Reservation Legalism

This week's audio message:

Reservation Legalism

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

So Walk In Him (Transcript)

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I’d like us to take a look at a terrific verse of Scripture, Colossians 2:6, which reads, "As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him."

The only way to become a son or daughter of God is to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, to believe in Him (John 1:12, "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name").

This entrance into the family of God is accomplished by God's GRACE through faith. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." (Ephesians 2:8,9).

We can’t brag about earning our salvation, because we didn’t earn it, did we? It’s completely based on God’s Grace, His undeserved favor toward us. It’s a free gift.

Good works are the fruit of our new life, and we are a New Creation, with a new life. But no good works have any part in our receiving eternal life, or as the Bible calls it, being saved. "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10).

A Free Gift

The salvation, the eternal life is an absolutely free gift.

Some say that’s not fair. It’s too easy. You don’t know the sins I’ve committed. You don’t know how I’ve spit in God’s face for so many years. It’s not just, it’s too simple. Why should I be saved through simply believing in Jesus? We naturally gravitate toward trying to earn acceptance, and that attitude resists the simplicity of God's grace.

Yet the Bible is clear:

"But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness." (Romans 4:5). "And if by grace, then it is no longer of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace. . ." (Romans 11:6).

No wonder John Newton's hymn Amazing Grace has such meaning to saved people of God!

So we received Him by Grace, didn’t we?

Well, let’s go back to our verse, Colossians 2:6, "As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him."

The Role Of Grace In Living And Growing In Christ

What role does God’s grace play in living and growing in Christ? What role does God’s grace play in living abundantly?

Jesus said “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)

That they may have life (that’s salvation, the new birth, the new creation, eternal life)...

And that they may have it more abundantly (that’s living as a believer AFTER our initial salvation).

What role does grace play in that?!

Well, it is VITAL to the Christian life.

Why? Why can’t I just pull out my Bible, find all the rules and laws for living the Christian life, and live it?

I’m tempted to just say, "Okay, go ahead and try it." But I know better than that. I know from personal experience, from the experience of others, and from the Bible itself, that this makes a miserable Christian life. It’s what we call Performance-based Christianity, and it stinks.

Problems With Performance-Based Christianity

1. First of all, if we make the Christian life about rules and laws, we will find ourselves constantly falling short.

If we think we are successfully following the laws and rules, then we don’t really understand them. We don’t understand how Jesus elevated the laws to reflect how holy and perfect God is. When He said that adultery included even the very THOUGHT of lust in our hearts, He put the cards on the table.

2. And if we try to live the Law way, we will always be thinking that God is angry with us, His children.

You may already think that God must be angry with you, either directly or by implication. Admit it.

You may even think when you are sinful or disobedient to the Word of God that God sees you as "wicked", and everyone knows "God is angry with the wicked every day", right?

Confusion

Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, "Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God" in the 1700's, and the picture has been applied to believers and has stuck...

...with those who don't understand the difference between a Sinner and a Saint. Or who don't understand the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

The Devil loves this confusion. He loves confusion between the biblical concept of a "saint" as anyone who is a born-again child of God, and the Roman Catholic nonsense that a "saint" is someone who meets some elaborate criteria of the Mother Church, and is "voted in".

The Devil loves confusion between the Old Covenant (which Hebrews 8 says failed in bringing righteousness because of man's inability to keep the Law) and the New Covenant, in which God puts His laws in our hearts, fulfills those laws in Christ on the cross, declares us righteous, and forgives us of all our sins, past, present and future.

Yes, the Devil loves confusion.

So it's no surprise (though a crying shame), that children of God think that God is angry at them when they fall short and sin. And otherwise fine Christians, who mean well, perpetuate this ridiculous notion, without one shred of support from the New Covenant scriptures!

Running Away From God?

And so Christians often run away from this "angry" God, instead of toward Him, when they fail. They won't look Him in the face, because they think it's a face of anger. What a tragedy.

This is not the place for an extended explanation of the subject in the scriptures. But here's a challenge for those who doubt what I'm saying: Search the epistles of the New Testament for any teaching that God is ever angry with His children.

By the way, don't think the passages on God's chastisement are regarding some kind of punishment out of anger.

Study them closely, and you will see they involve loving, usually gentle correction, from a loving Father, who just wants his kids to be in close fellowship with Him. No condemnation, no unforgiveness, no bitterness, no anger.

