The Bullet of the Forgiveness: The More Difficult but Better Way
So few of your sins can be paid for. Seldom does the victim possess the power or the advantage to demand payment. In most cases, “making things right” is beyond possibility. This is why so many of us turn to revenge. But revenge is worthless. It ruins the avenger and convinces the victim he was right all along. If repayment is impossible and revenge useless, what’s left? Forgiveness! In other words, act like God!
The price of forgiving is high. There are no cheap reductions. No bargain pardons. Just saying, “I’m sorry,” won’t hack it. We must bear the cost of forgiving just as Christ has done for each of us. Real forgiveness is rare, hard, costly. It demands that the forgiver pays a price. If true forgiveness wasn’t hard, it would be a farce.
God paid the immeasurable cost of our forgiveness in His death on the cross. How can we hesitate to pay the infinitely smaller cost of forgiving our brother – or our “enemy”? I thank God for His forgiveness and patience with me. How about you? As never before, the poet’s words are with me:
He drew a circle that shut me out,
Hectic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took him in.*
The cost of forgiving is high, but the value of forgiveness is so much higher!
*"Outwitted" by Edwin Markham
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