The Foundation, Motive & Pattern for Human Forgivenes

Introduction to the Sermon and the Centrality of Forgiveness

0:03 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, May 25, 2003, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now may I encourage you to turn with me in your own Bibles to Paul's letter to the Ephesians, the book of Ephesians, and chapter 4, so that our minds will have the fresh impress of a section that I will be alluding to before coming to the text that is the focus of our study. I would ask you to follow as I read, beginning in verse 17 of Ephesians chapter 4, and read through verse 2 of chapter 5.

0:54 Ephesians 4 and verse 17. This I say therein. Therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart, who, being past feeling, gave themselves up to licentiousness, to work all. But you did not so learn Christ, if so be you heard him and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus, that you put away as concerning your former manner of life the old man that waxes corrupt after the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the newness of your mind, and put on the newness of your mind, and put on the newness of your mind, that after God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.

2:09 Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak truth, each one with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry, and sin not. Do not let the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole.

2:31 Steal no more. But rather, let him labor, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have whereof to give to him that has need. Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for edifying, as the need may be, that it may give grace to them that hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption.

3:02 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and railing be put away from you with all malice. And be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be therefore imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for you, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell.

3:56 To a world of sinful men and women, sinful boys and girls, in a world governed by a holy and a righteous God, who has said that the wages of sin is death, who has said that the soul that sins, it shall die. No words should throb with more hope than those found in Psalm 130 and verse 4. There is forgiveness with you.

4:37 There is forgiveness with you. Forgiveness. For sinners, the likes of us, in the presence of a God who cannot tolerate sin, who has pledged His own character and being to punish sin, I say no words should throb with more hope than these words, there is forgiveness with you. Forgiveness, that which we sinners desperately need, if we are to have a restored relationship with God.

5:19 Forgiveness, that which we need from one another when sin has fractured and strained our relationships to each other.

5:30 Forgiveness, that biblical commodity concerning which there is much confusion, fuzzy thinking, and downright heresy. Forgiveness, that's the subject. Forgiveness, that's the subject of a current series of sermons that I'm preaching, of which today's is the third in that series. In our first study of this vital subject, I sought to demonstrate the central place of forgiveness in biblical revelation.

Review of Previous Studies: Definition of Forgiveness

6:04 And we saw its central place in the character and disposition of God, in the substance and proclamation of the gospel, and in the initial and ongoing, and in the ongoing experience of the children of God. And then in our second study, last Lord's Day, I sought to set before you a biblically-based definition and description of forgiveness. And how did I go about this? Well, I went about it, first of all, by giving a brief overview of the linguistic family of the words chosen by the Spirit of God to convey the concept of forgiveness.

6:44 by the spirit of God to convey the concept of forgiveness. And we looked briefly at the three Hebrew and four Greek words by which God conveys to us what forgiveness is. And then secondly, we looked at some of the vivid pictures of forgiveness that God gives us. Assuming that one picture is worth a thousand words, God pictures forgiveness by such language as, I will cast your sins behind my back.

7:18 I will cast them into the depths of the sea. I will blot them out as a thick cloud. Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more. And then bringing together that family of words by which God conveys the concept of forgiveness, and mixing it in with those vivid word pictures, I sought to set before you a workable definition and description of forgiveness.

7:51 And I broke it into two categories. Divine forgiveness, that is the forgiveness that God extends to sinners. And then human forgiveness, the forgiveness sinners extend one to another. And I limited that second category to the forgiveness that Christians extend one to another.

8:13 And no fewer than four or five of you met me at the door and said, Pastor, we know you well enough. Why did you say what you did that limited human forgiveness between believers? And I said, for the simple reason that the bulk of the biblical material assumes that believers are forgiving believers. And there are other dynamics that enter when a believer is forgiving a non-believer, or vice versa, and we'll touch that in some of the mopping up considerations.

8:47 And what was that working definition and description? Well, for divine forgiveness it was this. Divine forgiveness is a gracious act of a holy and just God by which He removes from a sinner the guilt and legal liabilities of his sin, thereby clearing the way for a restored relationship to Himself. I have not dealt with the ground of the forgiveness, I have not dealt with the terms of the forgiveness, but forgiveness itself.

