Forgiveness

April 9, 2022

Devotions:

          “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”  ‭Ephesians‬ ‭4:30-32‬ ‭KJV‬‬

        Paul’s instruction to the believer is to not grieve the Holy Spirit. This is a word picture in the Greek. The picture is a man comes home early one day and finds his wife in bed with another man and is grieved by the betrayal. The meaning is that the Holy Spirit is grieved when we believers turn to the world for help rather than Him. We are putting our trust in the natural, material realm rather than looking to God. He has all the resources that we need in this life.

          In yielding ourselves to negative emotions that Paul lists here, bitterness, wrath, anger…. We are not availing ourselves of what God has provided and we do not see ourselves as we once were nor  as we are now. We were once in total rebellion against God and offensive to Him but He chose to forgive us of our sin against Him, which was worse than any offense that can happen to us. As God freely forgave us in Christ of the horrendous wrong that we had done against Him, so should we forgive others of the wrong, which is minor in comparison, they have done against us. This takes the power of the Holy Spirit and the revelation of who we are in Christ. 

          So do not grieve the Holy Spirit by holding offense against others but turn to Him, receive God’s forgiveness for you and forgive others.