More About Resentments and Forgiveness

We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol.

"These resentments had to be mastered."

The fact that people are trying to master resentments is what makes people resentful in the first place. In the previous post, "resentments" were all classified in one shape or another as works of the flesh. In effect, we try to fix or appease our pride, our feelings, ourselves, and thus we get angrier, because "the flesh" cannot be fixed. We are brought into this world "dead in our trespasses", but God the Father offers us forgiveness, adoption, and blessings.

This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, "This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done." (AA, pg 66-67)

This is just a heinous piece of bad advice, to say the least. People who commit crimes against us should not be shown the same deference which one would show to a sick friend. On the contrary, such people need to be held accountable!

I cannot imagine the pain of adults today who were molested as children, and the only solace they receive is "You uncle so-and-so was a sick man". The hurt and the pain that we feel is real, and the sense of outrage, that someone has to pay for this wickedness is also quite real.

Here comes Jesus Christ!

"1My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 2And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. " (1 John 2: 1-2)

John wrote "If a man sin" not "if a man confess" or "if a man works the Twelve Steps". Jesus' blood keeps on cleansing us (1 John 1: 7), and He keeps on justifying us (Romans 8: 32-33) at the right hand of the Father.

Jesus Christ is now the mercy seat for our sins (1 John 4: 10), in that every sin we have committed or will commit has been paid for, wiped out, and sent away.

The more we know how forgiven we are, and how much grace that God gives us through His Son, then we in turn can forgive others.

It is wrong, cruel, and just plain foolish to tell people "He was a sick man." In fact, the sins which others have done to you, the same sins that you have done, have all  been punished at the Cross.

Instead of fighting resentments, just speak forth the truth which has been done. Everything that was done to you, and the bitter outrage which summons up within us, take that and "send it away" to the Body of Christ.

He has paid for every sin. You do not have to.

"31Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: 32And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." (Ephesians 4: 31-32)

"Forgive" should be translated "be gracious to someone" or "grace someone", since we have received so much grace from God through Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul encourages us to keep receiving the grace of God:

"For if by the offence of the one the death did reign through the one, much more those, who the abundance of the grace and of the free gift of the righteousness are receiving, in life shall reign through the one -- Jesus Christ." (Romanms 5: 17, Youngs Literal Translation)

Keep receiving His grace, and in turn you can release any bondage which you may feel toward someone else.

Yet never believe for one moment that you should "just forgive". Everyone's sins were punished, paid for, and sent away in the Body of Christ. Receive this gift, and let Christ ever more bless you.