Man was created to be in a relationship with God. This relationship is intrinsic to our very being. We cannot be what we were designed to be without it. When Adam and Eve sinned, mankind, including you and me, died, which means we were separated from God. This created a God-sized hole in each one of us that could only be filled by a relationship with God. We desperately needed forgiveness in order to be restored back to life.

Forgiveness requires the settling of a debt. Just choosing to forgive someone doesn’t eliminate the impact of what happened. The debt is still there and must be dealt with. Forgiveness simply shifts the responsibility of the debt from the one who caused it to someone else who will cover it. In the Gospel, that someone else is Jesus. Jesus became human so that He could fully satisfy our sin debt to God by shedding His righteous blood on the Cross. Jesus, being fully God and fully human, was the only one who could pay that debt and thereby establish the basis for our forgiveness in order to restore us to a relationship with God so that we could live His Life.

One of the most well-known examples of forgiveness in Scripture is found in Genesis 37-50. It’s the story of Joseph and his brothers. Jacob had 12 sons. Joseph was the second to the youngest—Dad’s favorite. We know this because Jacob had given him a special coat, signifying the favoritism. Evidently, Joseph was also one of God’s favorites. We know this because God gave Joseph two dreams, and in both of the dreams, Joseph’s brothers bowed down to him. Joseph made the mistake of telling his brothers about the dreams. The brothers responded by throwing Joseph in a pit and then selling him to a band of Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt. The Ishmaelites were the descendants of his estranged great-uncle, Ishmael, which means they sold Joseph to a band of angry cousins. The brothers took Joseph’s special coat, poured blood all over it, and showed it to Jacob, leading their father to believe his favorite son was dead.

The cousins eventually sold Joseph to a high-ranking official in the Egyptian army named Potiphar. Joseph quickly became Potiphar’s favorite, who made Joseph the house manager of his estate. He oversaw everything that Potiphar owned, and all the other servants reported to him. Unfortunately, he became Mrs. P.'s favorite too. We know because she tried to seduce him. Several times! He resisted. Several times! She grabbed him. He ran away. She cried, “Rape!” He was arrested and thrown in the royal prison.

My late friend Mike Wells said, “People don’t normally understand how to live Christ's life until they are in their 50s. It takes that long to fail enough to learn dependence on Christ.” Failure, disappointments, and pain are the tools God uses to bring us to the end of ourselves so that we can learn to fully trust him. It’s really the only way we learn, and it normally takes a long time.

We may read about God’s faithfulness in the Bible and agree with it in our minds, but it is only through experiencing God’s faithfulness in times of struggle and failure does that truth move from our heads down into our hearts. God strategically and consistently uses circumstances to teach us deep truths about Himself and about us. As I look back on my life, I find that I learned more about Jesus and His Life in me through my struggles than through the successes of my life. It took multiple lessons over many years for me to finally begin to get it. The ministry of Forgiving Forward would not exist were it not for the betrayals and sufferings we endured throughout decades of serving in churches. Only God could have taken our misery and turned it into a ministry masterpiece.

The message of Gospel-centric forgiveness teaches us that we don’t forgive people, we forgive wounds and that freedom will be experienced when we forgive the specific wounds incurred against us. Jesus says in Matthew 18 that we should forgive “from our hearts.” To say, “I forgive my uncle,” period, is not forgiving from our hearts but from our minds, and the wounds in the heart are left behind to fester. Jesus, our supreme example, said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they DO.” So, to forgive from our hearts will sound like, “I choose to forgive my uncle from my heart FOR saying this, doing that, not doing this, making me feel,” etc. We must be specific. When we identify the wounds, specifically, by speaking them aloud and laying them at the cross, we will experience freedom.

The story of Christmas actually has its roots in Genesis 3. When God told Adam not to eat from the forbidden tree, God made Adam a promise. “…but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:17) God’s promise was that the consequence of man’s sin was that he would lose his relationship with his Creator. God kept His promise. When Adam and Eve fell to the seduction of the serpent, curses were declared on all three co-conspirators as our first parents were banished from the garden and severed from life with God. Yet in the midst of keeping His promise, God gave them a new promise as He pronounced the curse on the serpent. “And I will make enemies of you and the woman, and of your offspring and her Descendant; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.” (Genesis 3:15) God promised that the woman would have a Child (Jesus) who would ultimately crush the head of the serpent, thus breaking Satan’s power over man and providing a way for man to be restored to relationship with God. As the details of the promise were further developed throughout the Old Testament, we can see how God orchestrated a fulfillment of that new promise leading to Jesus’s death and resurrection. This new promise to bring mankind back to life would require God to do something that man could never do for himself. God would have to pay man’s sin debt, which He accomplished when Jesus shed His blood on the Cross.

The Gospel story is all about freedom. The Babe in the manger was born in Bethlehem to liberate the world by conquering sin and death through the Cross and the Empty Tomb. With His blood, Jesus paid the ransom so that dead men could live. In the 11th chapter of his Gospel, John gives a prelude to this in the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.

It’s a familiar story. Jesus’ friend Lazarus became sick. Knowing what would happen, Jesus delayed his arrival until after he died. Jesus did this purposefully to display His resurrection power as a preview of what He would do for us through His own death and resurrection. After consoling Lazarus’s sisters, Jesus went to Lazarus’ tomb and commanded, “Lazarus, come forth!” And he did! The dead man came back to life. The cold heart started beating as the motionless lungs began breathing again. By His word, Jesus defeated death and His friend was suddenly alive again.

What’s interesting to me is what Jesus says next. “Unbind him and let him go.” Why did He say that? Lazarus was dead and now he’s alive. He’s been set free from the bondage of death. He was now walking again. Why did someone have to loose him and let him go? Because he wasn’t walking free! Someone had to help him get the grave clothes off. Sometimes, we all need help getting the death off of us—the things from our old life and from our past that keep us from walking free. We have found that one of the primary things that binds us and keeps us from walking free is the torment associated with old wounds. Forgiven people cannot walk freely unless they extend that forgiveness to those who wounded them. And most of the time, people need someone to help them forgive.

Day in and day out, we see grown men and women who are tormented, struggling, hurting, bound, hopeless…the list goes on and on. Almost, if not every, person we meet with is struggling with a wound from their childhood. I’ve often thought that if only children could learn how to forgive at the earliest age, they could avoid so much of the pain and torment that carrying unforgiveness throughout their lives brings.