9:23 When the Scripture says there is forgiveness with God, when the Scripture says that God will forgive our sins, what does it mean? It means that God will engage in a gracious act by which He removes from the sinner the guilt and liability of his sin, thereby clearing the way for a restored relationship between Himself and the forgiven sinner. And what is human or horizontal forgiveness? It is this.

10:00 Human forgiveness is a gracious God-like act of one forgiven sinner to another forgiven sinner by which the offended party makes a commitment of his will not to remember the sin of the offending party, thereby clearing the way for a restored relationship between both parties. Now today we continue to construct the house of a biblical understanding of forgiveness. And I know some of you are so antsy, what you want, you want the floor joist of the first floor, and you want the studs of the second floor, and you want the roof rafters, and you want the gables, and you want the shutters, and you want the shingles. But if we don't start and dig a right foundation and lay a proper foundation, all of our thinking regarding the more advanced development of the house will be skewed. We must start with foundational issues. And having dealt with the matter of definition, we come this morning to what in my judgment is the next most crucial issue

The Foundational Principle: Divine Forgiveness as Pattern for Human Forgiveness

11:24 in having a solid foundation concerning our thinking about forgiveness, particularly the forgiveness we are to extend one to another. Having set before you a biblical definition and description of forgiveness, what I want to do is to demonstrate from the scriptures that divine forgiveness is the foundation, the motive, and the pattern for human forgiveness. That's the one thing I want to establish from the scriptures. That divine forgiveness is both the foundation, the motive, and the pattern of human forgiveness. And unless we have a clear understanding, now follow me, a clear understanding and a genuine experience of divine forgiveness, we will never think and act as we ought in extending human forgiveness. You follow me? That's the one thing that I want to establish from the Word of God.

12:37 We must have a clear biblical understanding of the nature, the essence, the motive, the parameters of divine forgiveness, or we will never think or act as we ought in the extending and the conferral and the reception of human forgiveness. Now there are several passages which we could consult to demonstrate this, but I want us to park on just one this morning, and it's found in the Ephesians passage that I read in your hearing. Here is the passage, verses 31 to 52 of Ephesians, 431 to 52. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and railing be put away from you with all malice, and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be therefore imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for you, and offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell. Now the first thing we must do if we are to responsibly handle

Contextual Setting of Ephesians 4:31-5:2

14:05 this passage is to spend a few minutes seeking to remind ourselves of the general setting of this passage. You have heard it said many times. Most cases, not always, but in most cases, a text without its context is a pretext. And we have so much of this dipping in and wrenching text out in topical preaching in our day without any sensitivity to the flow of thought, to the connectedness of thought.

14:37 And the connections in the Bible are as much a matter of divine inspiration as each of the parts. And so I want to take a few minutes to remind some of you and for others of you to inform you for the first time the setting of these words. When the people at Ephesus were sitting in a congregation on a given Lord's Day, and one of the leaders assigned a reader or one of the elders himself read this letter, he did not start with 431 and just break it in upon the people. They would have heard the words of 431 to 5-2 in the larger setting of everything that preceded in this letter. And the pressure of all the preceding is exerted upon 431 to 5-2. And I want us to feel that pressure. In chapters 1-3 of Ephesians, we have given to us by the Spirit of God what can be called nothing less than a mind-boggling, heart-ravishing display of a salvation planned and procured and applied by the Triune God to helpless, hell-deserving sinners.

15:59 That's what we have in chapters 1-3. We have this mind-boggling, heart-ravishing display of a salvation planned, it stretches back into eternity, procured in time, applied in time by God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to helpless, wrath-deserving sinners. A salvation which constitutes its recipients, both Jew and Gentile, God's new humanity, God's new living temple. That's a summary of chapters 1-3.

