This is what Christianity is all about

You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.    For however important chastity or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still.     It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments and, on the other hand, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

From: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis Ch.8 Is Christianity hard or easy?

God gives us a new nature but we must develop the character to go with the new nature. We must work out our salvation with fear and trembling. This is how God shares His glory with us. He lets us get up off the ground after we’ve fallen. He gives us the strength and instruction to get up but He expects us to do it. Remember Lazarus in the grave. Jesus could have walked in and carried Lazarus out in his arms, unwrapped the burial garment and presented him alive and standing.  But He simply told him “Get up”.  Lazarus walked out into glory on his own two feet in obedience to Jesus. The man with the withered hand, the lame man at the well, the man on the stretcher lowered into the room by his friends; to all He said, “Get up or stretch forth or arise. Stop waiting for him to physically appear and lift you up. Listen to his voice and obey it.  If we don’t have these habits of the soul, we cannot develop the character God longs to see in us .

Just Get Up.

Mere Christianity  / C.S. Lewis

Ch.7 Forgiveness

Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life – namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.

We cannot imagine any condition in life which would lead us to ever trample on Jesus, mock the cross, insult the blood of the covenant and insult the Holy Spirit. That would be the vilest godless state of our existence, a place we will avoid with every ounce of strength we have. No matter how bad the sin, how craven we become, we shall never sink to such a low state as that.

But withholding our forgiveness of others will get us there. The blood covenant is for the forgiveness of sins. When our right to be offended takes precedence over honoring our side of the covenant we do this very horrible thing and continue to feel justified simply because no one knows how badly we hurt. To withhold forgiveness is exactly to mock Christ, step upon Him, mock the Holy Spirit and insult the glory of God.

²⁷ Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. ²⁸ This is my blood of the^[covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Matthew 26:27-28

How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? Hebrews 10:29 NIV

Never go to this place. This is the worst form of pride which leads to our destruction.

¹⁴ For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6: 14-15.

Fast forgive and live.

The Impartial Power of God / Oswald Chambers

Hebrews 10:11-18

¹¹ Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. ¹² But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, ¹³ and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. ¹⁴ For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

¹⁵ The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:

¹⁶ “This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds.”

¹⁷ Then he adds:

“Their sins and lawless acts
I will remember no more.”

¹⁸ And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.

We trample the blood of the Son of God underfoot if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins.

The only reason for the forgiveness of our sins by God, and the infinite depth of His promise to forget them, is the death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the result of our personal realization of the atonement by the Cross of Christ, which He has provided for us. “. . . Christ Jesus . . . became for us wisdom from God–and righteousness and sanctification and redemption . . .” Once we realize that Christ has become all this for us, the limitless joy of God begins in us. And wherever the joy of God is not present, the death sentence is still in effect.

1 Corinthians 1:30

³⁰ It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

No matter who or what we are, God restores us to right standing with Himself only by means of the death of Jesus Christ. God does this, not because Jesus pleads with Him to do so but because He died. It cannot be earned, just accepted. All the pleading for salvation which deliberately ignores the Cross of Christ is useless. It is knocking at a door other than the one which Jesus has already opened. We protest by saying, “But I don’t want to come that way. It is too humiliating to be received as a sinner.” God’s response, through Peter, is, “. . . there is no other name . . . by which we must be saved”

Acts 4:12

¹² Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

What at first appears to be heartlessness on God’s part is actually the true expression of His heart. There is unlimited entrance His way. “In Him we have redemption through His blood . . .” To identify with the death of Jesus Christ means that we must die to everything that was never a part of Him.

Ephesians 1:7

⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace

God is just in saving bad people only as He makes them good. Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The atonement by the Cross of Christ is the propitiation* God uses to make unholy people holy.

*Propitiation is the act of appeasing or making well disposed especially a deity, thus incurring divine favor or avoiding Divine retribution.

Hebrews 10:26-31

²⁶ If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, ²⁷ but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. ²⁸ Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. ²⁹ How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? ³⁰ For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” ³¹ It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Four Evil Friends

Un-forgiveness

Where there is grudge bearing there is pride.

Where there is pride there is rebellion.

Where there is rebellion there is cruelty.

Where there is cruelty there is grudge bearing.

These are attributes of the unsaved unregenerate human nature. These are the root of foolishness, ignorance, darkness, sin, despair and death.

No one ever says they absolutely maintain their right to be prideful, rebellious or cruel to another person. They simply stand upon the self justifiable position of the offended one and withhold their forgiveness from that other person. And right there they’ve done the very things they would never have dreamed they were capable of.

Un-forgiveness a/k/a grudge bearing never stands alone. Pride, rebellion and cruelty are always there alongside feeding and supporting one another as the best evil friends.  Think of any human deprivation in history and you see them standing shoulder to shoulder. Their order of appearance or level of severity is subject to many variations but surely they are there, none ever far behind the others. Pride is usually the first one on the scene. If he had been properly identified we might have kept the other three from making themselves comfortable. The mess of horrors created is most often accounted for by the term cruelty. Cruelty works itself out the best making for an easy target.  To flip cruelty we just have to apply the intellect of self improvement. Expand our minds, maintain some order and sense of priorities, these are universal desires, very noble and doable; in fact we feel good about overcoming cruelty.