Like a daddy teaching his 1-year-old to walk, while the kid keeps wobbling, staggering, and falling...sometimes painfully in the wrong direction, but often into a laughing Daddy's arms for a big hug.

The Biggest Reason

And that’s the biggest reason why grace is so important to the Christian life. Because it causes us to want to fellowship with Christ. To draw near to Him, and not away. And that drawing near is the very SOURCE of our Life. Christ, who IS our life, the Scripture says.

And ironically, moving away from a law-based life to a grace-based life doesn’t cause us to sin more, but less. That’s why Romans 6:14 says “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” You are not under Law, which says “do”, but under grace, which says “done”.

With apologies to Jimmy Stewart, it can be a Wonderful Life between our initial salvation and our glorification, if we heed Colossians 2:6, and walk in grace just as we received Christ in grace, by simple faith.

Faith that He has already forgiven us of all our sins, past present and future.

Faith that we are no longer under condemnation, because our sins have been paid for and put away as far as the East is from the West.

Does God Overlook Our Sins?

Notice I didn’t say He overlooked our sins. He couldn’t be that unjust. No, He exercised His great justice, by taking our sins on Himself. He became sin FOR us, that we might be made the righteousness of God.

I love the hymn by Annie Johnson Flint that goes,

"His love has no limit, His grace has no measure,
His power has no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again."

You see, it’s His love that supplies that grace for salvation and living. His love for you and me.

On Sunday, August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 225 crashed just after take-off at Detroit, Michigan.

155 died, and one lived.

That one who lived was a little 4-year-old girl named Cecelia. The wreckage was so bad, that the authorities thought at first she had not been on the plane. Checking the flight roster, however, and with Cecelia's own testimony, the following was discovered:

As the crash was developing, Paula Chichan had unbuckled her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around Cecelia, and would not let her go! Nothing could separate that child from her parent's love...neither disaster, nor crash, nor flames, nor pain.

Such is our Savior's love for us...

"...that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38,39)

So Walk In Him

This week's audio message:

So Walk In Him

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Daisy Theology - He Love Me, He Loves Me Not (Transcript)

I suppose someone listening to this may not be familiar with the plucking of Daisy petals to determine someone’s love.

A young lady might pick a Daisy flower, and stare at it as she picks off its petals one by one. As she picks a petal, she says aloud, “He loves me.”

As she picks off the next petal, she says, “He loves me not.”

Petal by petal she speaks the words, “He loves me, he loves me not; he loves me, he loves me not,” until the last petal is plucked off. And whichever phrase coincides with the last petal, tells her whether the one she loves...loves her.

Silly superstition, I know. But even sillier is building our view of God around Daisy Theology.

Performance Is What It's All About?

Daisy Theology is that view of God that basically says, God loves me when I perform well, and when I don’t perform well...well, how could God love somebody like me, when I act like that, or think this or that?

And so many have built their Christian lives around the awful thought pattern, “He loves me, he loves me not; He loves me, He loves me not.”

They may not SAY that God doesn't love them, but they FEEL it. And they feel it because they THINK it. And they think it because it's TAUGHT to them every time performance-based Christianity is held up as an idol.

And it's a shame. And it's not just a shame. It's a blasphemous denial of the Cross of Christ, where He said, "it is finished". It's Galatianism at its most subtle. It's the attitude that God loves me when I'm "good", and frowns with disappointment and anger when I'm not "good".

It's screamed from the pulpit every time condemnation is heaped on the sheep, because they aren't performing to perfection. It's screamed by pop Christian books that consist of nothing but 10 or 40 or 100 "rules to live by".

Books like How to Be A Good ______ [husband, wife, friend, Christian, worshiper, charity worker, pray-er, etc. ad nauseum]. Written by men and women who know that they fall short, but think it is incumbent on them to tell everyone else how to be a "Good ______."

Not precious principles from a loving God who loves us because He chose to before the foundation of the world, but rules to measure by. Rules to condemn by.

Daisy Theology is hurtful to the Christian life.

Why Daisy Theology Is Hurtful To The Christian Life

Here are 7 reasons why:

1. It quenches the peace of God.

Peace is a fruit of the Spirit. When we are filled with the Spirit and walking by the Spirit, we have peace in our hearts. This is a cycle, because the more we have peace in our hearts, the more we desire to commune with the Lord. We want to draw near to Him, and express our love to Him, and draw on His wonderful love for us.

When wrong thoughts about God creep into our thinking, it pushes out the right thoughts. And this quenches the Holy Spirit, and causes us to be robbed of our peace. Instead of resting and basking in the love of God, we fret and worry and amazingly, we may not even know we’re doing it for a while.

