What almost kept me from experiencing the amazing view of Fontana Lake and experiencing a little taste of life on the edge was my fear of climbing an 80 foot open stairway to the top of a fire-tower, but what keeps many of us from really living life on the edge and experiencing the best God has for us isn’t a fear of heights, or a lack of money, or being stuck in the wrong job or without a job all together. The greatest obstacle to our experiencing life on the edge is our unwillingness to forgive. As we have worked our way through Romans 12 I hope that one thing has become clear, living on the edge comes when we are in right relationships. It starts with a right relationship with God where we are fully surrendered to him, it continues with a right relationship with the world around us where we limit the power of the messages we receive from this world that are not from God. Experiencing the fullness of life comes when we are in a right relationship with ourselves which means seeing ourselves the way God does and then working to establish strong relationships with our family and friends within the body of Christ. God has created us to be in healthy relationships. Life is found in healthy relationships so when we are unwilling to forgive those who have hurt us it not only keeps us from experiencing a relationship with that person, it keeps us from experiencing the fullness of any relationship and therefore keeps us from experiencing the life God wants for us.
A number of years ago I had a friend who hurt and disappointed me and our friendship did not end well. For years I held on to the bitterness of that relationship and all that happened was that I began destroying myself. Not only was that anger and resentment eating me alive, it was keeping me from entering into new and life giving relationships with others. As long as that bitterness burned in my heart there was no room for love to develop toward anyone. Many people have talked about how anger is like a cancer on our soul that slowly eats away at everything until it destroys all of our relationships and it true, bitterness and an unforgiving spirit doesn’t hurt anyone else, it only hurts and destroys us and to remove that cancer we have to be willing to forgive and Romans 12 begins to show us what forgiveness looks like.
Before we read this last section, I want us to get practical for a moment and so I am going to ask you to think about the person who has hurt you the most or the person that today you are struggling to forgive. It might be a parent or a child; it might be your spouse, or an ex-spouse. It might be the bully who terrorized you as a child, an employer who destroyed your self-esteem, a coworker who has not been honest about you or a friend who disappointed you. As we think about this person, or persons, let’s hear God’s word - Romans 12:14-21.
Now your first thought in hearing this scripture might be to think that this kind of action toward those who are persecuting us is just not possible, but it is. God would not give us these commands and directions if it were not possible, so we need to take this teaching seriously and this is not just the teaching of Paul – this is the teaching and example of Jesus. In Jesus sermon on the mount, which is another message that God gives in order to help us understand what it looks like to live life on the edge, Jesus says: Matthew 5:43-45.
So Jesus is also clear that we need to be willing to forgive our enemy but even more powerful than his teaching is his example. When Jesus was betrayed and deserted by his friends he didn’t become bitter. When he was falsely accused, beaten, forced to carry a cross and finally crucified, Jesus didn’t lash out in anger or hold a grudge against those who persecuted him, in fact, from the cross Jesus says, Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing. Both the teaching and the example of Jesus show us that God’s will for us is to forgive and the reason God wants us to forgive is that forgiveness opens the door to life. It was Jesus willingness to forgive on the cross that led to the resurrection and new life so we see that for all of us forgiveness leads to life.
If we want to experience the power of resurrection, or life on the edge, we need to be willing to forgive and Romans 12:14 begins to show us what forgiveness looks like. Now to bless someone means that we wish them well and desire God’s blessing, God’s riches and God’s mercy to be a part of their lives. To curse someone is to wish and even ask God to bring about their destruction. Our natural instinct is to curse those who persecute us. We want them to get what they deserve, we want them to hurt because they have hurt us, so the thought of blessing those who have hurt us might seem impossible and if we left it up to our feelings it would be, but the first step in blessing those who curse us, or overcoming the evil that is directed toward us by others is to simply make the conscious decision to forgive.
Romans 12:14 is a command not a suggestion. Bless those who persecute you is not just a good idea God wants to offer us – it is a command that God is giving us. It’s the same with Jesus teaching in Matthew 5. Love you enemy is not a suggestion, it is a command and since God commands us to do it – it can’t be something that requires us to feel like doing it because we can’t always command our feelings. We may never feel like forgiving someone, we may never feel like blessing them, but our feelings don’t matter – this is not a matter of the heart it is a matter of the mind and will. We need to make the decision to forgive and allow God to bring the change of heart in his time.
So can you make the decision today to forgive the person you were thinking of a moment ago? Can we step out in faith and say, God I want you to bless this person, or God I am making the decision today to forgive this person. I’d encourage you to go home or even at the close of worship today to pull out the next steps and complete step #2. God, today I am asking you to bless… and then fill in the name. The first step to overcoming the evil that is aimed at us is to begin a process of forgiveness and love directed toward those people. I’m sure Jesus didn’t feel like forgiving those who had just driven nails into his hands and feet, but he said the words, he made the decision to forgive and I wonder if it was the power of saying the words that helped Jesus truly forgive and love his enemies.
