Total Forgiveness: Achieving God's Greatest Challenge

by R T Kendall Ministries Inc.

Love ‘keeps no record of wrongs’ (1 Cor. 13:5). Why do we keep records? To use them. To prove what happened. To wave it before someone who doubts what actually happened. A husband may say to his wife in a moment of anger, ‘I’ll remember that.’ And he does! She may say to him, ‘I can never forget this.’ And she doesn’t! So many marriages could be healed overnight if both parties would stop pointing the finger. Pointing the finger, a common problem in human history (Isa. 58:9), shows that one has kept a record of wrongs. Love is a choice. Total forgiveness is a choice. It is not a feeling – at first – but an act of the will. It is the choice to tear up the record of wrong. As we observed above, we clearly see the evil that was done, but we erase it – or destroy the record – before it becomes lodged in the heart. This way, resentment does not have a chance to grow. But when we say, ‘I’ll remember that’, when we have been hurt or maligned, we fertilise the soil then and there for an abiding resentment. When we develop a lifestyle of total forgiveness we learn to erase the wrong rather than file it away in our mental computer. When we do this all the time – that’s what I call a lifestyle – we not only avoid bitterness, but experience total forgiveness as a feeling. It is not initially a feeling; it is a painful choice at first. But later we feel it – and it is a good feeling.