Bible Text: Matthew 6:14-15 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living |
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6:14-15
How far will a person go to avenge wrongdoing? Perhaps the answer lies in knowing how deep the hurt goes and how long one will feed the fires of bitterness. The story that I am about to relate is absolutely factual. To protect the person who related it to me first-hand, as well as those who are involved, I have changed his name, but the facts are painfully accurate in every detail.
In World War 2, William was a little boy, barely old enough to remember when the Japanese came and seized his father, sending him to prison and accusing his mother of being a spy. Far from being a spy, his mother had come to China as a missionary, had married a businessman and had remained in China to be near her husband and family when the Communist forces of Mao Tse-Tung overthrew the government. Because of their Christian faith, the mother along with her children were placed under house arrest and for many years were virtually prisoners with meager rations year after year, barely above starvation subsistence.
“If it’s the last thing I do,” vowed William, “I will seek out the Japanese who first imprisoned my father and get my revenge.” Then as William grew older he came to realize that revenge is not really in keeping with the teaching of Christ. He finally gave up the idea of taking a life, but the bitterness was still there. He knew the name of the man who sent his father to prison and the city in Japan where he lived. “The least I can do,” he reasoned, “is to go to his place of employment and expose his war crimes and embarrass him, paying him back for the suffering and humiliation he caused my family.”
William’s long awaited pay-day finally came. Immediately prior to Deng Xiaoping’s trip to the United States, a number of Chinese were allowed to leave the mainland as a goodwill gesture. William was one of them. His first stop was Japan where he determined to humiliate and embarrass the man who had caused his family to suffer.
According to plan, Tokyo was his first stop. He was met at the airport and taken to the home of a friend, and during the next few days, William picked up a book that changed his rendezvous with revenge. It was by a Dutch woman he had never heard of, a woman whose name was Corrie ten Boom. What he read touched his heart.
In her book Corrie told of her experience of being taken from her home and put in a concentration camp at Ravensbruk. She told how God had delivered her. After the war she returned to Germany with the message that forgiveness is the only answer to bitterness and revenge. Corrie told how that she had been confronted by one of the S.S. guards from the very prison where she faced death hour by hour and that the guard had thrust forth his hand, saying he too had become a believer and that God had forgiven him. “Forgive me, fraulein,” said the guard with his hand outstretched.
As Corrie wrote how God touched her heart and made her realize that she too must forgive, God began speaking to the heart of this man who was on a mission of revenge. As God began to reprove him for the attitude which he knew was wrong, the bitterness and hatred began to subside. The mission of revenge was forsaken.
Bitterness may not send you across oceans or continents, but it can surely send you into a tailspin when it comes to your own spiritual life. Just as God met Corrie ten Boom and the friend I described today, He can meet you. Bitterness is a killer; it will kill you. “Father,” said Jesus, “forgive them…” And so must you. Forgiveness is first a decision of the will. It is the mental attitude that says, “Yes, God I will forgive as You help me.” Having made that decision, your heart will follow the lead of your head. Forgiveness is the answer, God’s only answer, to the bitterness of wrongdoing.
Resource reading: Luke 23:26-56
