The Power of Forgiveness

The Power of Forgiveness

If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent an educator.

If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist.

If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist.

But since our greatest need was forgiveness, God sent us a Saviour. Roy Lessin

On Sunday, 23^rd December 2007, during our CDC Christmas Service, we were privileged to have Brother Koh Gim Lan share a special Christmas Message on the power of forgiveness.

Starting off with the beauty poem written by Roy Lessin, brother Koh began his message on the greatest need of mankind – forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not just a whitewash by the offending party and forgiveness is not suppression. Some people run from church to church to escape their feelings of bitterness and unforgiveness. However, true forgiveness is not like that. Rather it is like a jasmine, one of the sweetest of flowers. Crush a jasmine, and the fragrance that is left on the finger is truly beautiful, and that is the smell of true forgiveness.

Max Lucado once wrote, “Relationships don’t thrive because the guilty are punished but because the innocent are merciful”. The primary meaning of the Christmas Message is that in spite of all our sins against God and His created world, He sent his Son to die for us, to forgive us.

Only when we know the forgivensss of God can we only receive the power to forgive and the grace to receive.

After the Second World War, Germany was in total disarray. Poverty and starvation were serious threats and bands of gangsters rose up and oppressed the farmers. In those times, a young man named Ceslo went to the countryside and gunned down the entire 10 members of the family of a farmer called Wilhelm. Wilhelm was the only one who survived. Ceslo was jailed for 20 years but at the end of it, they could not release him for her had no guarantor. Amazingly, Wilhem rose up and stood as his guarantor, and he said “Christ died for my sin, should I not forgive this man?”

Pastor Sun of South Korea went to North Korea to start an orphanage. A young communist leader in his 20s came to his orphanage to kill him. However, his men persuaded him not to kill Pastor Sun because he was doing a noble work there. Shockingly, the young man spared Pastor Sun’s life but killed his 19-year old son. Later, this same young man was captured and condemned to death because of war atrocities. Pastor Sun spoke out for him and persuaded the authorities not to kill him. Pastor Sun had learnt what it meant to receive the forgiveness of God and release the forgiveness of God. The young man became a Christian worker. 

When Morabian missionaries first went to talk to the Eskimos, they found it difficult to relay the gospel message as there was no word in the Eskimo language for forgiveness. And so, they created a new word “Not able to think about it anymore”, and this is the kind of forgiveness that God gives us. God does not treat us as our sins deserve, but as far as the east is from the west has he removed our transgressions from us. He knows how we are formed.

May we truly learn to receive the forgiveness of God and also learn to forgive others that we may find true freedom and love in His will.

God bless,

Jason