Forgive One Another Freely - WHY WE NEED TO BE FORGIVING

We  must be willing to forgive those who offend us, whether they are part of the Christian congregation or not.  Doing this helps us  to keep peace with our family members, our friends, other people, and Jehovah.  The Bible shows that we are required to forgive others no matter how often they often offend us. Jesus told a story about a slave who owed his master a lot of money, and this story helps us to see why we must be forgiving.

The slave owed his master so much money that it would take him 60 million days of work to pay it back.   His master forgave him and told him that he did not have to pay the money back.  But what would this slave do in  similar situation? He had loaned money  to another slave.  It was the amount of money that a worker could earn in only 100 days.  He refused to forgive that slave and demanded that he pay the money back.  The second slave begged for more time to pay the money back, but the first slave had  put him into prison. The master, who had shown mercy to the first slave. got very angry. He told the first slave that he should have shown mercy to the other man. So the master had the slave put into prison until he could pay the money back. - MATTHEW 18:21-34.

What does Jesus want us to learn from this story?  He explained that Jehovah will not always be willing to forgive us if we truly do not forgive others.  (Matthew 18:35)  We are imperfect and sin often. It is not possible for us to obey Jehovah perfectly.  But he is willing to forgive us.  In fact, he is willing to act as if  our sins never happened. So if we want to be a friend of Jehovah, we must forgive other people.  This is what Jehovah meant  when he said in the Sermon on the Mount: "If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you; whereas if you do not forgive their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." - MATTHEW 6:14, 15.

You probably agree that we should forgive other people, but you may feel that it is not always easy to do so.  That is because we can have strong emotions when we have been offended by others. For example, we might feel angry or betrayed. Maybe we feel that we need to make sure the person is punished for what he did, or maybe we want to make him suffer as we have.  We might be so upset that we feel we will never be able to forgive the other person.  If you have similar feelings, what can you do so that you can be willing to forgive  other, as Jehovah asks us to do?



Next time: Forgive One Another Freely - UNDERSTAND WHY YOU FEEL THE WAY YOU DO

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