Eph. 4:32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving
one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
	Recently, in our young people's meetings, we dealt with the reality
of forgiveness. It is an element of our walk in Christ that we can never
ignore. It is also one which we must constantly seek to have at work in
our lives each and every day. We cannot take the substance of
forgiveness in Christ for granted nor underestimate its necessity in the
wonderful working of the Holy Spirit.
	It has been a remarkable subject for our young people, with the
Lord faithfully creating several opportunities to put into practice,
that which we have been discussing. The Lord is always so thorough in
creating the circumstances through which His realities can become truth
in us. He doesn't tease us with what ifs and hypothetical possibilities.
When He reveals Himself in our studies of His Word, and if we desire
that the Holy Spirit make known all the depth of Christ within us, then
we will surely receive every avenue of His Love in faithfully working to
establish His truth in us. This is what has been happening with our
Tuesday Night group. The Lord has been very actively working to fix His
heart of forgiveness within each of us.
	Knowinq this, it is with utmost prayer that we will broach this
tremendous reality this evening. There are many aspects of forgiveness
that we are aware of because we have heard it over and over again, like
that we need to forgive and to forget. But, as is common with so many
truths in Christ, familiarity with the words and with the concepts can
sometimes mask the substance of that truth in our beings. Forgiveness
needs to be an expression of Christ, Who is now living His life out from
us. This too, has a very familiar ring to it, but we must consider it in
another light, the illumination of the Holy Spirit as He works in us to
make this our very physical existence. We need to consider forgiveness
from an entirely different perspective than that with which we may be so
familiar.
	Look at the passage before us this evening ... And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's
sake hath forgiven you. The NIV ends this verse with ... forgiving each
other, just as in Christ God forgave you. God's eternal purpose is tied
up in the intrinsic element of His Being of forgiveness. Because He is
the essence and the Being of Love, He could do no less than give utmost
expression to that nature, by forgiving us in Christ. It was for
Christ's sake as the authorized version states, or in Christ as the NIV
states that God forgave us all the trespasses and sin that was the very
makeup of our being in our flesh.
	    It was His essence of forgiveness that set aside our old nature,
placed it in the grave by the death of Christ, and then gave us new
life, the very life of Christ in His resurrection power. II Cor. 5:17
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are
passed away, behold, all things are become new. We have many other
scriptures upon which we are encouraged to meditate dealing with the
fact that we are now a completely new creation in Christ Jesus. It is by
the effective working of the Holy Spirit, and therefore, we need to come
into the actuality of all that is part of our spiritual life. That is
the fact of who we are now in Christ. We are born of the Spirit, living
in and led by Him in the way of our new life. This means that there has
to be a radical change in our understanding of forgiveness. It needs to
be as natural a part of our spiritual beings as breathing is to our
physical bodies.
	With this as our basis of understanding, let us launch into the
foremost aspect of forgiveness, in a very well‑known passage, Gal. 2:20
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me: and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the
faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave his life for me. I tell
you right now, that this will not be an easy lesson to take. Neither
will it be one that can be ignored just because we have heard it all
before. We are faced with the spiritual truth of the very Son of God,
Jesus Christ indwelling us, being our life. We are considering the very
nature that He will establish in our lives, and we dare not frustrate
nor try to diminish that which is of Christ within us. There is nothing
more miserable in this entire creation than a Christian who is trying to
deny the indwelling nature of Christ our Lord.
	We are told that it is no longer our life to live. Christ is now
living His life in us. We are crucified, we are dead, we are no longer
the focal point of existence, Christ is! We need to reckon this to be
true, as the Apostle Paul writes to the Romans in Chapter 6. We are dead
to sin. We are dead to ourselves. We are dead to the things of this
world. We are dead to that old nature that wanted everything its own
way. Dead in deed, dead in word, dead in thought, dead! Everything that
is now life in us, is the very life of Christ living His life in us.
Alive unto God, alive unto righteousness, alive unto holiness, alive
unto the glory of God, alive now and forever in Christ Jesus.
Now that we are alive in Christ, our beings are admittedly not yet
perfect, but our essence is. And it is to give evidence of this glorious
truth. How else can we abide in the statement of our text this evening,
that we should be kind and compassionate and forgiving to one another?
You see, this is where the new and the old collide, and the old must be reckoned dead, considered dead, and left in the grave in its death. Forgiveness is a double‑edged sword of our old nature. Of ourselves, in
our old nature, in that depravity of our old beings, forgiveness can be
used effectively as a means to gain something for self. Please don't be too quick in agreement until we fully understand what is being
revealed in this statement. Forgiveness is a very useful tool to bring
self‑satisfaction	and self‑appreciation into our beings. It can get us
so many things in this world, because it makes us look so good to
others. Some people have no difficulty forgiving, or saying that they
forgive others, because they are racking up points of favor in this
realm. They point out how swiftly they can get over a wrong. They are
quick to highlight the ills that they are suffering and the mistreatment,and how they are not holding anything against another because they are capable of enduring it all and practicing forgiveness.
