JANUARY 23, 2015
When
Others Won’t Forgive
Read: Philippians
3:12-16
Forgetting those things which are behind . . . I press toward the goal.
—Philippians
3:13-14
I was having lunch
with two men who had opened their lives to Christ while they were in prison.
The younger man had been discouraged by the fact that the family from whom he
had stolen would not forgive him.
“My crime was
violent,” the older man said. “It continues to haunt and affect the family to
this day. They have not forgiven me, . . . the pain is just too great. At
first, I found myself paralyzed by this longing for their forgiveness.” He
continued his story: “Then one day I realized I was adding selfishness to my
brokenness. It’s a lot to expect that the family forgive me. I was focused on
what I felt I needed to heal from my past. It took some time to realize that
their forgiveness of me was a matter between them and God.”
“How can you stand
it?” the younger man asked.
The older man
explained that God did for him what he didn’t deserve and what others simply
can’t do: He died for our sins, and He keeps His promise to move our sins “as
far as the east is from the west” (Ps. 103:12) and “will not remember [our]
sins” (Isa. 43:25).
In the face of such
great love, we honor Him by accepting His forgiveness as sufficient. We must
forget what lies behind and keep pressing forward (Phil. 3:13-14).
Thank You, Father, for the work of Christ on
the
cross. Help me to understand and accept what
it means for me, and to be a messenger of that
forgiveness to those I meet along the way.
The
work of Christ is sufficient for every sin.
Insight
Paul often uses the
metaphor of an athlete running a race to depict the Christian life (1 Cor.
9:24-27; Phil. 2:16; 2 Tim. 4:7). In today’s passage, he compares himself to
someone running a long-distance race. Paul had probably been a Christian for
about 30 years when he wrote this letter; he was known as the apostle to the
Gentiles (Eph. 3:8; Gal. 2:8) and as a teacher of the scriptures. He could have
been content with his own spiritual maturity, but he did not consider himself
as having “already reached perfection” (v.12 nlt). Instead, Paul persisted in
pursuing Christlikeness (v.10) with the determination and vigor of a runner
whose single goal is to be the first to cross the finish line.
Source:
Our Daily Bread 2012