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This week we turn our attention to Luke chapter 17. Please read verses 1-19 every day this week and, if possible, use a different translation each day, asking God to open your eyes to fresh revelation from His Word
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Luke 17:1-5 (New Living Translation)
‘One day Jesus said to his disciples, “There will always be temptations to sin, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting! It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin. So watch yourselves! “If another believer sins, rebuke that person; then if there is repentance, forgive. Even if that person wrongs you seven times a day and each time turns again and asks forgiveness, you must forgive.” The apostles said to the Lord, “Show us how to increase our faith.”’
I remember one occasion in my place of work where a colleague said something rather quite hurtful to another member of my team. I won’t go into detail about what it was but I can talk about the extent of the damage it caused. The guy on my team was really, really upset and every time we talked about this other person, you could almost see the anger in his face. His words were full of resentment and bitterness.
I kept on encouraging him to go and sort it out but he wouldn’t. He seemed to be quite content in his position and would keep pouring out vitriolic statements about this other person. Eventually, I got so tired of it that I went to talk to the other person in an attempt to get her to apologise for her words so that we could move on. She was reluctant to do so and said something like “I have nothing to apologise for”. I’m sure you’ve heard similar statements in the past! Well, after some days of persuasion, she eventually decided that she wouldn’t say sorry but she would buy a gift as a token of her desire for reconciliation.
Sure enough, the next morning, there was a gift on the desk next to me where my teammate sat. He arrived at work sometime later, saw the note that just stated who it was from, and threw it immediately in the bin. He said to me that there was no way he would ever forgive her even if she bought him presents every day for the rest of his life. Sometime later, the lady left the company and so we never saw an apology or any forgiveness.
Jesus is presenting a huge challenge for us in our verses today. Firstly, He is warning His disciples to be on their guard to ensure that they don’t entice others to ‘err’ in their walk with God. We briefly looked at that yesterday and I think that most of us would agree that we shouldn’t tempt others to sin nor do anything that causes anyone to stumble in their faith. However, Jesus goes on to talk about a second strand to the teaching that is much harder for many Christians to accept. I’ve heard so many Christian friends use phrases like “I’ll forgive but I’ll never forget” or “They’ve had their chance, I forgave them once but they’ve done the same thing again”.
The ‘boundary’ that Jesus is using for a forgiving attitude is seemingly limitless. I’ve heard people try to justify their unforgiveness by saying that the person isn’t truly repentant and so they don’t have to forgive. Well, Jesus qualifies what He means in the 2nd verse “If a person asks for forgiveness, you must forgive” This is such a high standard and so contrary to culture that the disciples respond with “Lord, teach us how to increase our faith!” It’s as if they’re saying that they can’t possibly do what their being asked to do. We’ll look at this more tomorrow, but for today, my prayer is that we all understand what God is asking of us: We are to guard ourselves against causing people to sin and always be ready to forgive.
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