	This is the aspect of the old nature that keeps a list of how many times a brother has been forgiven in order to bring that account to the
forefront at some moment in which it will be beneficial to disclose the forgiver's forbearance and magnitude toward the other.
	     Then we have the opposite attitude of those who can not bear to
forgive. There are those who feel that a wrong suffered needs
retribution in order to set things right. They, too, are focused on
themselves in their plight of being wronged and not yet being able to
correct the situation. They harbor those ill feelings toward another,
and seek to gain advantage over another through any avenue, using their inability to forgive as a means to promote themselves and to denigrate
others. They find forgiveness to be one of the hardest things to do,
because they have been wronged and they justify their anger and their
frustrations and their heartache in their ability to point out the error
of the other's way, constantly.
We have a third aspect, one in the center of these two extremes,
with which many of us can identify. Forgiveness is meted out, based on
the degree of the offense. If it is something that is not too bad, or
only affects a non‑consequential aspect of our lives, we sometimes can
forgive rather easily. As an example, if it is a matter of business or
work, if it is a neighbor or some other acquaintance that has offended
us, we can forgive and forget rather mundanely. But, if it is an issue
that is very close to us, such as our wife that has been offended,
someone whom we love very dearly, we take exception to it and have a
much more difficult time with this matter of forgiveness. We tend to
harbor ill‑will and resentment against the perpetrator, and find
justification in the fact that it wasn't ourselves that was personally
offended, but someone else whom we are trying to protect.
	    As well, there is another aspect that needs to be considered in
this matter of forgiveness and unforgiveness. So many of us sometimes
get mad at God because He doesn't always do things the way that we think
He should. We try to fit Him into our conceptual boxes of behavior, and
find, like Jonah of old, that His ways do not necessarily correspond
with our ideas and our desires. How many of us have set ourselves down, in anger and resentment to God because He does not see fit to perform in
line with our expectations? We get angry and we sulk and we stomp our
feet in disgust, and hold resentment against Him. We tend to treat God,
our Creator, our most living, holy, and righteous God as if He should
even be considered in the same light as we consider one another in our
humanity. God is divine. God is perfect. Our thinking in terms of
holding anything against God is not even an option to be contemplated.
We ought to be at a point in our spiritual lives in which we very
naturally and lovingly accept all things that are part of our lives,
including His good pleasure of working in our lives, as completely from Him. All things, whether we see them as good or bad are from God and fully in line with the truth that all things work together for good in His perfect plan and purpose.
	There are varying degrees and aspects to each of these generalized
scenarios, as we can well imagine. Our capacity for unforgiveness and
hardness of heart and self‑protection above all else is unfathomable in
its pervasiveness. As nice a person as we may be considered, it only
takes a single episode of hurtfulness to enrage us and to put us into a
position of even hating another person, even God, because we see
ourselves as having been defiled in some manner.
	Like it or not, this is where most, if not all of us are currently
situated in our ideas of forgiveness. We are looking at the manner in
which we can or can not forgive. We are judging ourselves and others by
the degree of forgiveness that is evidenced and exhibited toward others.
We find it very easy to prescribe for others to forgive someone else for
this or for that because we feel that we would have the capacity to
forgive if we were put into that same situation. We also feel that it is
our place to mete out forgiveness unto others because we want to be good
examples of what a Christian should be.
	    The truth is, and this is where we are now going to have to be
adjusted, radically adjusted by the Holy Spirit in all the grace of God
the ultimate truth is that all the forgiveness that comes from us is
worthless and self‑centered in nature. Good motives, bad motives,
motives of being a gentle and kind person, do not make our human
forgiveness anything less than rubbish. Our efforts amount to
self‑gratification, and that is what needs to be left in the grave.
Anything of our self, whether self‑pride, self‑indulgence or
self‑righteousness, it all has to be thoroughly and meticulously removed
from us, like the cancerous element that it is, and we must be radiated
by the healing power of the person of Jesus Christ.
	    Only then will we become the vessels through whom the Love of God
can freely flow in His forgiveness. True forgiveness, selfless
forgiveness, forgiveness expressing the very essence of the Love of God
can only be manifested by Christ living His life out from us. This is
the spiritual nature of God that was expressed in His very giving of His
only Begotten Son, sent to redeem fallen mankind unto Himself. The Son
was sent to die in our stead, to suffer the anguish of being made our
sin, in all His essence of Holiness, in order to proclaim and to be the
intense forgiveness of God unto us.
	He could do nothing less than this, and desired nothing less than
this in order carry forth that which His nature demanded. Only in the
complete giving of Himself to be our forgiveness could Christ find the
satisfaction of being the living sum and substance of forgiveness. Only
in the giving of His Beloved Son, in order to restore that which was
lost in sin, could the Father be the living expression of His attribute
of mercy and grace. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit could do
nothing less than manifest the Divine nature of the Godhead in bringing
forth utter forgiveness in Christ Jesus our Lord.
