verseoftheday

"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart." Matthew 18:35 NIV Our heavenly Father knows we have a tendency to forgive from the surface. Real forgiveness is costly. It costs us our rights, to get even, to get compensation, to get anything... It means we absorb into ourselves the "sin", the words, the actions, the attitude, of the person we're forgiving. The Greek word here for heart is "kardia" - the very centre of who we are, the deepest part of our inner self. That's where Jesus says true forgiveness needs to come from... (Maybe forgiveness is not so easy after all) This is where we are forgiven from. The very heart and core of God! Where our sin was absorbed and payment made... #forgiven #forgive #kardia

Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' Matthew 18:32-33 NIV Jesus is using a story of a person who's massive debt was forgiven by the King, who then showed no forgiveness to someone else over a much smaller thing... I've been forgiven everything. But when I come to forgive, somehow I get stingy. I just don't want to. I still want my rights enforced, my debt to be satisfied... Jesus reminds me that's not the way of the Kingdom, to remember what God has forgiven me for, that Jesus paid the debt, and I'm free from that. And that knowledge should determine how I treat others. My rights are less important than grace. My being right is less important than love. #somethingtochewon #wordsofJesus #upsidedownkingdom #grace #forgiven #forgive