16:44 Then in chapter 4, the Apostle begins to call such favored sinners blessed with this amazing salvation, he begins to call them to a lifestyle which will reflect both the reality and the power of that salvation that has been conferred upon them. In essence, what he's saying, this is what you are in Christ by God's grace, chapters 1-3. Beginning in chapter 4, this is what you are to be in the light of what you are. And so in chapter 4, he begins to call such favored sinners to a lifestyle that will reflect the reality and power of that salvation as it is lived out in two spheres, in the church and in the world. So in chapter 4, verses 1-16, we have the lifestyle to which we are called as we live it out primarily in the church. And that's the emphasis, as you saw in the previous hour, those who were here in the adult class, that these things of chapter 4, 1-16, are what new men and women in Christ constituted the living body of Christ, the new humanity brought to birth by the work of Christ. This is what we are to be like

18:13 in our life together. Then in verse 17 of chapter 4 through verse 24, the apostle gives this umbrella-like description of what our lives are to be like in contrast to those who are strangers to this salvation. And so we have this amazing statement in verses 17-24 that we are no longer to walk like those who are strangers to this salvation. They have their darkened minds, they have their perverse lusts, and he describes them in graphic terms, but we are to conduct ourselves as those who are new men and new women in Jesus Christ, and that God himself is the pattern after which we are to strive in this new life. Then starting in verse 25, he is going to get very specific about this alternate lifestyle to which we are called as we relate to one another in some of these very specific categories of speaking the truth, stealing, what we say, etc. And so it's in this very section where we have seven exhortations from verse 25 of chapter 4 to verse 2 of chapter 5, seven specific categories of exhortation to the people of God

19:43 as new men and women in Christ who are bound together in Christian oneness, members one of another, as he says in verse 25, what they are not to do and what they are to do. And you have this constant contrast. Don't do this, but do this. Don't be this, but be that.

20:03 And remember, this is not God telling you make bricks with no straw. This is a direction to people who have all that marvelous salvation described in chapters 1 to 3. They are the people who are favored with this amazing salvation, those who have been the recipients of God's grace in Jesus Christ. And as he works through this, he comes to the sixth exhortation in verse 31 and then down through chapter 5 in verse 2.

Exposition of Ephesians 4:31: Putting Away Vices

20:42 All right? So that's the general setting of the passage. Now we come to an exposition of the passage itself. Verse 31.

20:52 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and railing be put away from you with all malice and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be ye therefore imitators of God as beloved children. Walk in love even as Christ loved you, gave himself up for you in offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell. In verse 31, Paul identifies six vices which are characteristic of the interpersonal relationships of people who are outside the orbit of gospel grace. He describes six characteristics of interpersonal relationships that dominate those who are yet, what he calls, in the earlier verses, old men. They are yet in Adam. They are not in Christ.

21:59 And he says these six vices are to be put away from the people of God. You see, he's a realist. He knows that though these vices dominate among those who are not in Christ, those who are in Christ because of remaining sin can still in their interaction with one another be provoked to manifest these vices. Paul is the realist knowing that these people who are now one new man in Christ, who were chosen in Christ, redeemed by Christ, indwelt by the Spirit, marked for the eternal inheritance, risen with Christ, seated with Christ, that's all the language of the opening chapters, still they can provoke one another in their interaction and provoke one another in such a way that they can be guilty of these vices. Resentment. Let all bitterness, a resentful spirit, that's what the bitterness is. And then he says, and all anger, I'm sorry, all wrath and anger.

23:15 And if there's any difference, one is more the internal disposition and the other is the disposition breaking out in visible ways. Clamor. We would use the word verbal brawling. That's what happens when a husband and a wife start going at one another.

23:32 Yes, but you said. Yes, but you said. Verbal brawling. It's not speaking of a barroom brawl where you're throwing bar stools and bottles.

23:41 But a verbal brawl, he says, let all bitterness, resentment, rage, anger, verbal brawling, defamation or slandering. That's what this word means where he goes on to say, all clamor and railing. Railing is defamation of character where our words become clubs to beat another. And then he says, all malice or ill will, a malevolent disposition that wishes harm to another.

24:15 Paul says, now look at the text. Let all, and then he lists five of them, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, railing be put away from you. And then he says, with all malice. The list is bounded by two alls saying that among the people of God at no time, under no circumstances, no matter what the provocations may be, none of these things is to be manifested among the interpersonal relationships of the people of God.

24:58 You see that with your own eyes in your own Bible. There is never an excuse for any one of these things breaking out. There is no excuse for these things being a settled disposition of the soul or a pattern of the mouth. Never.