We may even try to perform better, trying to earn God’s favor and love and peace. And so we get off of the ground of Grace, and onto the ground of Law. And the cycle goes the other way. Until we come back to the great truth that God loves us by Grace, unconditionally, accepting us in the Beloved, Jesus Christ.

So Daisy Theology quenches the peace of God.

2. It causes believers to experience condemnation, in direct violation of Romans 8:1.

Rom. 8:1 says that there is now NO condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. But that doesn’t mean believers don’t sometimes FEEL condemnation. And if you FEEL condemned, then in a way you are. And so there is this odd thing going on where one is experiencing what is not even true.

And when a believer experiences condemnation, they will either have discouragement and despair for a time, or they will muster up their flesh and determine to perform well to earn God’s love. And under this lie-based scenario, the Spirit is quenched, and there’s another spiritual tailspin.

3. It steals the joy of salvation.

Joy is also a fruit of the Spirit, and is robbed from us for the same reason peace is robbed from us. The cry of David in Psalm 51:12 is the same cry that comes from the one who is in the dry desert of Daisy Theology: Lord, “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation”. But cry as we might, that joy won’t be restored until we abandon “He loves me, He loves me not,” and acknowledge the precious truth that He loves me.

4. It's contagious, spreading it's lie like a virus, everytime someone "sneezes" it.

The world, the flesh and the devil are intent on deceiving believers in Jesus Christ about God’s love for us. Every day in a thousand ways, every Sunday even in the pulpits of preachers who love Jesus, the virus of Legalism is spread.

Every time the Christian life is portrayed as some measure of performance, making it man-centered while pretending to be Christ-centered, the virus is spread. Every time God is taught to be angry and frowning on His born-again children until they get their act together, the virus is spread.

Every time the Christian life is looked at as a list of rules to live by, or else...the virus of Daisy Theology is spread.

We need to immunize ourselves from this virus, by proclaiming from the Word of God, and meditating in our hearts on the truth that God has already forgiven all of our sins, past present and future.

And there is nothing we can do to make Him love us more, and nothing we can do to make Him love us less. He loves us, because He has chosen to do so, even while we were yet unsaved.


5. It is rampant in the minds of many believers, and therefore in the church.

This may sound a little redundant, but it’s important to realize that this is not an isolated problem in the Church. We need to be on guard against Legalism and Daisy Theology all the time.

I don’t mean that we become Grace police, and jump down someone’s throat every time we hear it. But we can help the cause of Jesus and His Grace among our brethren, by speaking the truth in love, and by guarding our own hearts against the lie that God loves and favors us based on our performance.

6. It is seldom directly taught from the pulpit, but it's virus is smeared all over congregations by implication.

What do I mean by that? Well, hardly anyone preaches, “God doesn’t love you when you sin. He hates you, and you are going to Hell if you don’t stop that sinning and be perfect.”

No, it’s much more subtle than that, and unfortunately, is preached by preachers who themselves are fuzzy on God’s unconditional acceptance of us in Christ. They have often been taught Law-based theology in Seminary or Bible College.

They have been “warned” by well-meaning teachers that if you really preach Grace in all its fullness that the sheep will run wild. They’ve been taught that focusing on our performance is the best way to honor God. And so on.

And so they pass on these concepts to their flocks, never understanding that we are not only saved by Grace apart from works initially, but that we are to live by Grace apart from works AFTER we are saved.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t DO good works after we’re saved. We will. It’s God who is at work in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure, Paul tells the Philippians.

And as New Creations in Christ, who love Jesus, we WANT to live holy lives. But what about when we don’t? Does God withhold His love from us? Of course not.

7. It seems to "make sense", but is utterly unbiblical, destructive, and anti-Christ.

I know it seems to make sense. Humanly speaking, why shouldn’t God be angry at us, and frown on us when we fail? After all, didn’t He give us the
Bible with all the rules for living? And didn’t He give us His Holy Spirit so we have the power to obey all those rules? I mean it only makes sense.

The problem with that is that it is simply not true. It’s not the way it is. Why? Because Jesus became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21).

Romans 5:10: "For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!"

See, we have been reconciled to God, forever. We have been declared righteous by Him, through the blood of Christ. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Gal. 3:13).

And so there is no barrier to His love for us.

And for that we can love Him.

