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!