25:19 Never. We are new men and women in Christ. We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We have entered in to the new age by the grace and power of God in Jesus Christ.

25:33 Therefore, let all bitterness, all wrath, all anger, clamor, railing be put away from you with all malice. That's the negative. Now he turns and says, in stark contrast, to these noxious, horrible, foul things, let this characterize your interpersonal relationships even though you still do those things that left to themselves could provoke anger and provoke wrath and provoke railing and provoke bitterness and provoke malice. This is what you are to manifest.

Exposition of Ephesians 4:32-5:2: Manifesting Virtues and Forgiveness

26:16 In that very realistic context, be kind one to another. Kindness speaks of mercy and readiness to help. It's one of the nine fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, self-control, gentleness, kindness, kindness.

26:43 He says, be kind one to another. In the realism of things that will make us want to be something other than kind. Not hard to be kind to a sinless angel. Imagine anyone saying, God, I've had a rough week.

27:04 Why is that? I had to live with an angel for a week. I had to struggle to be kind to an angel. No, you don't have to be struggled to be kind to an angel.

27:13 You do have to be struggling to be kind to some people who provoke everything that's the opposite of kindness. Nonetheless, we're to be kind one to another. We're to be tenderhearted, compassionate. This is the root word that is so difficult to describe, but it speaks of the very internal viscera going out in loving concern and compassion toward others.

27:40 We're to be kind one to another, tenderhearted. And now look at the capstone. Forgiving, forgiving one another, even as God also in Christ forgave you. Be therefore imitators of God.

28:02 You see, no sooner does he mention the duty and privilege of mutual forgiveness as the capstone of these things, both the negative and the positive, but he launches into this state under the statement underscoring that our human forgiveness is to be patterned after the divine forgiveness with respect to its essence, its basis, and its ultimate source or motive. So I want you to consider with me then this vital principle identified. What's the principle? That human forgiveness is to be patterned after the divine forgiveness. This vital principle identified, this vital principle amplified, and this vital principle applied. All right? This vital principle identified.

29:00 Look at the text. He says, You are to forgive one another even as...

29:09 That is, we are to forgive according to a fixed pattern. And what is the pattern? Forgiving each other even as God also forgave you. I'm dropping off the little phrase in Christ for now.

29:30 Even as God forgave you. You and I are to be continually forgiving one another after the pattern of God's once-for-all forgiveness of us. This is the forgiveness Paul had already referred to in chapter 1 and verse 7. In whom we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace.

30:02 He's writing to a people who possess the once-for-all forgiveness of God given in conjunction with our initial repentance and faith and our justification and our adoption. And he says, with the once-for-all forgiveness of God as your pattern, you are to go on continually forgiving one another. And furthermore, as he takes this directive to forgive one another to its deeper roots, note the language of 5.1, having said, forgive as God forgives, he now draws out a logical deduction, be ye therefore imitators of God. Imitators. The mimics of God. We are to be God-like in this whole context of forgiving one another.

31:06 So the principle is clearly established from this passage that our forgiveness of one another is to have no lesser standard, no other basic paradigm, pattern, but that in which God has forgiven us. We are to be imitators of God in our forgiveness of one another. Now I find that very searching. Each time I have occasion to forgive someone, I need to ask myself this question.

31:45 Am I forgiving this brother and this sister even as God has forgiven me? Am I imitating God in His forgiving activity by my forgiving activity? Very searching. But that's what the text demands.

32:11 Forgiving one another even as God forgives. God forgave you. Be imitators of God. Nothing less than the standard of God's forgiveness of me is to be held before my moral eyes when I engage in forgiving one another.

Amplifying the Principle: God's Forgiveness as Free Grace and Kindness

32:36 That's the principle identified. Now secondly, the vital principle amplified. When the apostle says forgive even as, imitators of God imitate God in your forgiveness, what does that mean? Well let me suggest that the text gives us three lines of an answer to that question.

32:58 First of all we see that God's forgiveness is given as an act of free overflowing grace and kindness. Forgive as God forgave. How has God forgiven? God's forgiveness is given as an act of free overflowing grace and kindness.

