by the time they left. so I walked them to the door as did my husband and once they were outside and out of the range of my voice, I mentally "relaxed" my control. At that moment all I was thinking about was making it back into the living room so I could sit down take my pills and not move for at least an hour.
Bruce said something to me asking why I'd done something earlier. I don't remember what. But whatever it was, instead of calmly telling him why, I acted like he should be able to read my mind and know why, and snapped at him and while I don't remember anymore what I actually said, it was probably something along the lines of, "because I'm stupid, that's why!" implying that the only reason he brought it up was because he thought I'd done something wrong or that I shouldn't have done at all. Of course that wasn't true at all and I knew that and instantly repented; but before I could even say anything, (he was behind me) he came closer to me and gently put his arms around me and ignoring my snide remark, simply said, "your back is really bad now isn't it?", which brought on the tears which then flowed even heavier because of the pain.
That my friends is a beautiful picture of love covering a sin. His love for me, knew that the words I'd spoken weren't from the real me and that I didn't mean them and that I loved him too, so he simply forgave me in his heart and covered my sin with his love. And that's what we're to do with most of the sins that are committed against us. We simply love the person enough that the sin doesn't matter and we tell the Lord we've forgiven them or even ask Him to forgive them as well if we feel that's appropriate. I'll have to cover the way we deal with the unbeliever when they must be confronted tomorrow.
Proverbs 10:12 —Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs. *
Ephesians 4:32 —Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. *
Ephesians 5:1–2 —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. *
O God, give me a heart of forgiveness, so that I may commune with You in the fullness of fellowship and joy and not experience the chastening that comes when You don’t forgive me because I won’t forgive a brother or sister in Christ. May I remember that for everyone who sins against me I have sinned multiple times against You, and You have always forgiven me. At no time has any of my sin caused me to forfeit my eternal life; therefore, no one else’s sin should cause them to forfeit my love and my mercy toward them. Amen.
We will be talking more about how God will punish us by treating us the same way we treat someone else that we should have forgiven, later.
Ok, what about unbelievers? What do we do about them? Remember, we're to forgive the way God forgives us and since forgiveness always starts with belief and faith in Jesus, unbelievers cannot truly be forgiven. What we need to do now is see what God says about how we are to treat unbelievers. I'm sure you can think of a number of things the Lord tells us about unbelievers, but I want to start with a general statement that defines our attitude toward them: Romans 12:18 —If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. * Of course, the "everyone" in this command includes unbelievers. This verse points out that there may be times when living at peace with others isn't possible and that's most likely when it involves an unbeliever. I love this verse because it again shows us that God doesn't expect us to do the impossible and that what He does expect of us, He enables us to do. This verse lets us know that we need to be realistic about people and realize that we don't live in an ideal world where everyone is going to get along well together all the time. This is something I have to remind our members about in the apologetics forum. It can get pretty rough in there and because we're believers, we tend to automatically expect other people to act with the same morals and values we do. But when you're dealing with an unbeliever, you can't expect that!
Unbelievers are the exact opposite of what we are. We're God centered and growing more God centered, while they're self centered and growing more self centered. When we were saved, the Holy Spirit came to dwell within us and poured out His love in our hearts so that we could love Him and others with His true love and not the worlds false kind. Because we have His love in our hearts, we're able to love others, even unbelievers with His love and that too is something that the Lord increases in us as we continue to grow. But an unbeliever doesn't have God's love in their hearts because they weren't saved and they don't have the Holy Spirit within them. Without that, they cannot love God or other people in ways that are acceptable to God, nor can they understand our values, morals and way of life because they can't understand the Bible and don't really want to. Like God says, they can't please Him. They're incapable of it, just as we once were. That's why God tells us in this verse that He wants us to live at peace with others "if it's possible". He knows that with unbelievers involved in a relationship, that may be difficult at best and at times impossible.
Next God tells us that we are the only one that can be counted on to do right in a relationship with an unbeliever. That makes sense when we realize that the unbeliever is incapable of even understanding our morals and values much less living them.
I know that about now everyone is probably thinking, "but wait, I have a friend that's not saved and they're good people...they don't cheat, lie, steal, or murder and they are good parents to their children etc. I'm sure you do, I know people like that too. There's a big difference in why we act the way we do and why they act the way they do, and that difference is foundational to everything they are and we are. I'm not going to get into this now though as it would take way too long and this isn't what we're studying right now. For the purpose of this study then I would ask you to simply accept what scripture says about unbelievers, and we can certainly look into this more when we're done with this one if you want too.
Let's look at how the world handles it when someone does something the world considers is wrong. Usually if someone does something wrong and they value the relationship with the other person, they'll admit what they did and apologize for it. Remember, I posted a little about apologizing already. Let me quote parts of it here in case you missed it:
Quote:
Now, about "apologizing". Apologizing is the worlds substitute for forgiveness.
Saying your "sorry" and actually repenting of sin are two very different things. Someone can simply be "sorry" they got caught, or sorry they're going to have to pay the consequences of their sin, in fact they may not even believe in God or sin. If they do, they can even just be "sorry" that they're going to be in trouble for not doing what they knew they were supposed to do. They don't hate the sin, they're just sorry about it. All they're doing when they say they're sorry is telling you how they feel. They're not even telling you why they feel that way, which as I just showed could be for many different reasons! They aren't promising anything or doing anything about the sin when they say they're sorry either - as with repentance which means that they hate the sin and won't do it again and then they ask forgiveness and a promise is given that the sin won't be brought up again.
