Luke 3-4 (3) Take heed to yourselves: if thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. (4) And if he trespass agains thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him. [Editor’s note: Let’s start with definitions: Trespass: to wrongfully intrude on the personal property or rights of another person. Rebuke: to express sharp disapproval or criticism of (someone) because of their behavior or actions. Repent: to truly be sorry for ones behavior and make a change of heart and ask for forgiveness. So Jesus is telling us to let someone (a brother) know, in no uncertain terms, when they have crossed the line of our personal rights; then if that person repents, we are to forgive them, as many times as it takes. We all make mistakes. Some of us over and over, until we get it right. And we can be truly sorry each time. But what of those transgressors that don’t ask for forgiveness? Have you communicated your displeasure with them? If not, they may not even understand that you are upset with them. It is possible that if you communicate with them and express your hurt feelings in a constructive manner, they will repent, and then you can forgive them. And finally, we come to the case where we have expressed our hurt feelings, but they don’t care, they don’t repent, they don’t ask for forgiveness, and they don’t change their ways. Does God expect you to forgive in this case? (Be careful how you answer this question.) Well, God does not provide an answer, to this last case, here in this verse. But He does teach us in the Our Father prayer to say: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. So maybe He will take into consideration how we forgive others who have not repented when we are in front of Him with our trespasses from which we have not repented or asked forgiveness (there are probably more than we realize.) Just something to think about. While the saved won’t lose their salvation over this, we learned in the prior blog entry that our faults can cause us to suffer losses of our treasures stored up for us in heaven AND/OR our positions in the kingdom of God. When making these kinds of decisions about trespassers against us remember these three bits of wisdom: 1. Love your neighbor as yourself. (James 2:8 the royal law according to Scripture.) 2. Love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8) 3. Love your enemies and pray for them. (Matthew 5:44)]
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 16:16:49 +0000
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