Pride is so personal and subjective; we all suffer a bit of that so the harm from him is not worth the bother of serious analysis. Can something as plainly evident as pride be the cause of all these problems? He’s always around, part of the human condition, and how much effort must we really put into this to get a little hubbub resolved which ought to pass by on its own soon. Pride causes real problems for the powerful people in this world, they get carried away with him and do horrible things. That is not who we are. The very notion of pride is offset by the many good and humble works and offerings we’ve produced in a lifetime. Let’s keep this all in balance.

Rebellion is simply too radical a state, to call it out is so judgmental, can we seriously apply  that  term to any rational person’s intent or actions. Rebellion is the sort of thing devils and fiends do. Rebellion is aligned with out and out war and destruction. We’re not talking about anything like that here.

Grudge bearing, well we’ve all suffered through a bit of that in our past and may well justifiably do so in the future. We all try so hard but others do fail to meet the reasonable expectations of the very dear friendships we’ve invested in.  Leaders fail too, they are only human, but they leave that bad taste and those messy consequences, are we never to think ill of those people in such conditions?

Yes, leave it all on cruelty. All we need do then is tell ourselves we’ll be better people going forward. We’ll learn from the past, focus a little more diligently and we’ll come out all right. Cruelty can never define us. We know we’re better than that.  We’ll win this yet, you’ll see.

All this time grudge bearing, pride, rebellion and cruelty have huddled up, locked arms, tightened their grip and we’ve lost our breath or our will to throw them off.  We don’t even know who they are and what they are doing. Self improvement and a consensus of new priorities will simply make the mockery of the next crises more painful in light of all we failed to notice and overcome. Have no illusion, there will be a next crisis and we’ll fail in it.

Forgive fast, at the very first sense that you might be justified at being offended.  Forgive as the  Lord forgave you.  Keep a strict watch out for pride. Plead with God to convict you and strip you of sinful pride. Find a devoted trustworthy disciple of Jesus to stand with you against a prideful nature. Do this by the power of the blood covenant, poured out for you. Do it in the power and the name of Jesus.

Matthew 26:28

 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

This is what un-forgiveness feels

like. Why do this to people?

Forgive Fast & Live!

God’s Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the very heart and nature of God, you received it from him freely on your account, but the price to Him cannot be measured. Christ makes this crystal clear in his teaching of how we ought to pray;

⁹ “This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, ¹⁰ your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven. ¹¹ Give us today our daily bread. ¹² And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. ¹³ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ ¹⁴ For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6: 9-15 NIV.

Any questions?

No one ever pressed against so great a foe as Jesus in the desert, in the garden, the courts of the Pharisees, the hall of Pilate, the Roman torturers, the crowd filled with blood lust hatred, the cross, tomb, every evil force of hell and darkness. Christ had the right and the authority to stop everything, crush the universe back into the tiny spec from which it came and remake it any way he saw fit. No one could have complained. He would have had to do this because without forgiveness for sin mankind would have no life worth living and existence on this planet would be unbearable. When we withhold forgiveness we make this life unbearable and worthless for ourselves and others.

Christ’s victory over sin, death and the grave so changed the spiritual scale of the universe in favor of mankind that the earth itself was torn apart and gave up its dead at that moment. The power and anointing of God’s forgiveness was on display. Religious doctrines were tossed out, governments stepped back, the earth trembled. Mankind was so hungry to witness this event that we broke out of our graves alive.
The questions then are, what do we think about that and what shall we do about it?

Victim-hood rationalization comes quickly in varying degrees with each of us after we have been wronged. Forgiveness makes victims over comers.

What is the worst that could happen if I withhold forgiveness? You will live miserably, harm those you love, your soul will cave in, you will contribute to the collapse of humanity and worst of all, you will fore-go the mercy of God when you will need it the most.

When it comes to forgiveness you get what you give. No one likes the sound of that. Surely God will look upon us with mercy when he feels our deep despair at the thought of being damned forever without him. Every popular book and film testifies of God’s unmatched loving kindness and mercy on the poor wayward unwashed sinner. We wrote the end of that movie with us in the lead role from the opposite perspective when the question was put before us in real life and we refused to forgive. We for whom Christ died to forgive while we were  mocking sinners,  withheld forgiveness to the one who disappointed with an unkind word or who failed to acknowledge proper credit to you for a job well done. The wrong done to you may have been truly horrible even justifiably un-forgiveable in the eyes of this world. But the believer is not allowed to consider anyone from a worldly view point.

2 Corinthians 5:16-14 NIV

¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

 Oddly we still think we may use the worldly view point because the horror of this particular wrong happened to us and if “they only knew how that hurt” exceptions would be granted. We’ve been handed unbounded life giving wisdom from heaven by the Son of God as a gift of our new nature but we are certain that we are better off figuring things out on our own.

Two Kinds of Wisdom from James 3:13-19 NIV

¹³ Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. ¹⁴ But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. ¹⁵ Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. ¹⁶ For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

¹⁷ But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. ¹⁸ Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

Forgive Fast – Run from earthly wisdom and carnal viewpoints – Make peace