Let's look at the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow over a wrongdoing (sin).
2 Corinthians 7:8–11 —Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— *yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. *Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. *See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter. *
One kind of repentance comes from God and leads to life so there's no regret in having confessed and repented of the sin, but the other kind comes from the world and leads to death. There's two obvious examples of both kinds of repentance, Peter and Judas. Judas repented, was full of regret, the worldly way and killed himself, whereas Peter repented, also full of regret, weeping, and then assuring Jesus of His love accepted His forgiveness and went on determined not to sin that way again.
If we look closely at the two different ways of repenting, we see that one is self centered and one is God centered. The world's way if obviously the self centered one. Unbelievers repent, or "feel badly" that they did something wrong for selfish reasons. They might be sorry they got caught, or sorry they have to pay the consequences of the wrong, or sorry that someone else found out about it, or sorry about what it'll do to their reputation now, or how it might affect their personal life, business life, etc. or what they may have to give up or not get because this happened, or they may be sorry that it will affect their friendship. That sounds close to what we might feel, but it's really not. They're sorry because of the loss to themselves, not because of the hurt to the other person. For the unbeliever, it's all about them.
For us, it's all about God. We're sorry because we've hurt our Lord, or displeased Him in some way and desperately want to make it right.
As you can see from this, there is simply no way that the unbeliever's repentance is nothing like ours and won't lead to the same good results. So it's up to us to do our best to find a way to settle things so that we can continue to live in peace with them.
Before I get into exactly what to do with an unbeliever, let's take care of our own hearts. God says we're to forgive them, so there must be a way we can do so, even though they can't really repent. The way we do this is by forgiving them in our hearts. This is how we are told to deal with a great many sins against us so that we're not constantly running to other people to rebuke them. (I heard that sigh of relief!
) BUT, in the cases of serious sins against us, forgiving them in our hearts does not let us off the hook. We still have to rebuke them and forgive them to their face if they repent. Let me show you what the Bible says about this.
1 Peter 4:8 —Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. * This is actually a quote from
Proverbs 17:9 —He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends. * So the only sins we need to actually confront someone about are those that love can't keep covered up. Or in other words, when it is in the other persons best interest to be told about their sin because if we do not do so it would break our fellowship with them. Just as God doesn't pick on us for every single sin we commit every day, neither should we pick on other people for their sins. We see this in parenting and in marriages too.
All this means then is that when a person sins against us in a way that perhaps hurt our feelings but that we are not going to allow to break our fellowship with them over, we forgive them in our hearts, by going to God in prayer about it. We go to the Lord and tell Him that the person hurt us and we don't want to have any bitterness or resentment in our hearts toward them because of the sin, and ask Him to help us with that. Then we simply tell God that we because we love them, we forgive them for their sin. That's it. It's not forgiveness like we'd grant to someone who has committed a major sin against us, but then they don't need that kind of forgiveness as it's not a big deal. Let me think of an example...
Sometimes I say things I don't mean. Especially when I'm in a lot of pain. I tend to snap at my husband then and can get quite mean, using a mean tone of voice, although I don't mean to. I try hard not to let that happen, but sometimes when the pain's really bad and I've been trying to hold myself together for a while for the sake of my grandchildren, when they leave, out of relief that I can now "relax" and take my pills, I'll have let down my guard and will slip up.
Like one night when the kids and grandkids had been here visiting all afternoon and for supper, I was in really bad pain and trying hard not to show how bad it was. I could barely walk. They knew I was in pain...I couldn't hide that and wasn't trying to. I simply didn't want to cry in front of them as that would upset the little ones, and I was about to do so by the time they left. so I walked them to the door as did my husband and once they were outside and out of the range of my voice, I mentally "relaxed" my control. At that moment all I was thinking about was making it back into the living room so I could sit down take my pills and not move for at least an hour.
Bruce said something to me asking why I'd done something earlier. I don't remember what. But whatever it was, instead of calmly telling him why, I acted like he should be able to read my mind and know why, and snapped at him and while I don't remember anymore what I actually said, it was probably something along the lines of, "because I'm stupid, that's why!" implying that the only reason he brought it up was because he thought I'd done something wrong or that I shouldn't have done at all. Of course that wasn't true at all and I knew that and instantly repented; but before I could even say anything, (he was behind me) he came closer to me and gently put his arms around me and ignoring my snide remark, simply said, "your back is really bad now isn't it?", which brought on the tears which then flowed even heavier because of the pain.
That my friends is a beautiful picture of love covering a sin. His love for me, knew that the words I'd spoken weren't from the real me and that I didn't mean them and that I loved him too, so he simply forgave me in his heart and covered my sin with his love. And that's what we're to do with most of the sins that are committed against us. We simply love the person enough that the sin doesn't matter and we tell the Lord we've forgiven them or even ask Him to forgive them as well if we feel that's appropriate. I'll have to cover the way we deal with the unbeliever when they must be confronted tomorrow.
Proverbs 10:12 —Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs. *
Ephesians 4:32 —Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. *
Ephesians 5:1–2 —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. *
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