The Power of Forgiveness

It is an understandable question Peter asks.  “If my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive?  If you have ever been forgiven by someone else for something done or offered forgiveness to another, you know something about the freedom and power of forgiveness.  Yet, the human side of us wonders, how often?  How many times?  Isn’t there a limit?  What about enabling? The realities of co-dependency and enabling and the need for “tough love” are all legitimate.  So once again, we bump up against the theme many of our recent text raise.  We must look at the contrast between “God’s thoughts and ways” and ours.  We struggle with what it means to live in the world and not be of the world.  So, Peter’s question is ours.

Yet, what we so often find is that when God’s timing, God’s ways, and God’s power gets ahold of us, human and normal and understandable things disappear.  Wait until you see the text for September 20^th!  Like this one, legitimate, human questions regarding forgiveness and fairness dissipate and are dissolved into God’s great store of grace and mercy.  We get freed by a power not our own.