	As this is true of Our Lord, Who now indwells us, so ought our
beings now give evidence of the same, by virtue of the fact that we are
now spiritual beings, the vessels through whom God has chosen to make
known all the riches of Himself. Because we are indwelled by Christ, and
it is now His life that is our own, our very nature should, as well, be
that of forgiveness. We should find that we have no choice but to
forgive in every instance, in every circumstance. None of us can experience a more severe situation than did our Lord Jesus Christ at His
crucifixion. He was the only begotten Son of God, living a life of
perfect obedience to God, bringing the very salvation of God to the
people who were called by His name, who were His constituted nation of
believers. Jesus Christ, was the One Who brought healing and comfort and
enlightenment to the Children of Israel. He healed their sick, raised
their dead, and fed their hunger. He issued forth the light of God into
the darkness of this realm, and His own people turned viciously against
Him. They desired rather the darkness of this realm, and chose to
crucify the One Who was their Savior. They maliciously mocked and
scourged Him, then led Him to the hill to be nailed to the wooden cross,
in public display as if He were a vile criminal. He had committed no crime except to love them and to love them entirely. Hanging on that cross, He could have called forth legions of angelic hosts to wipe the entire world clean of the wretchedness that had pounded those nails into His hands and feet. But rather, He chose to love them, chose to love us to the utmost. His triumphant nature of Being still rings forth in illuminating radiance through that dark cloud of human depravity, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do."
	    We have no basis of comparison in anything that we suffer, even
though we do suffer in this realm. No one can treat us with any more
vileness than that with which Christ was dealt. Oh, we may cry out that
we are abused, that we are being cheated, that we are being falsely
persecuted. But it matters not to the will of God in bringing us into
those situations. We are to forgive, and to forgive and to forgive again
and again and again. Not because we have to, not because we know we
should, not because we like to suffer, but because forgiveness is part
of us! It is now to be as natural a part of our spiritual being, as it is to breath in our physical bodies. We don't think about breathing, our
lungs just respond to the stimulus of the brain in a very natural and
orderly response to the fact that our bodies need oxygen in order to
live. There is no conscious thought process, no determined efforts on
our part. We just breathe. So it needs to be with forgiveness. It is
part of our spiritual essence. It should not even be a conscious
determination on our part. It is vital to our spiritual life, and our
spirit should naturally respond to the Holy Spirit as He directs our
spiritual growth. We forgive, not because we want to, or have to, but
because there is no other way for us to live since we are now new
spiritual creations in Christ Jesus.
	I hope that this will sink into each one of us in a most living
manner. If it does, it will entirely change the way we look at who we
are now by nature. I know that I have used the excuse, and I have heard
it many times that we are what we are by nature. We can't help our
unforgiveness, and our reactions and our responses to this or that,
because that is just the way we are. We use our nationality traits, our
upbringing, our physical makeup as reasons as to why we will respond in
any given set of situations. But it is no longer valid as an excuse to
cite anything of our old nature. That nature is dead! The only nature
that we now can fall back on is that of our spiritual nature in Christ
Jesus, and that wipes away any excuse for not being a living expression
of Him to all those about us.
	We can no longer claim the inability to forgive because we know
that we will not mean it. We have to mean it, and have to forgive with
all our heart. To fail to do so is to find that our very spiritual
existence is being depressed. Just as the physical body, when it is ill,
needs to focus all its efforts and energy in fighting off the infection
or the sickness, and thereby other aspects of our physical being suffer,
so is the same true of our spiritual life. When the natural element of
forgiveness is choked off, we suffer a tremendous set‑back to our
spiritual growth and development. It is not that we are dying
spiritually, because we are eternally secure in the grace of God in
Christ Jesus, but rather our spiritual being becomes weakly and frail
and we suffer the spiritual anguish and torment that goes far beyond
anything that we could imagine in our physical senses. There is a
deadness in our being because we are quenching the effective working of
the Holy Spirit to manifest Christ in us. If we fail to forgive, if we
hold anything against anyone, great or small, we are denying the
effective work of Christ, the Person of Christ, the Love of Christ. It
is that serious, and it is that consequential. Just as when we cease to
breathe, we cease our physical life, so when we cease to show forth the
spiritual nature of our spiritual being in Christ, we lack the spiritual
faculties to continue operation in the spiritual realm. We are arrested
and imprisoned by a developmental anomaly that restricts any of the joy
and the peace of the Holy Spirit that should be, as well, our nature in
Christ.
	    Our miserable existence can very easily be explained in the fact
that we are not living forth in the forgiving nature of Christ. That
simple reality is at the very core of how we are seen by this realm, as
living witnesses of God. As He so fully forgave us, and so tremendously
00%,	loved us in Christ, so are we to be that same expression of the
spiritual reality Who now is our very life!
	    Eph. 4:32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving
one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.