Through Jesus Comes Forgiveness
As I mentioned in the previous post, the card I received by email to bear with and forgive one another in Colossians 3:13 motivated me to restore my relationship with my family after eight years of mutual separation.
I decided to do a little Bible study on the verse and on the subject of forgiveness in general. It seemed in the Colossians 3:13 verse that "bearing" and "forgiving" were easier said than done. A hard lesson I had to learn was that not all family members have the same spiritual acuity or objectives that lead to resolute forgiveness. Even some family members don’t seem to care whether disagreements are resolved. It’s too easy to avoid the argument than it is to settle it non-violently.
Enjoined in the Greek word used are the specific nuances that can relate to the word for “bear.” Many think of the word "bear" as being closely aligned to a immovable structure, such as a wall or a inner strength (one's will). Our first inclination is not to think of the word as relating to the ability to absorb, survive and even thrive on "hurt" or "charity" in the same sense that the word is used to describe Christ’s forgiving Grace by sacrificing Himself for mankind’s sins.
Whenever someone finds themselves in a conflict or hopeless situation, they need help "bearing" up in the manners needed to resolve uneasy and sometimes very difficult disagreements even with people to whom they know or are related.
They may be wrong but not believe they are wrong. Or you may be wrong but not believe you are. Regardless of all of the gray shades between those rationalized dipoles is conflict, which is what you have to bear.
I did not even try to understand the depths of the word "bearing" in Colossians 3:13 when I withheld my forgiveness to members of my family. I was too hardheaded and simply not strong enough spiritually to do so. That is not an excuse; it was a huge cop-out that was too easy to choose. I did not give God the chance to take my cup of troubles away. I buried the cup as though it did not exist. I can even give you the Bible verse out of God's Word that I used as my basis. I give it to you because I should not have hid behind it and neither should you. The verse said:
Romans 12:18-19
If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY," says the Lord.
I distanced myself from several family members and their children for several years because I could not resolve a standing dispute. I told them I forgave them, but that doesn’t work when they think you are at fault. There did not seem to be any way I could help them see what I thought was the truth. Immediately your conflict becomes a battle of wills. What makes that hard to resolve is stubborn human will that often comes with human pride to assess blame, but more importantly, to avoid the perceived shame of alternate thinking.
I prayed and prayed for the Lord to renew their mind without regard to the renewal my mind may have needed. To my shame today, I even backed up my position with the Bible, Romans 12:18 - If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.
I reasoned that I was not wrong and could not win this battle. So, to live in self-peace I separated myself from a relationship with family members. I justified that action by assuming my absence would relieve them of any anxiety having them admit their being wrong. Here is what went through my torn up soul:
- “That’s all I can do;
- it’ll be a sacrifice that requires God’s intervention,”
Not only was I wrong to dump the matter on God without trying to repair lost relationships, it bordered on cowardice that goes with taking an easy way out.
It is not society’s fault that we all have been conditioned to call-in a higher power, whether local the authorities or God, to resolve human conflicts. But, that is what we in reality do:
- We leave it up to the Sheriff; or
- We leave it up to the Police; or
- We leave it up to the legislature; or
- We leave it up to the government to enforce the rules and the law; or
- We leave it up to the Domestic Dispute Hotline that has nothing that it can do except listen to you; or
- Far too often, we leave it to to Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson to resolve quickly and permanently.
Instead, we hear cries of: “Let’s all agree to disagree until we can figure out who was at fault.” Arguing parties, however receive legal instruction that reassures them of "bonding out of jail, parole, and assured rehabilitation.” Add to that is the rapid spread of information beyond those who were actually involved. Social media goes viral pointing fingers at each other to effectively egg-on the opposing sides of disagreements. That is what we have been doing in some way, shape or form since Creation.
Inefficiency and unfairness has festered all of these years until the only way the majority of the people think they can resolve conflict is to blow someone’s head off or run over them with their car or cheat or steal, whether they think they can get away with it or not.
Our global society is as or more frustrated than Israel must have been when they insisted on their system of Judges. God let them have their way, even knowing that it would lead to the kind of violence, wars and separations caused by human judicial systems and the social culture conditioning people received leading them to take matters into their own hands and become judge, jury and executioner.
God gave mankind a choice to rely on Him for justice and equitable settlements to disagreements or make it work for themselves. God's warning, however, was, "Keep that up and God will let you have your ways until you either come to your senses or die.
God did not mince wordsReading Romans 1:20-32 is enough to curl my toes:
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
- For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
- Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
- Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
- For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
- For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
- And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, inventors of evil, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
That tells me that if we persist, God will let us have our way.
And you know what? He gave us today's society because that is exactly what our society wanted to persist in doing.
Getting back to the way I decided to handle my familial dispute:
My wrong decision led to my missing a large part of the time when my nieces and nephews were growing up. I will never get that time back. Upon their high school graduation, I came to the end of that long rope without a knot to hold on to.
I copped out by letting go and letting God resolve something that He had already given me the ability to resolve. The handy advice, “to let go and let God,” is what too many Christians advise others to do or do themselves without realizing what they are doing or saying.
They tempt God the way that satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, to jump off a cliff and save Himself if He was really The Son of God and King of the Jews.
