The Right Response

COL 3:13 NIV

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

The world is what it is today because we have learnt how to count scores and keep records of wrongs. Our sense of 'worth' and 'value' is offended when people wrong us and we feel it is our sacred duty to right these wrongs and correct the faults. This attitude May work for those who aspire to no standards at all or who live by the standards of the world, but for as many as aspire to God's standards, then we strive for a higher level of responsibility and accountability.

Offences are bound to come. Human relationships have not evolved to become faultless and perfect. Because we are all human beings, with our weaknesses and peculiarities, we will offend others, either deliberately or inadvertently. How we now handle these issues speaks a lot about which standard we uphold and live by: God's, or the world's.

God's standard is exemplary; he does not ask us to do what He has not done himself or demand from us what He has not given us power to do. When we were the worst of people, and we scorned and rejected him, He sent his one and only Son to die for the sins of the whole world. He didn't have to do it, He did it Anyway, because He loved us so much. He wiped our slate clean, by forgiving us all our sins in the present and giving us a promise that if we only confessed and forsook them, even future sins are forgiven, as long as it was not too late. He then calls us to the same standard, asking us to relate the same way with our fellow man, who He also died for. The world is looking for change, the world is hungry for a new direction and it is those of us with a new heart that will lead the new change, because what you don have, you can't give.

Has the change in heart occurred in you? Have you learnt to forgive others the way God has forgiven you? Can you wipe the slate clean for others the same way God did the same for you? His time of favour is here.