Forgiveness may just be the hardest thing we do in life. At times it can be downright agonizing, amen? But agony meets ecstasy, and forgiveness is an enviable invitation into the very heart of Christ. When we forgive at great expense, dying to ourselves and our desire for self-justification, we know Him better. We experience the miracle of His life in us. We wade deeper into the ocean of His love. And what does His love look like? C.H. Spurgeon put it beautifully in his sermon on Ephesians 4:32: All our transgressions are swept away at once, carried off as by a flood, and so completely removed from us that no guilty trace of them remains. They are all gone! O ye believers, think of this, for the ALL is no little thing: sins against a holy God, sins against his loving Son, sins against gospel as well as against law, sins against man as well as against God, sins of the body as well as sins of the mind, sins as numerous as the sands on the sea shore, and as great as the sea itself: all, all are removed from us as far as the east is from the west. All this evil was rolled into one great mass, and laid upon Jesus, and having borne it all he has made an end of it for ever. When the Lord forgave us he forgave us the whole debt. He did not take the bill and say, ‘I strike out this item and that,’ but the pen went through it all—PAID. It was a receipt in full of all demands, Jesus took the handwriting which was against us and nailed it to his cross, to show before the entire universe that its power to condemn us had ceased for ever. We have in him a full forgiveness. Dear one, I have too often been the hypocrite—the one who was freely pardoned $1,000,000,000 only to be caught violently demanding repayment of a $5 debt. To put it another way, if my sins were all the sand of the world’s seashores, your offense against me would be a solitary grain of sand. When I withhold forgiveness from you, I betray the fact that I don’t understand calvary love at all. But what of the times I’m obediently forgiving—yet tempted to make much of it in my heart? Do I secretly believe I’m the only one being wronged, the only one perpetually pardoning others? Again, Spurgeon says it so well: [Ephesians 4:32 says] ‘forgiving, one another.’ One another! Ah, then that means that if you have to forgive to-day, it is very likely that you will yourself need to be forgiven to-morrow for it is “forgiving one another.” It is turn and turn about, a mutual operation, a co-operative service. In fact, it is a joint-stock business of mutual forgiveness, and members of Christian churches should take large shares in this concern. You forgive me, and I forgive you, and we forgive them, and they forgive us, and so a circle of unlimited forbearance and love goes round the world. There is something wrong about me that needs to be forgiven by my brother, but there is also something wrong about my brother which needs to be forgiven by me, and this is what the apostle means—that we are all of us mutually to be exercising the sacred art and mystery of forgiving one another. Let us begin our Christian career with the full assurance that we shall have a great deal to forgive in other people, but that there will be a great deal more to be forgiven in ourselves, and let us set our account upon having to exercise gentleness, and needing its exercise from others, ‘Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.’ Who have we received forgiveness from today? Who do we need to forgive today—in such a way that “no guilty trace remains”?    For more thoughts on forgiveness, read 5 Ways to Pursue Peace in a Difficult Relationship. 

I was deeply encouraged by this today! Hope you are too…. “Our normal way of living in our human nature is to value results and to look at people as those who can help us achieve what we want or look at people who are ‘getting in the way’ of achieving those results. This can result in manipulation and/or rejection. “But, when the Holy Spirit enters in and grows our new nature, when we grow to be more like God, we realize our relationships with others are more important than the problems we have with them. This changes the way we look at life and the people we connect with on a regular basis. Whether it is our business, the way we act in our families, the way we deal with our friends and neighbors, relationships have priority over results.” For Dana Hanson’s full article, visit the Joy Starts Here blog.

Her message left me shaken. She said if we had just 30 minutes together, she could get things off her chest; she was angry and needed to tell me the specific ways I’d hurt her. We’d had this same conversation a couple of years before, so I knew that another venting wouldn’t liberate her. She’d placed me on a pedestal I didn’t belong on, and I wasn’t sure how to convince her that I could never be who she wanted me to be. What she wanted was a perfect mentor, but what she really needed was Christ. And while I knew all of this in my head, there was still a tender space in my heart that longed for her to look past my faults, to realize I was just six weeks a mom, rendered useless by exhaustion and illness. I wanted her to love me in spite of me. To let me off the hook. Yet what my heart longed for her to do for me—to love me unconditionally—I’ve so often failed to do for others. I’ve demanded their perfection. I’ve wanted to extract profuse apologies from those who have wounded me. I’ve itched to unload the silent rant that’s played on repeat in my head. I’ve actually expected others to make me happy, to help preserve my emotional equilibrium. IT’S COMPLICATED Pastor Milton Vincent once said, “Our lives are complicated by agape love.” Because we will wrestle deeply with sin till we see Jesus face-to-face, our relationships will likewise be deeply impacted by sin—our sin, others’ sin. Agape love steps into that sinful mess and says, “No matter what you do, no matter what it costs me, I will care for you, think the best of you, put you before myself, forgive you, and show you kindness.” Until my late twenties, I thought agape love was synonymous with simple, harmonious relationships. Life experience has proven, however, that to love someone selflessly often means opening myself up to relational conflict, hurt, and disappointment. But where others fail us, that is exactly where we get to experience more of God.  As we learn to see God more clearly in the midst of relational hurt and disappointment, we can let loose our stranglehold of expectations on those around us and, instead, be free to love them lavishly. Isn’t that what we all long for—to be lavishly loved smack-dab in the middle of our mess? The problem is, I fail more than I succeed at loving like this… like Christ. So I must continue to spend time with Him, to read His Word, to pray and pour out my heart to Him, asking that “He might increase and I might decrease” (John 3:30). And as I do, two things happen: I remember how much I’ve been forgiven. News flash: I have an inflated view of myself. So much so, that the very offense I hold against my offender, I myself have been guilty of countless times. My pride blinds me to my own faults (or at the very least, minimizes them), and shifts my focus to the unforgivably large faults of those around me. Time spent with Jesus humbles me and helps me readily confess that in my sin nature I am capable of the very worst of sins. If an infinitely loving God has forgiven the vileness of my sin (all of it!), how in the world can I refuse forgiveness to a fellow desperate sinner? (See Matthew 18:33.) Joy suffocates judgment. It is impossible to hold onto a grudge when my heart is overflowing with joy in Jesus. As I rejoice in the greatness of my Savior and His gift of salvation, I am compelled to share His love with those around me. Any judgment or wrath I had in my heart for my offender is swept away by time spent rejoicing in who God is. Where do you feel hurt and disappointed today, dear sister? Who has wounded you or made your life feel painfully complicated? Take heart: that is precisely where God longs to meet you and amaze you with His goodness. For more thoughts on this topic, you can read “5 Ways to Pursue Peace in a Difficult Relationship.” **Please note that this post is not addressing issues of abuse.