Jesus emphasised the need to forgive. In Matthew 18 the first servant was desperate and released of his debt. This forgiven servant then failed to release the same forgiveness.
The debt that we owe is more expensive than we could ever hope to pay. Through guilt of past events and shame, many live with a sadness and a cloud hanging over them. Psalm 130 verse 3 says... "if He marked our iniquity who would stand" - but many don’t stand. They are bent over with secret guilt... this makes them a target. A target for the 'accuser'.
The greatest prize in this life is complete forgiveness, but we must guard our heart and cleanse it. Peter asked Jesus how much we should forgive and was told that it had no limit. Jonah cried out when desparate in the belly of the whale, but was still full of anger when he went to Ninevah and saw that God had shown mercy to a people that didn’t deserve it.
The weight of generational guilt for sin, overshadows the life that we now live. We do not have to be subject to it.
In the story of Gideon it says that the people of Israel hid in caves because they were oppressed by the enemy; but it says that they had done evil in the eyes of the Lord. As so often was the case, during this time, the people would return to God and then forget Him; in which case, an oppressing enemy would come. The landscape is too often shaped by the sin of the past.
But Gideon was asked very simply, to believe God. Not to look intensly at every sin and unforgiveness. However, he was asked to wipe their mark off the land. An altar had been erected to Baal when the enemy had gained access.
There is complete forgiveness available, we don’t have to live with the cloud of the past overshadowing us or indeed the access of the 'enemy'.
Forgiveness takes the 'legal right to condemn', from the enemy; but to believe God when He comes to us and offers forgiveness, is so powerful.
In the story in Matthew Chapter 18, the servant was thrown into prison because he withheld grace, where he should have forgiven. We can’t pay what we owe and the enemy had laid a claim, but God has made it clear what the final word is: we can forgive and be forgiven and then God might say "now go and wipe the enemy’s blot on the landscape". He often seemed to say this. But we have no real strength to do this, only if He gives us permission.
So do not just go to and fro with your sin, in a pattern of forgiveness and guilt, but stand in the light of His LEGAL word. We are forgiven through the blood of Jesus and His blood washes through generations like a river running through the coridors of time and sweaping ALL debris with it.
Daniel Chuter
