Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. (Romans 12:9)What kind of freakazoid would advocate blessing people who curse him? Somebody curses me and I’ll take care of him.
That is normal. But the weird thing of Christianity is that God calls us to something more than normal. He calls us to him. And in him, things are different.
Look at Jesus on the cross. He was dying and people were killing him and it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t do the crime but he was still having to do the time. But he looks down from the cross at those who were making fun of him and he said “Father, forgive them, because they don’t know what they are doing.”
As he is dying he forgives. Then he says, Okay, Johnny, you do the same. (He calls me Johnny because he has known me a long time) I say, how? How do I look at people who want to do me harm and bless them? His answer: I will help you.
And you know what? He does help me. I sure can’t do it myself. As far as I am concerned, hurt me and my family and a shotgun is not good enough for you.
But he says, forgive them. Why? Over in another scripture he says: because I have forgiven you.
But have I done as much to God as they have done to me? Yeah, I guess I have. I have done stupid things, I have broken laws, I have hurt people, I have been, in general, a stupid person. Yet he forgave me.
Now their version of being a stupid person may be different than mine. But even so. God calls us to a different way of looking at things. It is a way of looking at things through his eyes. And in his eyes, he forgives.
But what if they don’t ask? The people at the foot of the cross didn’t ask either. He just went ahead and did it.
And I want to tell you, it is a lot easier to live when the need for revenge isn’t sitting there inside you percolating like sorry coffee, ready to burn your insides up.
That kind of anger and resentment hurts you more than it does them anyway. They live fine with you mad. You, on the other hand, have a lot of trouble being mad for a long time. It will eat you up.
And Jesus came to forgive us. That was why he came in the first place, to forgive us and bring us back to God.
His forgiveness starts with you.
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