“I’ll never forgive him–ever!” Her words hung in the air as I prayed what to say. Would she ever hear any words of caution if I said them? I doubted she was aware of the scripture warning in Matthew 18: 21-35 that ends with, “My heavenly Father will do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive your brother from his heart.” You see, the slave owed his master 10,000 talents which the slave could not ever…
With apologies swarming around like a thick cloud of gnats these days, we need to examine the difference. To apologize, according to Dictionary.com, is “to offer an excuse for some fault, insult, failure, or injury. To make a formal defense in speech or writing.” An apology is “an expression of one’s regret, remorse, or sorrow for having insulted, failed, injured, or wronged another.” You can regret wronging another and still not change. You’re still not forgiven. It’s a pretend…
In Matthew chapter 18:21-35, Jesus speaks of the necessity of forgiveness. In essence, He says if we don’t forgive those who have wronged us, we will be handed over to the torturers (verse 34) in the New American Standard Version. In the King James Version, they used the word jailers instead of torturers. In the Greek according to BlueLetterBible.org that word means: “one who elicits the truth by the use of the rack, an inquisitor, torturer also used of a jailer doubtless…