33:22 When the Holy Spirit guided the apostle to choose a word for forgiveness in this context, he causes him to use that word used 11 times to convey the concept of forgiveness in the New Testament. Once in the Gospel of Luke, all the rest in the epistles of Paul. And it's that word which has as its root the word for grace, charis. And this is charitomai.

33:51 And so God is saying to us in this passage that we are to forgive as God forgives and His forgiveness is an expression of free unmerited kindness and graciousness. You see, God does not choose the word which focuses upon what we might call the more essence of forgiveness, the removal of sin from us, the taking away, the divorcing of the sin from us, afiemi. He uses charitomai to emphasize that in our forgiving of one another, we are to mirror this reality that when God forgave us, His forgiveness was not a tight-fisted, reluctant, stingy, parceling out of a little bit of dealing with our sin. No. It was the profuse, open-handed, free, gracious, overflowing extension of forgiveness. And now He says, you are to forgive one another even as God forgave you.

35:17 And the Holy Spirit uses the same word for the forgiveness we are to give that He uses for the forgiveness that God has given. God's forgiveness is given to us in terms of an action past, an aorist. Our forgiveness is a present participle. We are to be continually forgiving one another, but not a different kind of forgiveness.

35:46 It is to be of the same kind, of the same quality, marked by the same free, gracious, overflowing kindness. May I say, almost chomping at the bit to extend the forgiveness. Now look at the text. Be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other even as God forgave you.

36:25 God's forgiveness is given as an act of free, overflowing grace and kindness. So every time I say to my wife when she has said, honey, I sinned in that, will you forgive me? When I say, yes dear, I forgive you. My forgiveness should be the mirror image of God's forgiveness.

36:56 A mirror image, not a stingy, reluctant, tight-hearted, narrow-hearted, reluctant sense. I forgive you. You see the attendance of this forgiveness are kindness and tender-heartedness. And without the best man and the bridesmaid, you're not going to have that kind of forgiveness.

Amplifying the Principle: God's Forgiveness Located in Christ's Sacrificial Death

37:34 Kindness, tender-heartedness are the accompaniments of that kind of forgiveness. But then secondly, as we see the principle amplified, God's forgiveness is located in the person and work of Christ, especially in His sacrificial death. God's forgiveness is located in the person and work of Christ, especially in His sacrificial death. Look at the text.

38:05 Be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, even as God also, now look at the little prepositional phrase, in Christ forgave you. Even as God in Christ forgave you. That is, God's forgiveness took place in the sphere of the person and the work of Christ, especially His work in His sacrificial death. For He goes on to say, Be therefore imitators of God as beloved children, walk in love as Christ loved you and gave Himself up for you and offering and a sacrifice to God. You see, God's forgiveness is not a simple detached act of His sovereign will toward sinners. Sinners come to Him and say, Oh God, I've sinned. I'm grieved that I've sinned.

39:14 I know my sins deserve hell. Oh God, forgive me because You're a loving God. God, being who He is, cannot forgive sin simply on the basis that He's a loving God, because He's also a just and holy God. And He has said He will by no means clear the guilty.

39:35 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The wages of sin is death. And the ground and basis on which Almighty God can forgive sinners is located in Christ, in the person and work of Christ, especially in His sacrificial offering of Himself. God was under no obligation to save sinners but to forgive sinners and to forgive sinners.

40:04 God was under no obligation to save any one of the fallen sons and daughters of Adam. God could have sent us all to hell and had angels worship Him for His holiness and justice and bow before Him wrapped up in wonder and worship. But once God determined that He'd save any one of us, let alone a great multitude whom no man could save, God was obligated by His own character to provide a just atonement for sin. He could not, being who He is, simply forgive as an act of His sovereign will and the outflow of His love. No! There had to be a satisfaction to His broken law. There had to be payment in the counsels of eternity.

41:08 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit conceived this amazing plan of salvation in which the second person of the Godhead in the fullness of the time would, in Mary's womb, take to Himself a true human soul and body that in that true humanity the one person forever He might live in obedience to God and under the law that He might go to the cross and there bear the unleashed fury of God in terms of the law that we had broken. Hence, the Scripture says, Cursed is everyone who continues not in all their curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangs upon a tree. And because Christ has paid the penalty for man's sin, Christ has died that horrible death of abandonment by God in separation from God, God now has a just basis on which to forgive penitent and believing we are to forgive even as

42:36 God also in Christ forgave. God's forgiveness is located in the person and work of Christ especially in His sacrificial death. Here in this passage it is called a sacrifice to God an odor of a sweet smell. That's language taken directly from the Old Testament.