Daisy Theology is one of the most subtle and destructive corruptions of the Word of God that has ever been cooked up by the Doctrines of Demons, Inc. lie factory.

Don't buy their product! Call the Better Bible Bureau and report them!

If you are Christ's, there is nothing that can separate you from His love. Don't forget that. There is nothing you can do that will make Him love you more or love you less. He loves you, period.

The curtain has been torn apart. The wall has been torn down. It is finished. He loves you, period.

Don't even look at a daisy, until you are completely recovered.

Daisy Theology - He Love Me, He Loves Me Not

This week's audio message:

Daisy Theology - He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Resentment and Forgiveness - Part 3 (Transcript)

In Part 1 we talked about how resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. We talked about how toxic unforgiveness is to our bodies, as well as our souls.

Then we looked at a few verses of Scripture which gave us some instruction and some wisdom on forgiveness, forgiving one another, and not holding resentment against others.

Then in Part 2 we made an attempt to actually define “forgiveness”, and we said it was sort of the other side of the coin to biblical unconditional love as found in 1 Corinthians 13, for example.

Here's the definition we gave for “forgiveness”:

“Forgiveness is not holding something against someone as regards your unconditional love for them.”

And since it's the other side of the coin to biblical unconditional love, here's how we defined “love”:

“Love is truly, by the Holy Spirit, desiring the best for the one loved.”

So we said that when you forgive someone, you no longer hold their sin against them by withholding your love for them, that is, you still desire the best for them, in your heart. You still love them, with the love described in 1 Cor. 13.

What Do Forgiveness and Unforgiveness Look Like, And What Hinders Forgiveness?

OK, now let’s talk about what forgiveness LOOKS like, and what unforgiveness looks like, and how to forgive, and what hinders forgiveness.

And we’re going to do that backwards, starting with what hinders forgiveness.

Well if forgiveness is the other side of love, that unconditional God kind of love, then the main thing that hinders forgiveness, the one thing that keeps us from forgiving is a lack of love. And since love is a fruit of the spirit, then the main hindrance to forgiveness is what we call walking by the flesh, instead of walking by the Spirit.

A Little Side Road About Anthropology

Now let's take a small side-road and give a reminder of biblical Anthropology. That's the study of Man, what he was like before being born again, and after being born again. When you were born again, you became a new creature or a new creation, it says in 2 Cor. 5:17.

You were given a new spirit, a new nature, and in your new nature you love Jesus and hate sin. And of course the Holy Spirit came to dwell in you, Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). And you became one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17).

Your old nature was killed, crucified with Christ, the Bible says. Gal. 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” And that's the new lifestyle that we want to live, isn't it? We want to live such that Christ is living out His life through us, and that requires walking by the Spirit.

Now, when we are in fellowship with Jesus, in surrender to Him, thinking “Not my will, but yours, Lord”, and being filled with the Word of God, the Bible, we are being filled with the Holy Spirit. The Bible tells us not to be drunk with wine, but to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18).

And you may have heard that by the verb tense of the original Greek, we know that it actually means to “be being filled” with the Spirit. In other words, it’s not a one-time thing, but should be a lifestyle. And so when we are in fellowship with Jesus, and being in surrender to Him and His will, and being filled with the Word of God, we ARE being filled with the Holy Spirit.

How Exactly Do We Forgive?

When this is happening, we will be walking, or living, by the Spirit, and we will have the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, and so forth. But we’re keying in here on love. Because when we are loving, we will be forgiving. We will be casting aside the hindrance to forgiveness, which is lack of love, and we will love and forgive.

Remember, when we're walking by His Spirit, we are also walking by our own new spirit, too, in harmony with God.

So that pretty much also answers the question, How do we forgive, but let’s expand on that a little more.

How do we forgive? Do we just SAY “I forgive you”, or is it like a New Year’s Resolution, “From this day forth, I will forgive so-and-so”? Or is it a change of heart and mind that I just hang around and wait for the Holy Spirit to do for me?

How do we forgive?

First of all, if we are walking by the Spirit as a general lifestyle, we won’t even normally have to ask the question. Forgiving will be as natural as breathing. Forgiveness will flow out of us like carbon dioxide does when we exhale.

But what if we sense that we’re NOT forgiving? What if the very mention of a person riles up our bad intentions toward them? What if we not only don’t desire the best for them, but frankly we’d just as soon they’d exit the Planet, or at least exit our lives?

Then there is a process to get back to square one.

