Among the tactics used by our enemy to disrupt, distract and destroy us, perhaps the greatest deals with forgiveness. In many respects there is nothing any more difficult to do in this life than to forgive others and ourselves of mistakes, errors, blatant disregard for the truth and even criminal acts of violence or abuse. In God’s eyes there are no degrees of evil. From God’s perspective bad is bad and evil is evil no matter how much or little is involved.

For those soaked with the syrup of “holier than thou” piety, their sins are apparently less severe as those of the common sinner. For those whose form of worship is one of sanctimonious self-righteousness, their mistakes are stained with purity and not as bad as those less smug as they are.

Each one of us was, is and will continue to be (until Christ’s return) imperfect people who will mess things up, fall prey to the enemy’s snares and hurt ourselves and others through ignorance or stubbornness. For anyone unwilling to forgive someone else, in reality they either are unwilling to forgive themselves or feel they have nothing in their own life needing forgiveness.

We are, by our very nature, stubborn and selfish people who want what we want when we want it and have no patience for those who slow us down, seek to instruct us or dare to reprove us. Due to our mistaken belief in our infallible nature, we fight the idea of forgiving someone else. We expect someone who has wronged us to crawl on their knees to us begging for mercy before we even consider granting them even a little forgiveness.

We are so very quick to point out the speck in someone else’s eye while not seeing the beam in our eye. We are so very adept at spotting every little thing someone else does wrong while not seeing the gross errors in our own lives. We are so very adamant in our belief those who commit sin must repent while somehow finding all sorts of good reasons why we do not need to do the same thing.

It takes great humility, honesty, faith and LOVE to forgive someone who has wronged us. All traces of sanctimonious self-righteousness must be purged from our hearts before we are able and willing to manifest the same love Jesus Christ manifested on the cross when He said “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”.

Until we are willing to swallow our pride, demand our self-righteous nature shut up and our desire for revenge be destroyed; we will never be able to forgive others or accept forgiveness in our own lives. Love demands we climb down off of our high horse and humbly bow before those who hurt us in the spirit of forgiveness. Even if that forgiveness is rejected, at least we followed the command of the Lord and manifested His love even as He did upon the cross.

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