To a certain extent, we love rivalries and grudges. We'll never forget the one player who kept our favorite team out of the playoffs, and maybe we get animated when thinking about the person who challenged us the most in school. It's one thing to have healthy competition or have a joke with an opposing team in the realm of sports, but how often do we let grudges posses us in our daily lives?
We are constantly wronging other people and being wronged, even if there was never an intention to cause pain. So what do you do with that? Do you remain bitter against the person? Do you avoid them if possible and just barely make an attempt to be civil if you must interact?
Once, when one of Jesus' disciples came to him asking Jesus how many times he should forgive his brother, Jesus answered that we should forgive as many times as we are wronged (see Matthew 18:15-35). That's a hard pill to swallow! How could we ever forgive someone seven times, let alone seventy-seven or more?
We look at what God has done for us. We've sinned against him. For as much as we may try to do what is right, we've failed to keep God's law perfectly as he demands. Seeing that we were powerless to do anything to save ourselves, he sent his own Son to live a perfect life in our place and to suffer the punishment that we deserved when he died on the cross. In Jesus we have complete forgiveness, not just for seven sins, or even seventy-seven sins, but for all of them. We are perfect in God's sight because he's made us that way.
So let us take that forgiveness to others. Let's see the times that we've hurt others and ask for forgiveness. Let's see the times that we've been hurt and forgive, really forgive. No grudges; no throwing the hurt back in someone's face at a later date. Forgiven and forgotten, just as God has forgiven us in Jesus.
We need God's forgiveness and he's given it to us freely. Let's do the same for each other, always giving thanks to God in how we treat one another!
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