A young woman, a Christian, had committed some terrible mistakes. She deceived people; she made up stories; she hurt several people very badly. Those people she hurt suffered financially, emotional, and spiritually from her actions. When she was finally confronted with her sins, she said, “there is no way God can forgive me for what I have done.” She did repent, she confessed her sins before the church, and she asked for forgiveness. We know that if we ask God’s forgiveness, He will forgive us. John tells us, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (First John 1:9).

The thought occurred to me the other day that the devil uses just such things as what happened in the story above to tempt us. He uses our sins to make us think we have spoiled our relationship with God, and that we can never get it back.

I wonder how many people go through their lives believing their sins cannot be forgiven, and they just give up. They continue sinning because they believe they have no hope.

Peter was a great example of failing Jesus on more than one occasion. Jesus told him he lacked faith when he tried to walk on the water with Him. There were other times when he and the other disciples showed a lack of faith, and I’m sure they wondered if they would ever be forgiven. He certainly would have felt that way on the night Jesus was betrayed. In front of many of Jesus’ accusers, Peter denied Him three times, even saying he didn’t know the man. He cursed and swore that he was not associated with the Lord.

Paul was not any different. He went to the high priest and asked for letters of authority to go to Damascus into the synagogues to find those believers, whether men or women, to arrest and bring them bound to Jerusalem. With an appearance from the Lord, he fell trembling before the Lord and begged to know what to do to change his life. With the help of Ananias, Saul was converted, his sins forgiven, and his life was changed forever.

Paul never forgot what he did. When he wrote to Timothy, his son in the faith, he says, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (First Timothy 1:15). He goes on to say that he received mercy from God. God showed him a degree of patience that He bestowed on even the greatest offenders and sinful mankind.

He goes on to say that this kind of forgiveness could be used as a pattern to those following him in wickedness and unbelief. So, the precedent is set. God forgave, and he will continue to forgive when we confess our sins and ask for forgiveness.

Now this gives a whole new meaning to the process of our forgiving others, and it shows another way in which the devil tempts us. He creates in us a resistance to forgive others. When we don’t understand God’s forgiveness of us, we can’t understand how we should forgive others. Remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:12, “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

This was another lesson Peter had a hard time understanding. He asked Jesus, “How often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus had to tell him the story of the king that forgave his servant a huge debt and the servant in turn throwing his servant in prison for owing him a small amount of money. That is the comparison we need to remember when we are tempted to withhold our forgiveness. Our debt is greater than any debt anyone could owe us.

We can’t let the devil use our past to keep us from doing the Lord’s work by thinking we can’t be forgiven. We can’t let our past relationships with people who sin against us keep us from forgiving them and showing God’s mercy to them. Once we realize that the devil is behind both our misunderstanding of God’s forgiveness and our problems with forgiving others, we can deal with both in a much more realistic way. We can be assured that our sins can and will be forgiven, if only we will repent of them and ask God’s forgiveness. We will be able to forgive others when we realize our debt to God is greater than anyone else’s debt to us.

Sandra Oliver