Title: I Forgive You
A letter written to a man on death row by the Father of the man whom the man on death row had killed:
You are probably surprised that I, of all people, am writing a letter to you, but I ask you to read it in its entirety and consider its request seriously. As the Father of the man whom you took part in murdering, I have something very important to say to you.
I forgive you. With all my heart, I forgive you. I realize it may be hard for you to believe, but I really do. At your trial, when you confessed to your part in the events that cost my Son his life and asked for my forgiveness, I immediately granted you that forgiving love from my heart. I can only hope you believe me and will accept my forgiveness.
But this is not all I have to say to you. I want to make you an offer -- I want you to become my adopted child. You see, my Son who died was my only child, and I now want to share my life with you and leave my riches to you. This may not make sense to you or anyone else, but I believe you are worth the offer. I have arranged matters so that if you will receive my offer of forgiveness, not only will you be pardoned for your crime, but you also will be set free from your imprisonment, and your sentence of death will be dismissed. At that point, you will become my adopted child and heir to all my riches.
I realize this is a risky offer for me to make to you -- you might be tempted to reject my offer completely -- but I make it to you without reservation.
Also, I realize it may seem foolish to make such an offer to one who cost my Son his life, but I now have a great love and an unchangeable forgiveness in my heart for you.
Finally, you may be concerned that once you accept my offer you may do something to cause you to be denied your rights as an heir to my wealth. Nothing could be further from the truth. If I can forgive you for your part in my Son's death, I can forgive you for anything. I know you never will be perfect, but you do not have to be perfect to receive my offer. Besides, I believe that once you have accepted my offer and begin to experience the riches that will come to you from me, that your primary (though not always) response will be gratitude and loyalty.
Some would call me foolish for my offer to you, but I wish for you to call me your Father.
The Father of Jesus
Christians Online
Title: Shackles fo Sin
In his book Great Themes of the Bible, Louis Albert Banks told of the time D. L. Moody visited a prison called "The Tombs" to preach to the inmates. After he had finished speaking, Moody talked with a number of men in their cells. He asked each prisoner this question, "What brought you here?" Again and again he received replies like this: "I don't deserve to be here." "I was framed." "I was falsely accused." "I was given an unfair trial." Not one inmate would admit he was guilty. Finally, Moody found a man with his face buried in his hands, weeping. "And what's wrong, my friend?" he inquired. The prisoner responded, "My sins are more than I can bear." Relieved to find at least one man who would recognize his guilt and his need of forgiveness, the evangelist exclaimed, "Thank God for that!" Moody then had the joy of pointing him to a saving knowledge of Christ -- a knowledge that released him from his shackles of sin.
See: Psa 38:18; Luke 4:18; Luke 18:13
Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Confession/Of Sin Commanded/816
Title: Sins Forgiven
Nome, Alaska, on the edge of the Bering Sea, is like many villages of the Arctic. The ground on which the community sits is frozen, sponge-like tundra. Burying the dead is a real challange. Sanitation landfills are unheard of. Garbage trucks do not haul off the kind of refuse we leave curbside in the "lower 48." Instead a typical front yard displays broken washing machines, junked cars, old toilets, scrap wood, and piles of nondegradable refuse.
Tourists who visit Nome
in the summer are amazed at the debris and shake their heads. How could
anyone live like that, they wonder. What those visitors do not realize
is that for nine months of the year Nome sits under a blanket of snow that
covers the garbage. During those months, the little Iditarod town is a
quaint winter wonderland of pure white landscapes.
The reality of grace
is that the garbage of our lives has been covered by a blanket of forgiveness.
The prophet Isaiah declares that the blight of our sin, once red as crimson,
is now white as freshly fallen snow. And unlike the situation in Nome,
our sin is covered forever!
--Greg Asimakoupoulos
(Isa. 1:18)
Title: Humanist Admires Christians
Not
long before she died in 1988, in a moment of surprising candor in television,
Marghanita
Laski,
one of our best-known secular humanists and novelists, said, "What I envy
most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive
me."
John Stott in The Contemporary Christian
Unknown
Title: Remember Forgetting It
A friend of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, once reminded her of an especially cruel thing that had been done to her years before. But Miss Barton seemed not to recall it.
"Don't you remember it?" her friend asked.
"No," came the reply, "I distinctly remember forgetting it."
You can't be free and happy if you harbor grudges, so put them away. Get rid of them. Collect postage stamps, or collect coins, if you wish but don't collect grudges.
Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Forgiveness/Difficulty
of
Title: Forgiveness on the River Kwai
In "The Christian Leader," Don Ratzlaff retells a story Vernon Grounds came across in Ernest Gordon's Miracle on the River Kwai. The Scottish soldiers, forced by their Japanese captors to labor on a jungle railroad, had degenerated to barbarous behavior, but one afternoon something happened. A shovel was missing. The officer in charge became enraged. He demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill them all on the spot . . . It was obvious the officer meant what he had said. Then, finally, one man stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. When it was over, the survivors picked up the bloody corpse and carried it with them to the second tool check. This time, no shovel was missing.
Indeed, there had been a miscount at the first check point. The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die to save the others! . . . The incident had a profound effect. . . The men began to treat each other like brothers. When the victorious Allies swept in, the survivors, human skeletons, lined up in front of their captors (and instead of attacking their captors) insisted: "No more hatred. No more killing. Now what we need is forgiveness." Sacrificial love has transforming power.
Don Ratzlaff, "The Christian Leader"
Title: Cut it Down
In his book. Lee: The Last Years, Charles Bracelen Flood reports that after the Civil War, Robert E. Lee visited a Kentucky lady who took him to the remains of a grand old tree in front of her house. There she bitterly cried that its limbs and trunk had been destroyed by Federal artillery fire. She looked to Lee for a word condemning the North or at least sympathizing with her loss. After a brief silence, Lee said, "Cut it down, my dear Madam, and forget it." It is better to forgive the injustices of the past than to allow them to remain, let bitterness take root and poison the rest of our life.
Michael
Williams
Title: The Power to Forgive
Corrie ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn't sleep. Finally Corrie cried out to God for help in putting the problem to rest. "His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor," Corrie wrote, "to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks." "Up in the church tower," he said, nodding out the window, "is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there's a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope.
But if we've been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn't be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They're just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down." "And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations, but the force -- which was my willingness in the matter -- had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at the last stopped altogether: we can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts."
Corrie ten Boom
Title: True Forgiveness
Thomas A. Edison was working on a crazy contraption called a "light bulb" and it took a whole team of men 24 straight hours to put just one together. The story goes that when Edison was finished with one light bulb, he gave it to a young boy helper, who nervously carried it up the stairs. Step by step he cautiously watched his hands, obviously frightened of dropping such a priceless piece of work. You've probably guessed what happened by now; the poor young fellow droped the bulb at the top of the stairs. It took the entire team of men twenty-four more hours to make another bulb. Finally, tired and ready for a break, Edison was ready to have his bulb carried up the stairs. He gave it to the same young boy who dropped the first one. That's true forgiveness.
James Newton, Uncommon Friends
Title: The Art of Forgiveness
The art of forgiving is a spiritual grace every Christian should develop. Because this is so difficult to put into practice, he offers the following suggestions:
1) Begin by assuring
yourself that compared to Christ's suffering
you haven't been seriously wronged at all.
2) Recall the many kind
deeds that have been shown to you, perhaps
even by the person who has harmed you.
3) List the benefits
you have received from the Lord.
4) Thank Him for blessing
you with His love and forgiveness
each day.
5) Make an honest effort
to pray for the one who has injured you.
6) Go even further by
looking for an opportunity to help him.
7) If the offense is
especially hard to forget, try to erase
the memory by thinking gracious and generous thoughts.
8) Finally, before you
fall asleep at night, repeat slowly and
thoughtfully that phrase from the Lord's Prayer,
"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."
Roy L. Smith
Title: By the Death of Christ
We trample the blood of the Son of God if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation for the forgiveness of God and for the unfathomable depth of His forgetting is the death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the outcome of our personal realization of the atonement which He has worked out for us.
It does not matter who or what we are; there is absolute reinstatement into God by the death of Jesus Christ and by no other way, not because Jesus Christ pleads, but because He died. It is not earned, but accpeted. All the pleading which deliberately refuses to recognize the Cross is of no avail; it is battering at a door other than the one that Jesus has opened. Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The atonement is a propitiation whereby God, through the death of Jesus, makes an unholy man holy.
Oswald Chambers
Title: Wilt Thou Forgive?
Wilt Thou forgive that
sin which I have won
Others to sin? and made
my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that
sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed
in a score?
When Thou hast done,
Thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear,
that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall
perish on the shore;
Swear by Thy self, that
at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines
now and heretofore;
And, having done that,
Thou hast done,
I fear no more.
John Donne, 1623
Other Topic/Subtopic/Index:
Poems