FORGIVENESS IS RELEASE

IOI CHRISTIAN MORNING MEAL

TOPIC: FORGIVENESS IS RELEASE

TEXT Matthew 18:27, Matthew 18:32)

Meaning of forgiveness?

Try to forget for a moment everything you have ever heard or assumed about forgiveness. Let a single word impress itself on your mind, the biblical word, the new covenant word. In Greek it is aphesis, in English, release.

Now just for a moment, don’t make it any more complicated than that. Release. To forgive means to choose someone whom you have been holding in your debt, holding in resentment and bitterness, and release him or her.

Forgiveness is not calling something that someone else did that was immoral or destructive OK.
It is not turning a blind eye toward injustice.

Forgiveness simply means that you choose to release somebody from personal obligation to you-even though that person will have to face the justice of God.

In Matthew 18, Jesus disciple asked:“How many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” (Matthew 18:21).
Jesus answers in a parable in which a man owed a king ten thousand talents (Today’s equivalent? Millions of Naira.) and was on the brink of having to sell his wife and children into slavery to pay the debt. But the pleas of the man to the king resulted in a canceling of the debt. Forgiveness. Release.

But the same man turns on a man who owes him merely a hundred denarii (for us, #20 or so). And when the king hears of it, he is incensed, saying, “You wicked servant, … I canceled all that debt of yours. …Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant?” The king rescinds his forgiveness. And Jesus closing words are these: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Forgiveness is release-being released by God, and then we are able to release other people in our lives.
Before you go out today, make sure that you release someone you are holding in your heart.

LET US PRAY
TODAY GOD WILL REMEMBER HIS SON'S DEAD ON THE CROSS AND FORGIVE ALL OUR SINS IN JESUS NAME,

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