The Madness of Unforgiveness: Avoiding Slander

by David Chadwick

Forgiveness can only truly happen when Jesus is your source. Without his strength, bitterness will inevitably take root in your heart, defiling your soul.

Have you ever thought about what springs up from a bitter heart? Slander!

When given the chance to speak ill of someone who has hurt you, we seldom turn down the chance, do we? We all struggle with this temptation. Somehow, we think we are punishing them for what they did to us and at the end of the day, we don’t want our enemy to be admired.

Do you know why I think it is so easy to keep slandering someone? Because they hurt you! Hurt people hurt people. It can also be hard to speak well of someone who brought so much pain and devastation into our lives.

If you’re not careful, the pain of your situation can create a stronghold over your life that drives you into deeper sin instead of holiness.

Once you truly forgive someone, you won’t gossip about them. You won’t have the desire to slander them or put them down to someone else.

Now, let me say this. It is okay to find a Christ-centered pastor, counselor or trusted friend to help you work through your pain. Sometimes you have to share your heart with another in order to get free. This is acceptable. But slander is not.

Make sure that as you share something with another person that your end goal is forgiveness and becoming more free. Not aimless chatter simply intended to do harm to another.

Ephesians 4:32 reminds us how to be kind and forgive just as God in Christ forgave us. After receiving Jesus, remember that God will never punish you for your sins. His grace covers you rather than exposes you. And he will never hold our sins against us again.

When I fill my heart with Jesus’s love for me - his cross, his mercy, his kindness - I can release my offender and continue to have an abundant life. That is God’s desire. For you and for me to be free.

The Madness of Unforgiveness: The Result of Unforgiveness

by David Chadwick

Forgiveness. Releasing offenders and offenses to Jesus so you can be made whole.

This is something that can only happen when Jesus is your source of life.

Unfortunately, many people choose to remain embittered and trapped by unforgiveness.

What is the result of unforgiveness? Bitterness.

As you remain in unforgiveness, bitterness takes root (Hebrews 12:15). Bitterness corrodes your soul and defiles those around you. It’s a deep, dark prison from which no one can escape without learning to walk out forgiveness.

As you heard me mention the other day, refusing to forgive and holding on to bitterness is like drinking arsenic and expecting the other person to die! This is especially grievous when thinking about those who have hurt you and have died. Oftentimes, when people haven’t experienced forgiveness, their offenders continue to hurt them from their graves!

Think about how incredulous this concept is! It’s like the time I picked up a dead wasp and it still stung me! What a terrible thing for something that has no life in it to poison you!

My dear, dear friends, forgive! Pull the root of bitterness out of your soul.

Then, where bitterness once held you captive, replace it with the same grace and mercy that Jesus has given you.

As you set the other person free, it will free you.

The Madness of Unforgiveness: What is the Source of Forgiveness?

by David Chadwick

Yesterday, we learned about what forgiveness is - releasing any offenders and offenses back to Jesus, knowing that bitterness will only hold you captive and destroy your life.

But what is the source of forgiveness? Well, it’s supernatural. A strength that can only come from a love outside of us.

Within ourselves, in our own strength, it’s impossible to forgive.

We can only love because Jesus first loved us (1 John 4:19). We can only forgive because God first forgave us.

God’s forgiveness is the source. Our ability to forgive is rooted in God’s forgiveness of us and our sin. We owe him a billion dollar debt. One we can’t repay. The debt to God for all our sins is far too great. And his love lavished over us through forgiveness becomes the source from which we can pull to forgive others.

Remember the parable of the forgiving king and the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:21-35? If not, take a moment and go read it. The king mercifully forgave his servant of a massive, unpayable debt. You would think this would prompt the servant to do the same for other people, but it did not. The servant would not forgive someone of the smallest debt that was owed to him.

Because the unforgiving servant wouldn’t forgive, he was thrown into a prison and not allowed to leave until every penny of his debt to the king was repaid. The unforgiving servant’s decision to not extend forgiveness left him in a literal prison of bitterness, which we will learn more about tomorrow.

Jesus used this parable to teach a very important lesson. If God’s forgiving love extended a billion dollar debt repayment to us, we must not be unwilling to forgive someone who has hurt us.

Paul reiterated Jesus’s teachings in Ephesians 4:32 and Colossians 3:13 urging people to be kind and compassionate and to forgive just as Jesus forgave us and to bear with one another, forgiving grievances.

Use the one, true Source named Jesus as your strength to forgive. It will be a supernatural display!