A Practical Process For Forgiveness

It’s not a complicated process, in fact it’s simple. It’s as simple as the simplicity which is in Christ, as the Bible says. It’s not an exact formula, but it might go something like this:

1.A recognition of the wrongness of unforgiveness, coupled with repentence, a change of mind, perhaps a prayer,

“Lord, I’m sorry for harboring that resentment. I know it’s sinful. I know it’s wrong. I want to love that person, and therefore forgive them. Fill me with your Spirit, because without you I can do nothing. But with you all things are possible.”

2.Coming back to the recognition of your new life in Christ. Again reckoning yourself dead to sin, and alive to God through Christ Jesus (Rom. 6:11). It won’t hurt to say it out loud, but of course it’s not magic:

“I am dead to sin and alive to God through Jesus Christ. I don’t have to hold resentment, and withhold love for that person. I am free in Christ to love and forgive, because the old me died and I am now a New Creation."

3.Exercising love toward that person. It may not be face to face. You may not even have that opportunity. If you do, great. Go ahead and show them love. Show them you are not holding a grudge or resentment. But if you don’t have the opportunity in person, pray for them. Every time you think of them, put off the resentment, and put on a prayer of love for them.

“Lord bless so-and-so. Draw them near to yourself, and work your wonderful will in their lives. And if possible, Lord, let them know that I love and forgive them.”

4.Rinse and repeat, just like shampooing your hair. Don’t ever give up. Don’t ever let a root of bitterness grow. Practice is not unbiblical. Part of the fruit of the Spirit is self-control, and sometimes we just need to PRACTICE these things, until they are habit.

It can be a habit to walk by the Flesh, and it can be a habit to walk by the Spirit. So practice walking by the Spirit. Practice loving, practice forgiving.

Then you may find that in some mysterious way, it’s not you doing it, but Jesus, living His live through you. You may be skywalking in another realm, a heavenly realm, an eternal realm, and wondering how it was you used to hold all that resentment and bitterness for anybody.

A miracle will have been worked in you by God Himself. You will be walking by faith, not by sight. You will be setting your mind on things above, not on things of the earth. You will be walking in forgiveness.

And what does that forgiveness look like? It looks like love.

It’s patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Cor. 13)

And then you are free.

Part 1
Part 2

Resentment and Forgiveness - Part 3

This week's audio message:

Resentment and Forgiveness - Part 3

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Is The Sabbath For Christians Today?

Pretty good article on Christians and the Sabbath on the Pulpit Magazine blog.

Is God Pleased With You?

This week's audio message:

Is God Pleased With You?

Grace For Life audio archives are here.

Resentment and Forgiveness - Part 2 (Transcript)

We talked last time, in Part 1, about how resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. We talked about how toxic unforgiveness is to our bodies, as well as our souls.

Then we looked at a few verses of Scripture which gave us some instruction and some wisdom on forgiveness, forgiving one another, and not holding resentment against others.

OK, now let’s talk about what forgiveness actually is. How can we identify forgiveness, so that we aren’t harboring some unforgiveness or resentment under the surface that will spring up at any old time, or even worse, that will become a root of bitterness, not easily dug out? How do we know if we are really forgiving someone?

We’ll answer that today, but first let’s switch gears, and talk about another subject which may seem unrelated, but is VERY related to forgiveness. It’s SO related to forgiveness, it’s like wet is to water; like dry is to desert; like Abraham Lincoln’s picture on one side of a penny, and the Lincoln Memorial on the other side.

Love and Forgiveness

The subject I’m talking about is Love. And of course there are different kinds of love.

That Loving Feeling

There’s the affectionate kind of love, that anyone may have for another person that they are bonded to, such as a mother and child, or two long-time friends, or a couple getting married who we say are “in love”.

Now that’s a wonderful kind of love. That’s the kind of love that someone was talking about when they said that “Love makes the world go around.” It’s built into most people, and we could say like the old song says, “Everybody loves somebody sometime.”

It’s wonderful. But it also has a couple of problems.

And part of the reason it has a couple of problems is that it is based pretty much on feelings. Nothing wrong with that. Feelings are something God has built into us humans, so much so that if someone for some reason doesn’t seem to HAVE feelings, the psychologists diagnose them with some kind of so-called illness.

So this love which is a feeling is wonderful, but because it is based so much on feelings, it has a couple of problems.

First, it may not last. Now sometimes it does. Many parents keep their affectionate love for their children all their lives, and many husbands and wives grow old still feeling affection for their spouse.

