One of the important milestones in our faith is when we begin to see ourselves as the Lord Jesus Christ sees ourselves. Back when I was living in Louisiana, an old Baptist preacher by the name of Clarence Welch told me and another young man who was working in his garden that if we ever wanted to get a good look at our faith we could only do so through the mirror of the Bible. At the time, I was 36 years old and was going through a personal crisis. I had just been medically discharged from the U.S. Army for injuries that I had sustained. Then, without the comfort and security of a steady income and active duty military benefits, the woman I was married to left me and returned to her hometown where she moved in with her old high school sweetheart. I was mad – mad at myself, mad at her, mad at those around me, mad at God – genuinely mad.
I wanted to share that because yesterday, my best friend called me and told me that on Friday of last week, as he was heading home, he decided to empty his heart’s contents to God. He had reached a point in his life where he was desiring a closer relationship with God and from what he described to me, tired of the trapped feeling that unresolved anger can have in our lives. What he had done, as I had done for so long, was to internalize and bury the unresolved anger and tried to build on top of that foundation. Can we get saved with unresolved anger in our hearts? The answer to that is simply yes. Can we spiritually grow with that unresolved anger in our hearts? The answer to that is also yes; however we will reach a certain point where spiritual growth cannot occur unless we resolve the anger. There is a reason why – anger occurs when we believe we have been wronged or harmed and we feel that the other party has not atoned for the transgression. At the heart of the issue is forgiveness and our willingness to allow God to heal our wounds.
Forgiveness is important for the believer for many reasons and if we are not careful, we can actually carry anger with us for so long that we become accustomed to its bondage. We excuse our anger and have a tendency to see it as justifiable; unfortunately, God does not see it that way. During Jesus’ earthly ministry, he taught all that would listen, For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matthew 6:14-15). When we harbor our anger we place ourselves under the same judgment, but from God, that we are placing on the object of our anger. We have effectively blocked God from being in a position to help us and to bless us. We cannot continue our spiritual growth until we have let go of the anger that holds us back. In fact, the gospel written by the apostle Mark records Jesus teaching those that followed him, And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses (Mark 11:25). Notice that when you pray…forgive, if you have ought against any. There’s no conditions, there’s no justification, there’s no reservations recorded in this verse. Jesus’ teaching is clear – forgive.
As recorded in the gospel of Matthew, there is a parable that Jesus uses to teach this very concept. The parable is about a man who receives forgiveness for a debt that he owed another. The parable ends with this passage: Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses (Matthew 18:32-35). This is a difficult lesson to allow to sink in – the forgiveness of God is complete; the forgiveness we offer others must reflect the forgiveness that He freely offers us. It is not optional, it is not a nice request, it is something we must do if we are going to enjoy the fullness of our Christian faith.
The Bible is our mirror and our measuring rod; when we begin to see our lives through the mirror of the Bible, we do not get the distortions that we do when we look at our lives through the lens of the world. When we look through the lens of this world, it becomes easy to justify our anger and our judgment of others. It becomes easy to hold on to that anger. The world even tells us that we are justified to hold on to our anger and judgment of others. God tells us that our anger at others must be dealt with; the perceived wrong must be forgiven completely. Once we have forgiven them, we must leave our anger in the past and pray for the person that wronged us. By doing so, not only do we free ourselves up from the anger and judgment within our hearts, we allow ourselves to be brought into God’s perfect peace and we really begin to spiritually grow and enjoy the richness of the forgiveness of God.
