Ephesians 4:31-32
Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: 32 and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
Galatians 5:22-24
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. 24 And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
Galatians 5:19b
19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, ….hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21 envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like:
Un-Forgiveness Affects Relationships
- How we relate to others in the future… Breeds Corruption Gal 6:8
- How we manage current relationships…Instigates Disruptions James 4:1
- How it hinders our relationship to God…Creates an Interruption Matthew 6:15
Why is Forgiveness Hard at Times?
- A PROBLEM — problem defining Forgiveness
Forgiveness is “the act of setting someone free from an obligation to you that is a result of a wrong done against you.”
Charles Stanely
- A PERCEPTION – Is my perception correct?
- A PRINCIPLE – Am I willfully ignoring a biblical principle? A fundamental, primary, or general law of truth from which others are derived.
How Can We Know the Freedom that Forgiveness Brings?
- Admit that to fail to forgive is A Sin.
- Ask God to forgive you.
- Consider yourself
Galatians 6:1-3
Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. 2 Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. 3 For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.