Month: April 2026

Self-Forgiveness

Forgiveness of self is no less important than the forgiveness of others.  People have harmed themselves terribly because they could not forgive themselves for what they had done or what was done to them.  Meanwhile, the same people are sometimes willing to forgive others generously.  The self needs the assurance of forgiveness no less than others do.  Give first to yourself what you would give to others, or what you want others to give to you.  Sow a ‘seed’ into your own life also, as you would sow into other lives.  Forgive yourself, forget your past.

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Assurance of Forgiveness  (Forgiveness, Chap 9, Series 16)

We concede that feelings alone might not always be a true expression of the degree of penitence (on the part of the trespasser) or of forgiveness (on the part of the forgiver), although they are veritable indicators.  There are other indicators of the state of forgiveness that we can glean from the story of Joseph and the parable of the prodigal son.  The effort here is to address two questions:

• how do I know that I have forgiven?
• how do I know that I have been forgiven?

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1.  The Unlikely Armies of God

When your enemy is God, it is pointless to fight, because you will never win.  In such conflicts, the mighty God could hire such ordinary fighters as frogs, such little fellows as locusts and lice, such hellish missiles as hailstones, or fiercer regiments like the heathenish brutish Babylonians (Jeremiah 25:9; Exodus 8).   His army might be as deceptively fragile as flies and little as lice yet, even with supersonic chariots and the backing of superpower Egypt, you will never win against them.   Swift chariots do not guarantee a victory in every war, not especially when God is on the other side (Proverbs 21:31).

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Conditions in Forgiveness

Does Acts 17:30 mean that forgiveness may be given blankly; that a trespasser can be granted blanket forgiveness that is connected to no specific trespass?  Can I forgive someone, yet tell them of possible consequences if they should trespass again?

Sometimes it is necessary to specify post-forgiveness terms in a relationship, which terms, if breached, the culprit should be aware of the implications.  It is neither wisdom nor spirituality to shut the eyes to future or possible future trespasses merely based on past forgiveness.  David and Solomon might have abused the ‘clause of conditions’ in the terms of forgiveness, yet that does not make the process wrong.

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