Colossians 3:12-17 Living the Gospel

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan.

Putting Off Sin and Putting On Christlike Character

We are to put off specific things like anger, malice, slander, obscene talk, sexual immorality, lust, greed, some of the smattering of things that God told us through that text a couple weeks ago. But this week we see a new list, a new list of things.

When he tells us all to take off these evil things, he doesn't leave us standing in the cold in our skivvies, but he gives us something to put on in its place, something to put on our lives rather than just a whole process of taking things off, taking things off.

But no, we are to put something on, and the list of things we put on this morning are things to replace those evil behaviors, those evil characteristics, those evil patterns that we find readily available in our hearts and in our lives.

Our text this morning reads like a list of commands because, frankly, it is a list of commands, but each command focuses on a part of our lives that needs a reformation in light of salvation. Not that we go out and preach this list to the world that this is what you have to have to be acceptable to Christ, but rather these are the things that we get to put on in light of having been saved by Christ.

And so what is our message to the world? There is a Savior, there is one who died for you to give you a new life and give you a new start. That's the message that we have for the world, but the message is different for the church, and that is that you have a Savior who has loved you and therefore desires for you to put on new behavior, to put on new character.

And so that's what we're looking at this morning, and the outline is simply this. In verses 12 through 14, Christ describes our character. In verses 15 through 16, Christ defines our community. And in verse 17, Christ directs our calling.

So I got a little of alliteration in there for you guys, those of you that like that kind of thing, there you go, you're welcome. But we all need an improvement to our character, right, that will ultimately impact our community, and all of that is fueled by his great calling on our lives.

And so let's open our Bibles to Colossians 3, 12 through 17, if you're not there already, open up there, Colossians 3, 12 through 17. If you don't have a Bible or a device to navigate to a Bible on your lap, please just raise a hand so that somebody can bring you a Bible, and we want everybody to have a copy of God's Word on your lap there to reference and to look at.

We'll follow along as we read Colossians 3, 12 through 17. Put on then, after we've seen all these things to take off in the last text, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

And whatever you do, and whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Let's pray as we get an opportunity and the band comes to lead us in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs that we might sing with thankfulness in our hearts, let's pray.

Father, I do thank you so much for the cross of Christ that leads us to a life of gratitude, leads us to thankfulness, leads us to joy. Father, I recognize that some of us bickered and got on each other on the way in the car, on the way here.

Some of us woke up with a joyful song in our hearts, and that frustrated everybody, and so did our family. There's all different kinds of things that have happened to us, even yet this morning, that have impacted the way we're feeling.

We're so driven by circumstances. So Father, would you let one circumstance shine all the brighter that it might fuel our worship, and that is that we are redeemed. That is that we are okay in your sight because of what your Son has done for us, and may that fuel our attitude and our heart towards hearing your word and going out and obeying it this week.

Father, let that be the fuel moment by moment, and especially in this moment where we have the opportunity to corporately sing songs to you. Let thankfulness drive us, because despite all the petty inconveniences and all the frustrations and little things that get in our way, Father, it is just that you have saved us that really should fuel our hearts, and so I ask for that this morning.

I ask that we would sing together with joy and with gratitude, and it's in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. Amen. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated. Big thanks to the band for leading us in worship this morning, just very grateful for the time and energy that they put in.

Their morning starts pretty early on Sunday morning. They're usually practicing at 7 .30 on Sunday morning, so just really grateful for their dedication and their commitment. Encourage you to get comfortable.

You can get more coffee or juice or donuts while supplies last there. You're not going to bother me if you get up and come up and do what you need to do there. Remember that restrooms are out the hall to the end.

Turn right and go down that way. Men's upstairs, women's downstairs. We want you to use the restrooms on this end of the building. There are some down here, but we save those for the kids' ministry, so use those down here.

All right, thinking about Colossians 3, 12 through 17, I'd love it if you had your Bibles open there and just kind of keep it there so that we can kind of keep referencing it. I'm going to keep tying into those verses there, and that's going to be our outline, by and large, as I lined out for you before.

When it comes to changing clothes, I think most of us in the room are pretty much experts. You've got some experience. You've got some time logged. You've got some How many of you would say, I've done that a few times?

