God’s job description is to cover the entire creation with His nature. His chosen strategy is you and I. By placing His nature in us and allowing us to re-present Him in the geography we inhabit, God is fulfilling His mission, and expressing His love to us simultaneously.
I start here with every stronghold I address because we must know that our freedom is first about the Kingdom of God, and second, about us. We benefit from God being committed to His job description, in the same way we benefit from the sun being at the center of the Solar System. Our freedom is an outgrowth of God’s absolute commitment to His mission. If He actually put us first, the whole system would implode. Putting us second is the most loving and generous thing God can do for us. His first priority is Being Himself, the only thing that could ever actually allow us to be ourselves.
Having set this foundation in place, it is important then to recognize that the God whose nature we carry does not love conditionally, and His emotions are not subject to anyone else’s behavior. If they were, He would cease to be God. No one can make God cease being Love. In the face of evil, injustice and pain, God stays absolutely true to His nature.
Forgiveness, our forgiveness of those who have wronged us, is not some requirement we face in order to fulfill a mandate to be good christians. Forgiveness is God’s gift to us to allow us to be fully ourselves (repositories of His Nature) in the face of evil, injustice and pain. Forgiveness is a gift that God gives us so that we might be able to be free, right now, in the middle of this still fallen world. It is a gift that allows us to continue to love and not have our well-being be subject to anyone else’s behavior.
The greatest obstacles to our receiving and using this gift are our misperceptions about forgiveness; what it is and what it is not. Over the next several posts, I want to help us all tap into one of the greatest gifts that God has given us. I hope you want this too.
