Forgiveness Is Love

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God Is Government called Your Daily Bread. Taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focused discussion will be on forgiveness is love. If God is guided and directed by supernatural spiritual principles, then you be.

If God is the victor over Satan, then you be the victor over Satan. You be like him. That’s it. Have you ever stopped to think about everything you have in Christ? It’s incredible. It’s incredible what Christ has given us. First three chapters, let me remind you. They tell us these things. We have a new standing before God, a new life, a new righteousness, a new father, a new inheritance, a new citizenship, a new master, a new freedom, a new victory, a new security, a new peace, a new unity, a new fellowship, a new joy, a new spirit, new power, new ability, a new calling, a new purpose, and a new love.

That’s a lot of new stuff, and that’s all ours in Christ. And you can’t help but see this concept of love woven through the first three chapters. It’s in chapter one. In love having predestinated us. It’s in chapter two. Why did he show us mercy? For his great love, wherewith he loved us. It’s in chapter three. To know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. See, woven through the whole deal, our whole position is predicated on God’s love, see? And if this is true, he says in chapter five, you’d better walk in love.

This ought to be characteristic. In fact, other places in the Bible tell us love is the key to everything, right? And now abideth faith, hope, love, and the greatest of these is what? Love. Love is the greatest. So we are to walk in love. Now I want to show you four points out of these seven verses, and then a closing warning, and we’ll have the rest of it for that part of it anyway, next week. Four points, the plea, the pattern, the perversion, and the punishment. We see here a plea, a pattern, a perversion, and a punishment, and then a final warning.

So we say the first two points are positive, and the second two points are negative. You could see that as I read it, couldn’t you? Verses one and two, very positive. Verses three to six, very negative. Verse seven, a warning. The plea, first of all, verses one and two a, be ye therefore followers of God, mimics of God, as dear children, and walk in love. Stop right there. There’s the plea. The plea is for us to live a love life. Now I know we talk about this a lot, and you can’t help it because it’s in the Bible a lot, see? But now listen to me, people.

Remember this. Preaching or teaching in the church is not designed to impart to you information, which you will retain for the rest of your life, and in accord with which you will live. That just isn’t how it is. The secret to preaching and teaching is to keep telling you the same stuff you heard before, but you forgot in terms of your behaviour. So we never apologise for saying something we said before. God doesn’t apologise for it, nor do we. And don’t you think because you hear the word, and you hear the term, and you know it intellectually, that it isn’t for you? If it isn’t operative in your life, you’d better listen more, because you’re more accountable than you used to be.

The plea is simple. Look at verse one now. It’s a command. Be imitators of God. It’s not a suggestion, it’s a command. And sure, you have to start from the point of sinfulness, and sure, you have to start from the fact that you can’t do it, but that doesn’t change the command. You’ve got to be what you can’t be. That’s where the Spirit of God comes in. But you notice that therefore, which way does that take us? Backwards. I’ll tell you one of the things that you have to do when you teach the Bible, is you’ve got to deal with the paragraph before, and the paragraph after.

And if you do that, you’ve got to deal also with the paragraph before, the paragraph before, and the paragraph before, the paragraph before, the paragraph before, because it all hangs together. What is the therefore there for? To take you backwards. Now watch what it’s going to show you. Verse 31. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and public yelling and private whispering be put away from you along with all malice. Now, let me tell you something, people. Those are the opposite of love. You see, all of those things preclude the fact that there’s no love.

When you’re bitter towards somebody, and you have a grudge against them, and you are angry, and there’s two different words used there, whether it’s an outside blast and display of anger or an internal smoldering anger, or whether it’s clamour where you slander somebody publicly, or whether you whisper behind their back, whatever kind of malice it is, that’s the opposite of what he’s talking about. On the other hand, those things shouldn’t be there. What should be there is verse 32. Kindness. Be kind one to another. Tender heartedness and forgiveness. Those are characteristics of love.

Love is kind, love is tender, and most of all, love is what? Forgiving. It is forgiving. And you see, it is a lack of forgiveness that makes bitterness. It is an inability to forgive that makes wrath and anger. It’s an inability to forgive that makes you slander people and whisper behind their back and hold malice against them. It’s because you don’t forgive them that you hold those bitternesses and those grudges. And the reason you don’t forgive them, folks, frankly, is that you don’t want. You don’t love them. So what he’s saying here is put away all of the anti-love stuff.

Don’t let that characteristic be manifest. Don’t have characteristics of an unloving heart, but have characteristics of a loving heart. He doesn’t mention love in verse 32. He mentions kindness, tender heartedness, and forgiveness. And just to be sure you don’t miss where that comes from, he says, therefore, in order to be kind, in order to be tender hearted, and in order to be forgiving, you must imitate God in this regard. You must walk in. What love? Because it is love that is kind. It is love that is tender hearted. It is love that is forgiving.

It is non-love that is bitter, angry, wrathful, clamorous, vicious, and malicious. So it’s a therefore that takes you right back. The central thought is forgiveness, people. And let me take that this morning and kind of force it into your mind a little bit. Listen to me, measure your love today, would you? There are a lot of ways we could talk about it, but let’s deal with the text as it appears. Measure your love today by the thought of forgiveness, will you? Because I really believe, now hang on to this, I really believe that as far as we’re concerned, the greatest measuring rod of love in your life is forgiveness, okay? I mean, that’s the way God even presents his love.

Thank you for joining us in this exploration of forgiveness is love. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].