Now you may be asking yourself what good is it to make this statement if our heart is not in it – good question. The answer is that forgiveness doesn’t come in one big step – instead it is a long slow process. Making the decision to forgive and asking God to bless is just the first step and Jesus then gives us the second step. Go back to Matthew 5:44 pray for those who persecute you. Prayer is the second step in overcoming evil through forgiveness and it may be the only step we take for weeks and months and years to come, but I will guarantee you this, if we pray on a regular basis for those who have hurt us or those who are persecuting us - something will happen. Those directing evil at us may not stop – those who have hurt us may not suddenly see the error of their ways and come to ask us to forgive them, but something will change because we will change. As we pray, our hearts soften and in time our feelings toward those who have hurt us will also soften so that forgiveness will flow naturally from our lips and our hearts.
While prayer is the second step, Paul shows us that we need to take this further. In Romans 12:15 Paul says, rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. Now when we read this verse we need to remember that Paul is not talking about mourning and rejoicing with our family and friends - that’s easy. We don’t need to be told to do that because we will naturally do that. What Paul is saying here is that we need to rejoice and mourn with those who are persecuting us, that’s the context here. Paul is talking about our relationship with those who are working against us, our enemies, so when our enemies rejoice we are to rejoice and when they mourn we are to mourn. Now let’s be clear that Paul is not talking here about political relationships, he’s talking about personal ones. The call to mourn and rejoice is a call to reach out in a personal way to those individuals who have hurt us and while again this seems impossible – if we will step out and do it, we will experience the power of God.
Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsie were Christians who were sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp during WWII because they helped hide Jews in their home. Betsie died in that camp and their story is told in the amazing book, The Hiding Place. After the war, Corrie travelled around Germany talking about her experience in the camps and the power of God and at one of those meetings she recognized a man in the audience and realized he had been one of the guards at Ravensbruck. The guard came up to Corrie after her talk and introduced himself as one of the guards from the camp she had been in, "But since that time," he went on, "I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well.” That’s when he extended his hand and said, "Will you forgive me?"
Corrie said she stood there and remembered her sister Betsie who had died in part because of his work and wondered how he could ask her to erase her sister’s slow terrible death simply for the asking? And for what seemed hours Corrie wrestled with the most difficult thing she ever had to do. Corrie said, “The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us and so I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion,” she said. “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. " So very mechanically she stuck out her hand and took the hand of the guard and in that moment Corrie said an incredible thing took place. “The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
"I forgive you!" I cried. "With all my heart!"
For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then.
God brought healing and power to Corrie because she was willing to mourn with this man as he confessed his sin and rejoice with him in his experience of God forgiveness and new life. This is living on the edge and it is not easy, but as we see, it is where the power of God is and it is what brings us the excitement of life.
So what might it look like for us to rejoice with those who have hurt us? Several years after my friend and I parted ways I got a call from him and he asked if we could get together. When we did, he shared with me that he was thinking about entering graduate school and wanted to know if I would be willing to write him a letter of reference. I have to tell you that I felt like I was being used and I wanted to say no, but to follow Jesus meant to let go of my bitterness and even though I didn’t feel like doing it, I gave him the reference and learn a little bit about what it means to rejoice with those who rejoice.
Maybe rejoicing with those who rejoice means sending a note when we hear about something positive happening in their lives. Maybe it is offering a word of grace when we see them and know something good is going on. And we mourn when they mourn by offering words and notes of encouragement when we know they are going through a difficult time. Now let me say that some pain and some circumstances may require us to keep our distance from those who have hurt us, and in those relationships we need to stand back and simply pray, but those prayers can help us have an attitude of joy if we see real change in the lives of others, and those prayers can cause us to weep when we know they are truly hurting.
Paul gives more direction on how to treat with our enemy in Romans 12:20a. Again, these are not easy things to do and we need to get involved in situations like this only after we have spent some serious time in prayer and maybe after we have asked others for their counsel and support – but if this is where God is leading us, we need to walk this journey because this is where we will find life.
The resurrection of Jesus shows us that we can overcome evil with good. When we make the decision to forgive, when we pray for those who have hurt us and reach out to bless them in words and actions we begin to break the power of evil and begin to experience the life God wants for us. Jesus did all of this and while it was not an easy road, at the end was resurrection and new life. Living on the edge is not easy, it involves surrender, sacrifice, service, forgiveness and love, at times it involves carrying a cross – but in the end we stand victorious – in the end we experience life.
Next Steps
Connect:
• Begin the process of connecting with (forgiving) those who have hurt you (or are persecuting you) by naming them today.
• Identify a friend who will walk with you as you seek to offer forgiveness.
Serve:
• Make the decision today to forgive the person you identified above.
• Write out the following prayer: "God, today I am asking you to bless __________________________________.
Grow:
• What will it mean to rejoice and/or mourn with the person who has harmed you?
• Can you step out in faith and offer this love and grace this week?
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