43:06 When you read a passage such as Exodus and verse chapter 29 you find in verse 18 and in verse 25 two different kinds of sacrifices. One was an animal sacrifice and the other was the sacrifice of a loaf that was brought and when they were consumed to God. Did you ever smell a burning roast and say what a sweet smell. It stinks it's acrid.

43:46 You walk in the house some of you guys if your wife was out shopping too long and she left the roast in the oven you walk in the door and you say when the odor of that burnt flesh from the altar came up into his nostrils it was an odor of a sweet smell. That burnt loaf as the odor came up into his nostrils a sweet smell why because God's justice has been satisfied by the priest and lamb of God offerer and offering and he is consumed by the fire of God's holy justice and his judgment against the sins of those for whom he was dying. It was a sweet smell in the nostrils of God and forgiveness is located in the heart of the person that he loved and loved

45:14 for all his sins and all his sins for all his sins for all his sins and all his sins and Forgive me, you have the promise. God will forgive you all of your sins.

45:43 We must understand this principle because it greatly affects how we forgive one another.

45:52 Greatly affects how we forgive one another. God's forgiveness is located in the person and work of Christ, especially in His sacrificial death. Now, what does that have to do with my forgiveness of my wife and of you and of yours, of me?

46:12 When I ask, I am to forgive as God forgives. I am to be forgiving even as God forgave. It means this as a Christian. I never deal with you in your offenses against me.

46:33 And you must never deal with me in my offenses against you where forgiveness is a commodity that either one or both of us need. Divorced from the cross of Christ.

46:49 Because whatever sin we commit against one another is primarily a sin against God. And the only place of pardon for that sin is in the cross of Christ. And no one can have a heart suffused with the sense of wonder that He, the sinless Son of God, would offer Himself up a sacrifice for me and not be more than willing to extend forgiveness. Forgiveness to a fellow sinner.

47:17 You see, you can't have your heart tenderized in divine forgiveness from Christ and have a hard heart in extending forgiveness to a fellow sinner. It's impossible. That's why those texts can say, If you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you. Why?

47:45 Why? Why? Why? Why?

47:46 Why? Why? Why? Why?

47:46 Why? Why? Why? Why?

47:47 Why? Why? Why? Why?

47:47 Why? Why? Why? Repentance!

47:48 Repentance! If you come with a hard heart that refuses to extend forgiveness to others, no one can gaze upon an immolated, forsaken, blood-baptized Jesus and say, I've got forgiveness from Him, but I'm not going to give it to you. It's morally, ethically, psychologically impossible. So we are to forgive one another even as God.

Amplifying the Principle: God's Forgiveness Rooted in His Love

48:20 In. Christ has forgiven us so that our forgiveness, like God's, is to be the free, overflowing disposition of grace. It is to be located in the cross of Christ. But thirdly, according to this passage, God's forgiveness is rooted in the love of God.

48:46 A love manifested in the voluntary, self-giving, sacrificial death of Christ for His people. God's forgiveness is rooted in the love of God. A love manifested in the voluntary, self-giving, sacrificial death of Christ for His people. Look at the passage.

49:13 You are to be kind, tenderhearted. Forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Be therefore imitators of God as beloved children. And walk in love.

49:30 When you find the phrase walk in something, it means let this be your pattern of life. You are to have a pattern of life suffused and characterized by love.

49:44 And in so doing, you are imitating God. Be imitators of God. Be imitators of God, who is love, and walk in love. And what is the supreme manifestation of the love of God?

49:56 Even as Christ loved you and gave Himself up for you. The measure of God's love is the voluntary, self-giving, sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus. It is this that moved Him to the cross. As He says in chapter 5, verse 25, Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for it.

50:26 His giving up was the fruit and the outflow of His love. God's forgiveness, though it is located in the cross, is rooted in His love. That love supremely manifested in the voluntary, self-giving sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. And now God says,