Hebrews 12:15
15 Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;
Hurt and offense and the bitterness that results can be among the most difficult things to abandon. Very often, bitterness feels powerfully justified: So-and-so has treated me abominably; they have hurt me deeply, wounding my heart cruelly, and they keep doing so. I have every right to feel offended, and angry, and bitter! Certainly, we would never do to them what they have done to us. We would show them greater respect, and patience, and grace than they've shown us!15 Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;
Hurt and pain grab our attention; and the worse the pain, the harder it is to look away from it. But once the moment of injury is past and the harsh sting of it has subsided humans have the peculiar habit of rehearsing it, examining old wounds, reliving the moments they first sustained them and keeping the pain fresh.
When it is a person who has hurt us - and who continues to do so - we soon begin to see them only through the lens of the pain they have caused us. They become the Enemy, deserving of our rejection, our resentment and hatred, the object of our ever-deepening bitterness.
But God doesn't give His children the freedom to indulge in bitterness, to remain angry and resentful toward one another.
Ephesians 4:30-32
30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
God knows bitterness is a poison we take, thinking our enemy will die. Bitterness doesn't sour and cloud the heart of the one toward whom we are bitter, only our own heart. And bitterness always takes root, penetrating into a person, like a weed, growing over time more and more difficult to remove. Perhaps worst of all, however, there is a terrible irony in bitterness: As a person rehearses the hurt another has caused them, they are fixed on what the other person did, on their wretchedness and cruelty, their selfishness. But God has made us to be conformed to that upon which we focus. And the more we are focused on a thing, the greater its shaping effect upon our thinking and behaviour. Consequently, as the bitter person looks again and again at the hurt given to them by another, they begin to reflect, quite unconsciously, the same hurtful behaviour in their own conduct, becoming in some measure the very person they so powerfully resent!
When a person sustains bitterness toward another person, doing so by regularly replaying the moment of offense and hurt, they act upon themselves like a man hitting his thumb again and again with a hammer. Imagine after, say, fifty impacts how damaged and sensitive the man's thumb would be. Even the slightest pressure upon his throbbing digit would be an agony! His whole focus, then, would be absorbed by the sensitivity of his crushed thumb and he would be acting at every turn to guard against the slightest possibility of the most meager contact of anything with his thumb.
In the same way, the man who rehearses over and over the pain of a past hurt wounds the "thumb" of his heart again and again with the "hammer" of an old injurious event. As he does, his sensitivity to any hurt grows inordinately and he begins to imagine possibilities for fresh offense and pain all around, growing extremely touchy and defensive, as a result.
All this aside, though, God justifies His command to us to forgive one another, to forsake bitterness, on the basis of His forgiveness of the offenses we've given to Him. We daily give Him cause to be offended, every day abusing the grace He extends to us. But God forgives us, setting aside His right to deal with us as our just, holy and wrathful Judge for Christ's sake, remaining open to us in love instead. However great we believe our right is to be offended and hurt, God says to us His right is far, far greater. And yet, He forgives us. As recipients of that forgiveness, we are obliged to forgive, too. (Matthew 18:21-35)
Here our clarity on our own wickedness is vital. If we don't see ourselves properly, through the lens of God's holiness, from His perspective of purity, we will look upon the next person who has hurt us in some way, who has offended us, with self-righteous justification, believing we have every reason to maintain deep bitterness toward others, in the storm of hurt feelings, ignoring how much we are a recipient of God's grace, patience and mercy (Titus 3:5; Ephesians 2:1-6).
Forgiveness is key to dissolving bitterness. But what is forgiveness, exactly? Well, God tells us in His word what it is: refusing to bring the past into the present.
Jeremiah 31:34
34 ...For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
Hebrews 8:12
12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.
Psalm 103:10-12
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
Being omniscient, God does not actually forget anything; when Scripture says God will "remember no more" our sin, it doesn't mean He erases the knowledge of it from His memory. No, God's forgiveness is not self-imposed amnesia, but a refusal to rehearse our past sin, to bring our sin forward into the present in His dealings with us.
We, too, forgive, not by somehow blotting out from all remembrance the hurts and offenses someone may have given us in the past, but by refusing to see a person in the present through the lens of those past hurts and offenses. We forgive by choosing by a conscious act of our will not to dwell on the pain another has given us in times gone by, throwing it in their face as we deal with them in the present, chaining them to hurtful memories.
Make no mistake: This sort of forgiveness requires divine power. But all those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells possess in him all the power they need to forgive God's way (Philippians 2:13; Philippians 4:13; Romans 8:13; Ephesians 3:16). He has not promised in enabling us to forgive that He will sweep away in an instant all the hurt we've felt at the hands of another, all the hard emotions we have connected to them, only that He will give us the grace to set aside the past, to cease our rehearsal of the injury another has caused, and to deal with them anew, freed from the poisonous bondage of bitterness.
There is incredible liberty and joy on the far side of forgiveness - particularly in our fellowship with God. There is simply no way to fully enjoy Him, to be filled with Him and all the wonderful things He is (love, joy, peace, patience, etc.), so long as we harbor bitterness within. But when we embark on the practice of forgiveness, following God's example, we enter into a place of delight and peace with Him, enjoying unhindered the abundant life for which we were made.
One final word: Forgiveness is not a forced naivete. It is not forgiveness but foolishness to, say, forgive a heroin addict for stealing money from your purse but think that forgiving him requires you to leave your purse where he can get at it again. It is foolishness, not forgiveness, to believe that forgiving a physically abusive spouse requires that you remain in proximity to them and possibly be abused again. When God forgives our sin, He doesn't necessarily remove all the consequences of our offenses. He forgives the AIDS-afflicted homosexual who still dies of AIDS; He forgives the inappropriate content addict who still must wrestle - perhaps for years - with the foul images he has put into his mind; He forgives the murderer on Death Row who still dies by lethal injection. Likewise, when we forgive those who have hurt us, natural consequences often remain: Trust is broken and will require time and effort to restore; physical separation has occurred and must continue until the one forgiven establishes a new, consistent way of living; emotional and psychological wounds require time to heal, requiring patience and grace, and so on.
Galatians 6:9-10
9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.
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