C. S. Lewis said of Christianity, “It is a religion that you could not have guessed…it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all thee boys’ philosophies – – these over simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either.”
This resonates with me often as I read the gospels, and how Jesus paints us a picture of the Kingdom of Heaven that is a complete upside down and reverse of the world we live in now. We live in a world that tells us to take offense when we are wrong and hold that grudge, Jesus tells us it’s better to wronged than to be unloving.
1 Corinthians chapter 13 tells us exactly what love is. And one thing stands out to me as being opposed to everything in our culture today. In verse 5 it says, love “keeps no records of wrongs.”
This was written by Paul to the Corinthians who were apparently having a bit of struggle understanding the law Jesus gave us, to love one another. He says to them in the next chapter, “The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?”
As I’ve been studying this one thing keeps coming to my heart: if you’re keeping a record of wrongs, you’re wrong. That simple. No matter what wrong has been done to you, if you’re keeping a record of it (in your heart or on paper), then YOU are wrong.
I seek to cleanse my life and my heart of such thinking. To love as the Bible commands us. To love all in this way but especially fellow Christians, without keeping track of hurts, offenses and injustices.
Because despite all I’ve done in my life, my sins, the offenses I’ve committed, because when God looks at me He sees Jesus. That’s it. The Bible says He has separated my sins from me as far as the east is from the west. And if a perfect and holy God can forgive me in this way because of the blood of Jesus, then surely I, in my imperfections, can forgive and let go of the wrongs done to me.
Anna Farley 