Matthew 6:14-15

The Daily Verse with Luis Feliz

If you forgive those who sin against you, your Heavenly Father will forgive your sins. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Forgiveness is received or given. This means that there is one party that is guilty of wrong doing and another party that the wrong was done to.
For example; if I took your lunch from the break room, because I didn’t have money and forgot to pack my lunch on that day. I did you wrong and if I have an ounce of courage and a conscience, I will tell you the truth and ask that you forgive me. And Jesus is commanding us to forgive.
Unfortunately, that is not what happens most of the time. It usually goes like this. You show up hungry as hell to the break room, and you have been craving the left over pizza from last night. And that pizza was soooo good. All morning you have been thinking about it. You open the fridge and pizza is gone, and nobody knows who did it. Now you are hungry, angry and literally have day dreams of blowing up the whole place and go on a massive manhunt to find the coward that took your pizza. And have visions of going on the intercom and say something like this from the movie Taken.
In that case, guess what, Jesus is also asking us to forgive. And let me tell you, it is not easy to forgive. And honestly, it shouldn’t be easy.
Let me explain why. Jesus literally laid aside his immunity to pain and entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He had nails hammered through his hands and feet, his back lacerated, limbs wrenched and plunged into Godforsaken darkness. Even though He did not deserve that, He did it in order to forgive us and at the same time deliver divine justice for all our sins.
When we sin, we don’t sin against people. We sin against God. When we were guilty of sinning against God, Jesus offered us mercy, and it cost him His life. When we offer mercy to others it doesn’t cost us our lives, it simply cost us our pride. And if our goal is to become more Christ-like, then it’s quite reasonable to give to others what Jesus gave us.
What’s the alternative? Refusing to forgive others simply makes us a storehouse of pain and suffering. Not only are we storing in our selves the wrong others have done to us, but we are also holding what we have done wrong to others. We become a repository of errors, mistakes, lies, backstabs, gossip, insults etc. It is in our best interest to freely and abundantly forgive others.

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