To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 2:5-7 “Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you. For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough,  so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.”

How ready are you to forgive?  If someone has done something to grieve you, if he or she has violated a trust, brought harm to the church by their sin, or lived in a way that has brought them great shame, are you poised to forgive and to “take no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:5)?  When you think of someone who has wronged you or been involved in some shameful action in the past, what is your first thought?  Is that past life something you always keep hung over their head, like “the scarlet letter” in the well-known novel of that title by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  It was to this attitude that Paul spoke to the members of the Corinthian church in the passage above.  He speaks to them about a person who had brought harm to the church by his sinful actions.  The church, as directed by Jesus in Matthew 18:15-20, had apparently taken appropriate disciplinary action. But in the aftermath of it all, there was a reticence on the part of some in the church of fully forgiving the sin.  They were continuing to hold that sin against the offender and negligent in welcoming the person back into full fellowship.  Paul rebukes this, for such an attitude is foreign to the love our perfect God has shown His children. 

You see, when God forgives, He forgives completely. The Bible tells us that He casts the sin of the repentant sinner “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12). With this imagery God is showing us the vastness of His forgiveness, for if one travels east, they will never reach a point where they are traveling west (unlike one who would travel north or south). There is an infinite separation from the sin in God’s forgiveness. Indeed, “He will remember our sin no more” (Hebrews 8:12). When God forgives, it’s as if we had never committed the offense. Our slate is wiped clean. Incredibly, the only One Who was ever perfect views us as innocent when we repent no matter what we have done. How much more should we forgive others, be it “seven times or seventy times seven,” as Jesus taught us in Matthew 18:21-22. 

This reminds me of words of the hymn “To God be the Glory, Great Things He Has Done,” and specifically, the second verse:

“Oh, perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
To every believer the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives”

Isn’t the forgiveness of God such an awesome thing?!  May God help us to show this same forgiveness to others who have sinned, for it is such a despicable thing to withhold full forgiveness from others in light of the full forgiveness the perfect God has demonstrated toward us.