Forgiveness is the key to spiritual unity in the church, because it is the key to love and the key to all meaningful relationships. Only forgiveness can break down the barriers that sin continually and inevitably erects between people, including God’s people. “A man’s discretion makes him slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression” (Prov. 19:11). Christians are at their best when they are forgiving. Because they themselves have been forgiven so much by God, they, of all people, should be most forgiving of others, especially of fellow believers. Christians are most like their Lord when they forgive “each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven them” (Eph. 4:32). Paul declared the same truth to the Colossians, telling them to bear with one another and forgive one another, “just as the Lord forgave you” (Col. 3:13). Because they have been forgiven every sin by Christ, believers should be willing and eager to forgive each other in everything.
Nothing so characterizes the new nature of Christians as the virtue of forgiveness, because nothing so characterizes the nature of their Lord. Jesus’ most striking and humanly incomprehensible words from the cross were “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Written by John MacArthur
Dear church, the more we forgive one another the more we share in the new nature of being a true Christian. Today in the sermon if you find that you have not forgiven someone of a transgression against you. Ask the Lord for that great holy virtue of true forgiveness from your heart and begin to breath the fresh air of living above the stench of bitterness and resentment. Pastor Mark