The ultimate freedom from anything anyone has done to us comes through faith in God’s sovereign goodness. When we know that he is always good, and will always handle everything with absolute justice, we can rest in our relationship with him, leaving all the responsibility for the outcome to him. We enjoy our relationship with him while he handles everyone else according to his good, pleasing, and perfect will.
Included in this study is a look at how to deal with what are often referred to as “forgiveness issues” when forgiveness would be the wrong thing to do. In relation to unrepentant people, our enemies, people who curse us, people who seek our harm, people who abuse us, there is never an instruction to forgive them.[1]
However, our freedom to love them, bless them, do good to them, and pray for them, comes from our faith in God’s goodness in handling such people. When we trust him, we experience how much he has loved us, blessed us, done good to us, even prayed for us, so that we could enter into the fullness of the new covenant in Jesus Christ.
We may still have issues of trauma experienced at the hands of others, but forgiveness is only part of the freedom issue when any of those people come to us in repentance. All the other times (the majority, it seems) require a faith relationship to God in which we are free to do good because we have faith in God’s sovereign goodness.
If you know anyone who is carrying “justice issues” in their heart because they do not believe God is good enough to do the right thing towards people who have wronged them, there should be some encouragement in this exploration of God’s word. Of course, even if you trust God with all your justice issues, there will certainly be something of encouragement for you as well.
As always, although the walk of obedient faith may require a journey to get from where we are into the experience of faith regarding painful experiences, when we know that the direction God is leading us is into faith that sets us free, we can turn our hearts towards our Father with faithful devotion and focus on what he is doing in us instead of anyone else.
© 2018 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
[1] Our last few studies have shown that there are zero instructions to forgive unrepentant people, along with many examples of not forgiving unrepentant people. The point is not to nullify what God's word does say about forgiveness, but to clarify what he says to do for our freedom when forgiveness is the wrong option.
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