LOVE IN REAL CONTRAST
Matthew 6:5-15
Close contact intensifies personal feeling, both hate and love. It’s harder to forgive your near kinsman than someone you never saw. Family feuds are always the bitterest. King George and Emperor William are cousins. The terrible war was a family fight. Does this explain its bitterness, partly? Yet we’re all brothers, blood brothers. We’re all sons of the one Father, creatively. Love that’s really love controls all of one’s contacts.
A PICTURE OF GOD
Genesis 44:1-13
Joseph is a wonderfully vivid picture of Jesus, and so of God. He was misunderstood, envied, hated bitterly, plotted against even to the point of death. His brothers were hardened in their attitude to the last degree. His task of love was to handle them so tactfully and wisely and firmly that his love would change their hearts toward him, and so their character. It’s a wondrous picture of God’s forgiveness. And God’s is the standard for ours.
RARE DIPLOMACY
Genesis 43:26-34
Never was diplomacy—love’s wooing, winning diplomacy—sent on a harder mission than when Joseph set out to do—what? Be willing to forgive his brothers’ terrible conduct toward himself? No, no; something far different: to make them really broken-hearted to think they should have treated him so. This explains all his rarely keen, subtly shrewd —yet always loving and honest—handling of them, from first to last. This sets the standard for real, full forgiveness.
IT TAKES BRAINS
Genesis 43:15-25
To forgive in your heart is often a pretty tough task. It’s a fight with yourself. It’s a matter of your heart and will. Yet it is the easier part of forgiveness, even when not easy. To tell your forgiveness, and make the other eager for it—ah! that’s another thing, a far harder thing. That’s a matter of brains and tact. It’s the heart stimulating the gray matter of the brain. Yet this is what forgiveness means, often.
WISE FORGIVENESS
Genesis 45:1-15
Wise forgiveness is difficult and rare. It needs an exquisite blend of graciousness and firmness. Joseph had a ticklish job on his hands. His brothers didn’t want forgiveness. They weren’t penitent. It wasn’t simply that he should have a forgiving spirit toward them, but that he should so handle them as to lead to that brokenness of heart in them that would long for forgiveness and be grateful for it, and become utterly changed in conduct.
