Hajja Salesjana Apr-June 2019

23 H AJJA S ALESJANA plaining to his dad that the reason he hit Mary was that she hit him first. Like the children in this all-too-familiar scene, we often have good reasons for striking back at people who have mistreated us. Many times we are perfectly right. In accordance with principles of strict justice, people who wrong us ought to repent and make amends for the damage they have done. God calls us to show mercy to others Although this approach makes sense on one level, it can be fatal to us on another. If it’s reasonable to hold others to a standard of strict justice, it’s equally reasonable to hold ourselves to the same standard. Had the Lord demanded payment for the debt we piled up because of our sins, it would have cost each of us our lives. Death would have been only fair punishment for us. What else could we expect? The Lord, however, dealt with us according to a different standard, a standard of mercy. He was not put off by our sin. In the face of an endless inventory of wrongdoing and direct offenses against His Person, He sent His Son to die an ignominious death to cancel our debt to Him. “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man — though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” Instead of exacting what we owed Him, the Lord forgave us. Paul says that the Lord “canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this He set aside, nailing it to the Cross.” If we want the Lord to release us from our wrongdoing, we must release others from the wrongs they have done to us. This is what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. Instructed by Jesus Himself, we ask the Father to bestow the same measure of forgiveness on us as we bestow on others. If we have been stingy with our forgive­ ness until now, we had best hasten to become more generous. We ought to understand the consequences of praying the Lord’s Prayer. We don’t want to commit ourselves to a limited measure of forgiveness and mercy each time we say, “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” If we are harboring resentment, grudges, or bitterness against others, the New Testament commands us to put them away. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” When we hold a grudge, we are holding a claim against someone. We write out spiritual IOUs. We keep strict accounts, planning to exact the very last penny. In our ledger, we hold IOUs against our parents (for quarreling between themselves and manipulating us); against brothers and sisters (for belittling us and getting more parental attention, or so it seemed); against spouses (for some petty fault or slip of the tongue); against children (for lack of respect and for turning out different than we had planned). We hold IOUs against friends, neighbors, coworkers, acquaintances, and so on. If we are to experience freedom ourselves,