Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.
Colossians 3:12-13

Yesterday we looked briefly at positional forgiveness; we could also call it vertical forgiveness. The Bible talks about a second type of forgiveness, which is practical forgiveness, or what we might call relational forgiveness.

We need to understand that forgiveness is the very nature of our God. When God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock, we read, “And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation’” (Ex. 34:6-7).

Since we have been forgiven of our sins and the sin question has been settled, our God expects us to forgive even as we have been forgiven. Today’s verse reminds us to put on “tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another.” It is the clothing of those who have been forgiven a great debt they could not pay. We are to live with the fact of our forgiveness in mind, and when someone sins against us, when we have a complaint against another brother or sister, we are instructed to forgive them even as Christ has forgiven us. Paul is emphatic, saying, “So you also must do!”

The standard of forgiveness has been set: “even as Christ forgave you” and “forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). It has long been said, “We are never more like God than when we forgive.”

Anchor For Today:
Is there someone in your life you need to forgive today? Forgiving them may not be easy, but it will not only release them; it may also very well set you free from the bondage of holding in your heart what they have done to you!