The Mansion and The Park Bench

Monday, 8th October 2007

A reader of my blog had a question regarding forgiveness. He wanted to know whether we need to ask God to forgive us each day.

Hi Malcolm

I recently read "Destined to Reign" by Pastor Prince, and he mentioned that we no need to confess our sins IN ORDER for God to forgive us, because God forgives us even BEFORE we confess. But what about the Lord's prayer in Matt. 6:12-15, Jesus told his disciples that we are to pray DAILY to ask for forgiveness.

Thanks, this has been nothering me for some time.

Monday, October 01, 2007 5:09:00 PM

There was also another brother who asked me whether our forgiveness is conditional upon our forgiving of others. This is because Jesus said in Matt 6:14-15
14For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
15But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

I submit to you that I am not a theologian, so please don't take what I am writing as the gospel truth. I am still in the process of learning, and this is how I would respond to the above questions...

God has already forgiven us of all of our sins. However, many of us still have guilt on our conscience because of the knowledge of good and evil. We also find it hard to believe that God can be that good to wipe our slate totally clean. We have this "debt must be paid" mentality, and that is why we find it very difficult to receive forgiveness from God, as well as to forgive others who have wronged us.

That is why we have to keep looking at the cross, and be constantly mindful of the extent of Jesus' love for us. Once we truly understand that Jesus has paid the debt in full on our behalf when He hung on the cross, then we can realise that forgiveness, like grace, is undeserved. In turn, we will also start to be able to forgive others (even though they do not deserve it), since we ourselves do not deserve to be forgiven by God.

Note that Jesus said, "Forgive us our debts even as we forgive our debtors". The two actions cannot be separated because if we still continue to harbour unforgiveness and bitterness against others, it means we do not really comprehend the extent of God's love for us.

Jesus illustrated this by telling the parable of the unmerciful servant (as recorded in Matt 15) who was pardoned a multi-million dollar debt, yet could not pardon his fellow servant a debt of a mere few cents.

God has forgiven all our sins. In response, we should freely forgive others of their wrongdoing against us. On the contrary, if we are not able to forgive others who wrong us, then it means we have not understood that God has forgiven us of our transgressions. So it gives us the impression and makes us feel as though God has not forgiven us, although in truth, He has.

Let me use an illustration here. Let's say there is this guy who has been left a mansion as an inheritance. He however is not aware of this. So every night, he fights with other street vagabonds for a park bench to sleep on.

In the same way, the state of being forgiven is like being given that mansion as an inheritance. Not forgiving others who wrong us is like fighting over that park bench.

When we become aware of that mansion of ours, why squabble over the park bench? :-)