Choosing Forgiveness: A 5-Day Plan From Nancy DeMoss WolgemuthSample

Day 4: The Promise of Forgiveness

While forgiveness is indeed costly, it is not beyond the means of those who have Christ’s life flowing within them. When God tells us to love our enemies, He also gives us the love to go along with the command.

Yes, you can do this . . . because He can do this. That’s a promise.

Do you have a situation where forgiveness seems impossible? Perhaps you’re thinking, “I just can’t forgive this person for what he ’s done to me. It’s too painful to deal with. He’s done it too many times. He’s hurt me too deeply.”

But you must ask yourself—we must all ask ourselves—“Is my ability or willingness to forgive based on the magnitude of the offense?” In other words, is there a threshold of pain beyond which we are not required to forgive, one perhaps where it is impossible to forgive?

The Scripture reminds us that God has “cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Not some, but all.

These sins include things like the scorning mockery and insults of those who “despised” Him (Psalm 22:6–7), who totally “rejected” everything about His character, His person, His reason for living (Isaiah 53:3). It’s one thing to be disliked; it’s quite another to be despised—hated, spat upon, ridiculed, humiliated, betrayed, and wanted dead. Add to these the sins of our own, the ones we know so well, those that contributed to the guilt Jesus bore on the cross.

Yet this is the same God “who blots out your transgressions” and who “will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25 nkjv), who found us “dead in our trespasses” and made us “alive together with Christ” because of His “great love” for us (Ephesians 2:4–5).

You may not feel any natural “great love” toward the one who brought such shipwreck into your life—the one who trampled on your marriage vows, or the one who abused you as a child, or the one who misjudged you because of the color of your skin.

No one would expect you to.

But the power—and the beauty—of the transformed Christian life is that “it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13 nkjv).

It will never be the depth of your love that causes you to forgive such heartless acts and attitudes. It will never be within your power to overlook the wicked lies and wild justifications of those who have made you distrustful of just about everybody. It will be—it can only be—the love of Christ transplanted into your believing heart that can exchange your weakness for His strength.

And so because He has forgiven us—and because of His boundless life which now dwells in us—what offence is too great for us to forgive?