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Thoughts on Forgiveness

I was recently slandered by a fellow pastor.  I am not sure what set him off, but he came at me with a scathing set of accusations.  Because he is a brother in Christ and a pastor, I confronted him with my observations asking if I missed something or misunderstood.  His response was to slander me again.  Therefore I chose to sever fellowship with him.  Breaking fellowship is a difficult thing to do and I do not do it lightly.  Psalm 15:3 states
who does not slander with his tongue
For those who read Psalm 15, this command needs to be taken personally, but it can also be seen that slander is a sin that God commands Christians to avoid.  So when I am slandered by a fellow Christian, I need to look into it and if the offender does not repent, it is still my responsibility under Christ to forgive.

When I broke fellowship with this pastor I told him that I would not speak of these events again, that I would delete all communications between us and that I had forgiven him.  I deleted all communication records because forgiveness means that I no longer hold this sin to his account.  If I forgive, I cannot bring up again, ever, what happened this week to other people or to him.  When I forgive, I remove his sin from his account in relationship to me.  Of course he must repent and seek forgiveness from God, but that is none of my business.

I have read many articles over the past few years about the idea that I am only required to forgive someone if they repent.  The Bible is all about repentance and God requires repentance for Christians to grow in Christ.  Repentance means to change direction, to change one’s mind.  Not just change a thought but a 180 degree change of direction, removing one way of thinking and inserting another way of thinking.  God causes repentance in Christians because only God the Holy Spirit can do such a changing work.  I cannot cause someone to repent and I cannot demand someone repent of the evil they did to me. That is God's job.

When Jesus was on the cross, he requested that God forgive them because they did not know what they were doing.  Jesus was forgiving this sin of believers and unbelievers.  I understand that the them in the passage was everyone involved in the crucifixion.  So when Caiaphas, the evil High Priest,   stands before the great white throne, Jesus will not charge him with the sin of crucifying the Son of God.  It was removed from his account at the cross.  Caiaphas will still be cast into the lake of fire because he was an evil, evil man, but that one sin will not be among the charges, it was removed from his account.

When someone sins against me, they are indebted to me.  That is how sin works, it created a debt that has to be paid.  Because of Christ’s forgiveness to me, I am commanded to forgive others and cancel their debt owed to me.  I have broken fellowship with this pastor, and I will not seek to repair that.  I will also not hold his slander against him.  I forgave him without him asking for forgiveness.  If he seeks to restore fellowship, I will work on that.  He is still my brother in Christ and I will see him in heaven.  Right now, however, we are separate, which, I believe, breaks God’s heart.

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