THE OTHER FELLOW
Luke 17:1-10
The other fellow has something to forgive, too. Don’t let’s forget that. He has our unforgiving spirit to forgive, at the least. And what is harder to come up against than that? Or, what is harder to forgive? And then there’s God. What has he to forgive in me and you? The only place where you are sure, really sure, not to fall is flat on your face in the dust, pleading God’s forgiving grace.
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.