I've changed my clothes a few times. I can do that. You get it. Years of practice. Now, not all of us have equal skills at fashion, but all of us could swap out a shirt pretty fast or a pair of pants in just no time at all, right?

When Paul's instructions go something like this, take something off, put something on, we get the analogy, don't we? You get that. You can figure that out. Take something off. He's using an analogy of clothing and putting something else on.

It's possible to get caught up in the order, to be too specific, in other words, to carry the analogy a little bit too far. You could get into the order, for example. Well, first you have to take this off in order to put this on, or does this displace this, or whatever.

You could get into the nuances. Here in Michigan often, you dress in layers, right? You don't know. You wake up in the morning and it's 12 below zero, and then it's 80 degrees by the afternoon or something.

I'm exaggerating a bit, but barely. You know what I'm saying. You dress in layers. Are you allowed to put some of these things on over the top of other things? You could just kind of get a little confused about the analogy or carry it so far that it becomes illogical or doesn't make sense.

I believe that you could focus so much on the removal of some things and neglect putting something back on. The fact of the matter is, the Christian life is not neutral. It is not just what we take off that matters most, but it is also the good that we put on.

It is not sufficient to go through life avoiding malice. I wasn't malicious today to anybody. Is that the standard for the Christian life? Think that through carefully. Is it the standard that you're not malicious?

How many of you know it's good to not be malicious? Did you get that? That's important. That's good. But is that the standard? Well, I wasn't sexually immoral today, so I guess I'm okay. Or I avoided greed.

I wasn't greedy today, and I took that off, so okay. The absence of evil would be great in our lives. How many of you know that's a good foundation? That's a great place. But what Jesus wants for you and I is the presence of good in our hearts.

The presence of good in our actions and in our moment-by-moment lives. His people are called out to be a force of positive change in a world desperately in need of peace, compassion, and joy. Hear the difference?

A lot of people think of religion as a bunch of don'ts. Take a bunch of stuff off and throw it away. But what about the things that he desires of you and I? And that's what this text is looking at here this morning.

And when we see the things that Paul tells us to put on in verse 12, it becomes apparent that we cannot layer our clothing. He answers it for us. We cannot be both compassionate and malicious simultaneously.

Those two don't work together. The wardrobe clashes, okay, and they can't be put on. We cannot be both patient and sexually immoral simultaneously. We cannot possess humility and slander others at the same time.

Do you hear the incompatibility in that list that we went over a couple of weeks ago and the list that we're looking at today? So Paul is here in our text giving us a metaphor for the everyday moment-by-moment choices we make.

I want to caution us, but also guide us a little bit. In our religious minds, we have a tendency to take passages like this where it talks about putting things on and we talk about the armor of God. How many of you are familiar with the armor of God?

And so you can get into a mantra or a formula for putting on the armor of God every morning. Any of you ever had a pastor or a preacher or a lesson that told you to put on the armor of God every morning?

Well, I would suggest to you that the armor of God is something you need to appropriate every day of your life, and these character traits are something that are a moment-by-moment decision that you make.

You could go ahead and take this passage and say, well, when I put my shirt on in the morning, I'm going to utter a phrase about putting on compassion. And then with each sock, I'm going to think about kindness.

And the other sock, I'm going to think about humility. And you could go through this list, et cetera, et cetera. And with each article of clothing, how many of you think that would be a good exercise?

It might be a good exercise, right? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And it would be great if, and hear me carefully, if, if that would help you to be truly compassionate in your driving, would it?

Think that through. If every morning when you put your shirt on, you suddenly said, I want to be more compassionate, that's a good start to your day. But then about, what about when you're driving your car?

What about when your coworker does something that drives you nuts and you've told him it drives you nuts for the fifth time in a row by 10 o 'clock in the morning? What about those things that are the irritants in our lives?

I mean, maybe I'm not hitting the one for you, but you know what it is for you. You know what gets you riled up and ruins your sanctification come Monday by lunch. You've already lost all of this, right?

I mean, we all, we all relate to that in whatever it is. So it's what, the goal of this is not that you come up with a formula that you can just kind of say, check that box, put on compassion this morning, and that's it.

