I recently read that since 1996, rich countries have written off about $110 billion in debt from poor countries. Don’t you ignore this image?110 billion dollars!It’s an amazing debt!While I was astonished by this image, I came up with another thought: the cancellation of a huge debt makes a great statement.
When one party forgives what it owes another, it expresses its mercy. Mercy comes to us or crosses us when an unpaid debt is canceled. Mercy means a new relationship, as if debt had never existed.
- As I have already said.
- Forgiven sinners forgive sin; If you enter pastoral ministry.
- You will sin and they will sin against you; but this is where it happens: can siding against you become an opportunity for the gospel?A place to pass on.
- To others the mercy you have received; If you are called to ministry.
- You are called to apply the gospel in the face of sin; In fact.
- The extent to which we truly understand the gospel is revealed by the faithfulness with which we show mercy when we sin against ourselves.
But what exactly is mercy like? Four things come to mind
Mercy means that my goals when freckles change
The incredible mercy I have received on the cross becomes the starting point of how I react when others sin against me. The gospel suppresses my anger and my sense of justice. He reminds me daily that I have received inexhaustible mercy, and why should it happen in this mercy?Inexhaustible!
This means that when someone sins against me, my goals change; I am not trying to convince you of your sin, for the Holy Ghost will; I am not trying to ask for justice, because justice has been satisfied on the cross; I must never condemn others because they never reached my standard, because Christ reached God’s standard, His righteousness was imputed to them (2 Corinthians 5:21). The gospel allows me to forgive when they sin against me.
The gospel wakes me up every day with this reminder: I didn’t get what I deserved, so I won’t take them hostage until they get what I think they deserve. I can remove my internal cop who was always at work. searching for crimes and watching to take prisoners for sin. And if I speak of sin with you, I will not do it out of satisfaction or justification; I’ll do it for reconciliation and forgiveness.
Paul says in Colossses 3:12-14
So dress as God’s chosen, holy and beloved, with tender affections of mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, long life. Support each other; forgive yourself if someone has a complaint against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, you forgive too; Above all, however, there is love, which is the bond of perfection.
Because I have received incredible forgiveness, I am free to forgive. Forgiven sinners forgive sin. Forgiven sinners dispense mercy.
Mercy means I won’t see you through your sins or mistakes
Sometimes we want to forgive, but we reserve the right to suspect. We accept the person’s apology, but his memory remains. Have you ever realized that it’s much more attractive to keep your memory than to forgive?This is because it is difficult to give up the power to save the memory of errors. We want to have the most precious lyrics so that, if necessary, we can use it and remind the sinner of everything he has done.
Unlike us, God does not retain memory (Psalm 130. 3). Forgiven sin is not associated with a celestial HD for easy recovery. God does not keep sin on the table of runners to negotiate better behavior with us. Psalm 103. 10 says, “He does not treat us according to our sins, nor does He pay us according to our iniquities. “
If this is how God responds to sin, we must respond in the same way. When someone sins against me and then asks for forgiveness, it is an opportunity not only to declare mine, but also God’s forgiveness. This is an opportunity to say, “God does not see you through your sins and mistakes, and I will not go either. God doesn’t remember his mistakes, neither do I!
It’s more than kindness. It’s an expensive pardon
The mercy I have received from God allows me to pass it on to you. Forgiven sinners forgive sin, and forgiven sinners dispense mercy.
Mercy means I will accept your confession for the value it has
I’m unlikely to forgive if I hope the sinner “really understands” and then comes back to me with a deeper and more sincere confession. The reality is that forgiveness is not a reaction to confession. This is derived from a merciful heart willing to forgive. Is my heart willing to forgive because I remember that God has already forgiven all my sins?even those who have not yet been confessed.
The call to forgive does not depend on someone who confesses sin. Mark 11:25 is very clear: “And when you pray, if you have anything against someone, forgive me, that your Heavenly Father may forgive you for your offenses. “The idea that I won’t forgive until someone regrets it is typically a super spiritual way of saying “pay what you owe!”Remember: bitterness among Christians and even among leaders is always wrapped in a more sophisticated and spiritual dress.
Think about it too: there is no biblical basis for judging the sincerity or humility of a person’s confession, the more I make my forgiveness dependent on the quality of confession, the further I will turn away from true mercy. In Luke 17, Jesus says that if a brother asks for forgiveness seven times in a day, I must forgive.
True mercy accepts confession as it is; Forgiven sinners forgive sin, and forgiven sinners dispense mercy.
Mercy means I’ll be patient with your falls
When sinners gather, weakness becomes known, familiar patterns of sin appear, and the fall is fully manifested. So danger is not ignorance of sin, but corrosive fatigue, the kind that appears when I begin to tire of your fall.
Joel Calvino says: ?? he [God] expressly declares that there should be no limit to forgiveness; because he has never tried to set a fixed number, but on the contrary, he urges us never to get tired ?.
Are you tired of someone’s sins? I must consider whether this tiredness contributed to the attitude of the non-compliance creditor, who was simply tired of being indebted to him. So he, as one author says: ?? Did you forget what you had to remember (that had been removed from a big debt) and what I had to forget (that someone owed you less)?
The call here is not to swallow everything and just argue that people sin against you. The answer is to return to the debt that has been written off. The answer is to be inspired again by God’s patience, long life, and goodness, and then go and do the same for others.
Conclusion
Rich countries have written off $ 110 billion in debts from the poorest countries, and extraordinary debt has been canceled. But as a sinner, I was freed from a much greater debt! All my sins were paid for by Jesus Christ. It’s incredible, but the debt I owe to God was paid by God Himself.
Ministry is a call to mercy. But it is not because we are shepherds or called to be shepherds, but because we are forgiven sinners and forgiven sinners dispense mercy, which is just another way of saying that forgiven sinners forgive sin.
By: Dave Harvey. © 2015 Call me? Original: Towards a merciful ministry
Translation: Joel Pedro Cavani Review: Yago Martins © 2016 Ministério Fiel All rights reserved. Website: MinisterioFiel. com. br Original: Considerations on mercy in pastoral ministry
Authorizations: You are authorized and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format, provided that the author, his ministry and translator are no longer no longer modified and not used for commercial purposes.