More suffering (not that I have)
I was thinking yesterday in church that whenever you forgive someone you are absorbing the hurt/damage they have caused. Putting away your rights and taking blows you don’t deserve. So perhaps when we forgive we’re being most like our God.
6 responses to “More suffering (not that I have)”
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Yeah baby – put away those rights and take up those responsibilities!
Godliness – Rock, Rock On!
Yeh I’d agree with that one, Matthew. *IMHO*, forgiveness is definitely one of the hardest Christ-like attributes to display.
As the good book says: To err is human, to forgive is divine.
Not sure which good book, but yep, that’s what Aaron said when I told him this thought too. Some common ground!
Maybe forgiveness is letting the blood of Christ absorb and cover and erase the sin. Maybe we don’t have to internalize the hurt done to us.
You have a point jeep. One of my hardest tasks is not wishing for the revenge of hurt, inflicted on the person who hurts me.
For, Christ took the hurt due to them. And the hurt due to me. There is no need for me to wish more of it.
Yet as an image of Christ/God, renewed by the Spirit, I must continually give myself over to death for the sake of resurrection life. I must daily participate in the death of Christ. So, sin – both in my exilic nature and as it is done to me – must be taken and buried with me in the priesthood I share with Christ. So, when I daily rise with Christ out the other side of death, I leave behind all that is associated with exile – revenge, hatred – and gain all that which is associated with return and restoration: forgiveness, reconciliation.
It’s neat that baptism is a compressed image of this, too.