But sometimes it doesn’t last, and the reason is, something has interfered with the good feelings. Maybe one person betrayed the other, or maybe they hurt them in some way, over and over, or maybe they rejected them, or slandered them, or left them, or physically abused them, or just ignored them.

Or maybe they just came across someone who gave them BETTER feelings, and so they stopped loving the one whom they loved before. Whatever happened, it knocked the legs of good feeling out from under the chair of love, and the chair crashed to the floor.

That’s the kind of love that most people talk about when they talk about love. That’s the kind of love that Hallmark and Soap Operas, and 20th Century Fox are usually talking about.

A Higher Love

But there is a higher kind of love than that. I’m not saying it’s better, exactly. And I’m certainly not saying that it necessarily FEELS better all the time. But it’s a higher kind of love, because it’s the kind of love that God has for His children.

And because it’s the kind of love God has for His children, He can put that kind of love into His children, so that they too can have that kind of love for God, and for other people.

Let me say that again: because it’s the kind of love God has for His children, He can put that kind of love into His children, so that they too can have that kind of love for God, and for other people.

And He does that through His Holy Spirit, and that’s why Galatians 5 says that Love is a fruit of the Spirit. It’s a fruit that is automatically produced in us when we are filled with His Spirit, when we walk by the Spirit, or walk according to the Spirit.

And when we do that, and when we have that God kind of love, it will have certain characteristics, which we see in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. You probably know these. Even Hallmark knows these, though they may not know what they mean. Here they are:

“Love is patient,
love is kind and is not jealous;
love does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly;
it does not seek its own, is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.

Now an important thing about this kind of love is that it has these characteristics NO MATTER WHAT. In other words, it’s what we call UNCONDITIONAL.

It’s not conditional on what the other person does. It’s not conditional on how we may feel, or what wrong may have been committed to us, or who the person is, or whether the person is our family member or whether they are evil or good, Christian or non-Christian, friend or enemy.

Yes, we can even love our enemies, because this God kind of love is a fruit, produced in us by the Holy Spirit. And all we have to do is walk in that Spirit, and we will have that kind of love produced in us.

That’s why the Bible says that "Love Never Fails".

That God kind of love never fails. And that’s why God will never leave us or forsake us. Because He loves us with that kind of love that never fails. Never.

And we can love others with that kind of love. Love that never fails.

And may I say this? With love that FORGIVES.

Forgiveness Defined

Which brings us to our subject. Remember our subject? We are talking about resentment and forgiveness. And now we can clarify what forgiveness really means. Because forgiveness is the other side of the coin of love, this God kind of unconditional love.

And with that in mind, let me take a stab at a definition of forgiveness, as the Bible presents it, and as God desires us to practice it. The kind of forgiveness that is not based on feelings, but on the fruit of the Spirit, which is love.

I’m not saying this is a perfect definition, but we don’t forgive by definition anyway, we forgive by love, so cut me some slack and let this definition sink in a little, and I think you will profit from it. Here’s the definition of forgiveness:

“Forgiveness is not holding something against someone as regards your unconditional love for them.”

And we might define Love like this:

“Love is truly, by the Holy Spirit, desiring the best for the one loved.”

This means that when you forgive someone, you no longer hold their sin against them by withholding your love for them, that is, you still desire the best for them, in your heart. You still love them, with the love described in 1 Cor. 13.

Now there’s a lot packed into that little definition.

To use an extreme example, if someone physically abuses you repeatedly, do you continue to let them into your presence and just “put up with it”? Of course not. You take steps of wisdom to prevent that. But you still love them. You still desire in your heart the very best for them. That’s love.

When you forgive someone, you still love them, unconditionally. And love, as 1 Cor. 13 says, “does not take into account a wrong suffered”. It forgives. Forgiveness is merely the other side of the coin of love.

How do we know when we are NOT forgiving someone, maybe even growing a root of bitterness? When we are not acting and thinking in love toward them. When we’re not patient and kind. When we are arrogant, when we are selfish, and so on.

Which is why we need to stay in close fellowship with Jesus. He is our life. When we commune with Him, these things tend to take care of themselves. He is in you, friend, if you are a Christian. Draw near to Him. After all, He's already there.

In another message we’ll look at what forgiveness LOOKS like, and what unforgiveness looks like, and how to forgive, and what hinders forgiveness.

Until then, spend some time with Jesus. Fellowship with Him in some sort of quiet time, and throughout the day as best you can. Walk in the Spirit, and you will see changes in how you love and forgive.

Part 1
Part 3