Failure to forgive others causes us more trouble than we realize.
We are all too quick to find fault when others have wronged us or when we think they have, but all too slow to forgive and forget. We are always certain the other person was 100% in the wrong but we were blameless. We never want to look honestly into our own herts or listen to the tone of our own voices in a disagreement. We are not listening to Jesus' "Judge not that ye be not judged" (Matt.7:1).
When we judge another, we bring judgment down on ourselves. By condemning him, we condemn ourselves (Matt.7:2).
You say, "How can I condemn myself?" We don't understand because we do not comprehend God's laws of reaping and sowing (Gal.6:7). If we give love, we receive love. If we sow hate, we receive hate. And so the list goes on.
Our problem began with Eve who determined to be as God, knowing good and evil (Gen.3:5). She wanted to make the judgments as to what was right and what was wrong. Since then, man has always been certain he could run the moral universe without God's help and so began today's deadly humanistic philosophy. We judge our world, we judge others, and we judge ourselves using our human reasoning rather than the laws God gave us. We want to be God!!
The prayer our Lord asked us to pray says, in the Living Bible, "Forgive us our sins just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us" (Matt.6:12).
When we have been wronged or think we have, we are asked to forgive, and not to make a judgment about the case. We are not asked to be a lawyer or a judge; we are spared the responsibility of deciding who was at fault. All we are asked to do is forgive! We are relieved of the guilt as we forgive "not seven times, but seventy-seven times" (Matt.18:22). We are to let God do the judging:
"Vengeance is mine, I will repay saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink, for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom.12:19).
If we fail to forgive, judgment falls in a variety of ways. A bitter root grows within us which can cause emotional and physical problems. Someone in the healing ministry noted that bitterness and unforgiveness often prevent healing in the prayer lines. Long-term anger and bitterness make us physically and emotionally ill. We always suffer the consequences of our sins.
We must not judge, but be willing to forgive others and ourselves. But if we ask God to forgive us, we must not allow Satan, our "accuser" (Rev.12:10) to continue to harass us. Jesus died to set us free from sin and guilt, and if we still feel guilty after we have repented, we can be assured the accusation is not from God!
There are those who teach that since God is a God of love, He would never act as a Judge. They do not believe the Bible as written, but make their own human laws to replace God's laws. It is because God loves the world so much that He judges it to get rid of sin; sin in intolerable to Him.
Judgment is falling on our world today because of our refusal to let God be not only our lawgiver, but also our Judge.
© 1999, Doreen Palmer