I prayed to Jesus Christ to help me resolve this relationship roadblock that I had actually set up for myself.
And then I received the graduation celebration invitation of my sister's triplets. Almost right after receiving that invitation, I got an unsolicited email of the Colossians 3:13 card above about “bearing with one another,” I asked the Holy Spirit for guidance on what the verse meant and how to use it myself.
I have a very analytical way of reasoning that may seem laborious to many, but it works for me. Even in college, my professors remarked that I had a very strong inductive reasoning bent, as opposed to deductive reasoning. Whichever way you are, the extensive analysis I do helps me to remember and apply God’s Word.
So, I started with asking the question, “What does the word ‘bearing’ mean?” And then, to apply the instruction, I sought to define what God meant by “Forgiving each other,” which I thought I had already done, but about which I obviously had deluded myself because after eight years of self-imposed exile nobody in the family seemed to have forgiven anyone.
So, I shared my genuine feelings with the Lord and said, “Lord, please help me in restoring my relationship with my family members. That is easier said than done. How do You suggest I do that?”
I will summarize exactly what the Holy Spirit helped me realize, understand and implement and then leave the detail for you to examine at the end to give you an idea of how my mind worked.
One error I made in how I tried to resolve my familial conflict was buried in Colossians 3:13. The end of the verse is the answer to “Why” we should bear with each other and forgive each other.
The missing piece of my thinking that I did not have the power to resolve the conflict was:
“Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.”
And also in Philippians 4:13:
"I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."
Jesus gave His life so that my sins would not be held against me and so I might have a chance at developing a relationship with God. He did this without condition or without being asked. He did not say, ‘because I am innocent, take this cup away.’ He said, if ‘You are willing …, let Your will be done.’ And then He gave me His Spirit and the power of Jesus' gracefully saving sacrifice, which was within me all of the time if I had only humbled myself enough to ask for His help.
Jesus may not have liked it, but it was clear to me that the only way for me to be forgiven by God The Father was by Christ’s sacrifice.
Luke 22:42 – “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done."
It was not God’s will that I tried to resolve conflict the way I did. Realizing that earlier would have saved everyone much grief.
Jesus told me that if I believe, the Holy Spirit will counsel my willing heart on how to restore things God’s way:
John 14:26 “... the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”
He did not try to make a deal with me or goad me.
Ask God for His help in fixing my heart, soul;
Ask for God to help me commit in a meaningful way to The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Realize that you cannot very well commit to anything that you do not believe.
Therefore, resolve to reinforce your beliefs and your commitment to Jesus in praying:
By Your mercies, God I present myself as a holy sacrifice acceptable to You in spiritual worship; that I be transformed with a renewed mind that proves God’s good, acceptable and perfect will in me. Amen
The Lord in me helped me restore my relationship with my family members. I did not try to do at the beginning of this disagreement. The method I used, hiding behind God's Word that I had miss-applied, just does not ever lead to the level of restoration that results in love, peace, and hope.
My relationship with disputing members of my family and their children is still not that it should be. My presence may remind them of the eight years of self-imposed exile I used to avoid resolutions. I still do not get invitations or returned calls or emails. But, I know that they have their own lives which I had pushed away for eight years.
Being able to resolve arguments is a limitation that mankind has. One of the reasons for that is that mankind has trouble learning the difference between good and evil. God commanded Adam near the beginning of creation and to all of us since then to not use our own knowledge to judge that which is either good or evil. To judge for ourselves as good or evil is to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Does God take that position? Really? Here is one passage among many that actually promises that returning to Him is the only way to restoration:
Joel 2:12-13
"Yet even now," declares the LORD, "Return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments." Now return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness And relenting of evil.
God provides for restoration if, and only if, we turn to Him with a completely rendered heart. It's that "completely rendered heart" business that people try to redefine on their own terms and imagination. They try to replace their supposedly rendered heart with an artificial heart which our feeble brains concoct.
The very next morning I needed to call my sister to either accept or reject her invitation to the triplets' graduation celebration. I was asleep and my eyes popped open with this thought. As Jesus was being crucified on the cross, suffering terribly, Luke 23:34a shares what He was saying and praying to God:
...But Jesus was saying, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."...
What that meant to me was that the key to the unforgiveness that separated me from my family, and my family from me for eight years was this:
We were both wrong;
We were both blessed to be alive and given a second chance to make things right;
It required following God's Word with a renewed mind in Jesus Christ's sacrifice;
It required a completely changed belief system;
It demonstrates that love for each other is the only way to internal and external peace and a restored relationship.
The first thing my niece said to me when she saw me arrive to the celebration was "Uncle George, by your being here, you have just given me the best graduation present I could possibly get. I cried inside asking her to forgive me for being so obstinate and silently thanking God for restoring a relationship that the locust had eaten. (Joel 2:25)
I still have much to learn of how to employ God’s Word to resolve conflicts and improve relationships. Hence, this Bible study seeks to provide some Biblical reasoning to answer the questions of “Why?” and “How?” to accomplish that.
I hope to provide you with a free download of the Bible study I conducted to resolve our disagreement soon. My conclusion was that it was Christ's will to work in me that gave me the strength to restore my familial relationships.
