FULFILLING OUR PURPOSE

Why God Takes Our Unforgiveness So Seriously

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Matthew 6:14-15

The Lord's prayer is one of the most well-known passages of scripture worldwide. Many Christian traditions recite the Lord's prayer daily as part of their liturgy. One would be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn't recited or heard the Lord's prayer at some point in their life. But it’s interesting to me how often people miss what Jesus is actually instructing us to pray in this model prayer.

There is one clause in the Lord's prayer that Jesus attaches a condition to, and it involves forgiveness. We have found most people are surprised to learn that the condition is the exact opposite of what we would expect. If I were to predict the condition about forgiveness that Jesus would ask us to pray in a model prayer, it would be something like this: “Lord, help me forgive others the way you have forgiven me,” but it is the exact opposite of that. What Jesus is actually telling us to pray is, “Dear Heavenly Father, please use the standard I use in dealing with the people who wound me as the standard you use to relate to me.” You wouldn’t believe how many confused looks I get when I point this out to people. Why? Why are people so surprised when they realize that God ties how we forgive others with how He relates to us? The answer lies in understanding why God created us and why He redeemed us.

According to the creation account in Genesis, God created man to know Him and to be a reflection of His glory to the world. That’s what He meant when He said, “Let us make man in our image.” We were created to be a mirror that reflects God’s glory to all of creation. When Adam and Eve sinned, that reflection was distorted. It was as if a huge bucket of slime was poured over the mirror. The problem was, none of us could clean our own mirror, much less anyone else’s. Anything we tried just smeared it and made it worse. The only solution to restore us to His image was for the perfect Lamb of God to redeem us through His shed blood on the Cross so that we could fulfill our created purpose of reflecting His glory. In essence, the blood of Jesus cleaned our mirror so that we could reflect God’s glory to the world.

Man’s primary purpose was codified in the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which is:

Q. What is the chief end (purpose) of man?

A. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Simply put, we exist to glorify God by honoring His Word and living our lives in such a way that others see Jesus in us. In Matthew 5:16, Jesus commands us to, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” It is important to understand that when Jesus says “your light,” He is not talking about a light we generated from within ourselves. Jesus is referring to His light shining in us that reflects His Life. We were redeemed so that we could reclaim the primary purpose we were created for: mirroring God’s glory to the world.

Countless songs and poems have waxed eloquently about the romantic nature of the moonlight. I love strolling on the beach at night, walking hand in hand with Toni with just the moonlight illuminating our path. It is one of our happy places. But it’s all an illusion. The moon doesn’t actually produce light. It doesn't illuminate anything. It is just a dark sphere spinning in a fixed orbit in outer space. It has and never will generate light. The light that illuminates our late-night strolls is actually sunlight reflecting off the moon's dark surface and bouncing back down to the beach we are walking on. We call it moonlight because that’s the direction it seems to come from, but the light comes from a much greater entity that is unseen by us at night.

When we are abiding in Christ, His life expresses Himself in us, and others see Him in the works we do. Obedience and holiness are always the expression of abiding in Christ and result in God-works flowing through us that reflect HIs glory to others. We fulfill our purpose when we live in such a way that people are drawn to the Jesus they see in us. People may see light in us, but when we abide, they will realize that it is Jesus who produces that light in us. Others will see God’s glory in us when we love as Jesus loved, endure suffering as Jesus did, respond to mistreatment as Jesus did, and forgive the way He forgave us.

This is why God expects forgiven people to forgive others, so much so that He connects His forgiveness with ours. This is the reason, according to Matthew 18:21-35, God the Father hands us over to tormentors when we don’t forgive. Our unforgiveness distorts our ability to reflect God's grace and glory to the people around us and clouds our ability to share the Gospel effectively. I believe one of the primary reasons so many of our churches are struggling today is because of unforgiveness. The watching world is looking at us and saying, “You want us to believe in the forgiveness of God, yet you are not forgiving each other.”

One of the principles that I live by is to never eat BBQ prepared by a vegetarian. It’s just not going to turn out right. No, I want my BBQ prepared by a big overweight dude with BBQ sauce in his beard. I want to know that he has ingested all that he can and he’s sharing the excess with us. The watching world wants to see that we have tasted the Grace of God, that it has filled us to overflowing, and we are sharing the excess with everyone around us. They need to see that forgiveness is a natural outflow of our relationship with Jesus so that the glory of God shines through us to them

God is never more glorified in us than when we forgive!

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