On letting go

A recipe for forgiveness

Due to the nature of human relationships, being interactions between imperfect people, offenses are bound to happen.

But Christ tells us that the only appropriate way to deal with such offenses is to forgive those who hurt us as God has forgiven us.

Jesus told a parable once to illustrate the importance of forgiveness.
This one was about a man who owed a huge debt to a king. An enormous sum, estimated to be between $12 million and $1 billion in today's currency.

Basically, it was a huge amount of money. Naturally being a servant he was unable to pay back the amount owed, and the king threatened to sell him and his family to repay the debt.

So he did the only thing he could do, he begged for mercy and the king being generous forgave the debt and set him free.

But that same servant had a colleague who owed him a much smaller amount but he refused to forgive him and had him thrown into jail until he could pay back the debt.

Word got to the king of this servant's actions and the king demanded to know why he couldn't forgive his colleague's debt since he also had his forgiven.

Because of this the king had him handed over to the jailers until he paid back the debt.

Christ says so the Father will treat those who do not forgive their brother from their heart.

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
Matthew 6:14‭-‬15

The forgiveness we've recieved from God places a demand on us to forgive other as well.

C.S Lewis put it best when he said,

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."

Our hack for this week: forgive.

#lifehacksfromJesus