How many of you know that that's a moment by moment thing that you need to address in your life? And sometimes you're doing well at it and sometimes you're not, and sometimes you're like, I need to take off malice right here, right now, and I need to put on compassion.

And that's behavior, that's action, that's the way you're rolling in your life. And it's not just compassion, but it's kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. I'm not saying this, I'm only saying this to clarify that routines and rituals are not what God desires of us.

He wants us to exhibit the right character in our lives. So be cautious about rituals and routines, and consider, is it helping me or not, and is there something else that I need to do about this? My first point this morning, because we are God's chosen, because we are declared holy, because we are loved by Him, there's these three motivations.

Those three motivations are there for us in verse 12, as Paul begins to do this one thing, describe the character of a follower of Christ. That's our first step this morning, he's going to define the character of a Christ follower, or describe the character.

And God has chosen us, that's a motivation for us. It's not a point of pride, but the text is very clear, we are chosen in Him. It's not for pride, but it's quite the opposite. It's intended to have the opposite effect.

God didn't choose us because we're super amazing, because He was getting a bargain with you, or boy, He just looked and He said, boy, you've got the skills, you have honed yourself to be a fine spiritual machine, and I need one of you, so He saved you.

That's not the point. God didn't choose us because we're super amazing. As a matter of fact, take this one on for size. God said that He, through the Apostle Paul, that He chooses the, are you ready for it?

He chooses the foolish things of the world. Take that on for a minute. Consider what that says about you and I, who are chosen in Him. He chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. Let that settle in as we consider His choosing us.

We rejoice in being chosen because of what? His great grace towards us. We recognize we don't deserve it, but He's chosen us in Him. We don't deserve it, but we are indeed chosen, and that should motivate us.

When we consider the way that we came into the family of God by His own gracious choice, our character will be fueled by gratitude, by thankfulness. We recognize that we owe Him our everything, and those of you who have encountered Christ in that way, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

You know that there's a sense of unworthiness that comes with the recognition of Christ on the cross for you. And if you've really come to that place, then you recognize that the only right response is thanks, thankfulness, deep gratitude, and respect for that offering, that sacrifice.

And that should fuel our lives. That's meant to be fuel for our lives moment by moment when it comes to these character traits. Another component of the fuel for our character is His declaration of our holiness.

Now holiness in our minds is a mixed bag word. It's got a lot of different notions, and I've tried my best to preach multiple times that the word holiness has more to do with your being set apart for God's service, less to do with you doing everything righteous.

Righteous is a always right kind of word, so when you hear the word righteous, it means always right. And holiness is more set apart for God's purposes, set apart for His use. I've used the illustration of a pair of scissors that a professor of mine would illustrate holiness.

His mom had a holy pair of scissors. Now it's not that they did everything right and they always cut a straight and true line. It was that they were her cloth scissors, and he said he had been actually punished and disciplined and spanked for using those scissors to cut binder twine and cut all different kinds of things because those were her holy scissors, and she made that abundantly clear.

They were holy. In other words, set apart for what purpose? Strictly for cutting cloth. Well, what is the life of a person who's been redeemed by Jesus Christ, who's been saved? Set apart for His purposes.

Set apart for glory. Set apart to be compassionate, humble, meek, all of these things. So that's part of the fuel of the Christian life is that He has called us holy. He has set us apart in Him. We obey His commands.

His calling to us is to be a force of spreading His love in His kingdom, not our own. We do what He desires because He is the one who has set us apart for Himself. The word holy here is more like, think in terms of conscription, it's like being set apart into His army for His purposes, responding to His commands.

And the last component that fuels our character is that we are, this is beautiful, we are loved. The text says beloved. Without this, it would look like the motivation for the Christian life is just raw duty, it's conscription into an army, it's being made holy, it's being set apart.

We owe Him our everything, but the one issuing the commandments is one who has demonstrated His lavish and deep love for you and I by dying on the cross for our sins. He is our Savior, He is our Redeemer, He is our friend because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

So the motivation to obey these commands comes straight from our understanding of the gospel. What's the fuel for these things? It ultimately comes down to your recognition and understanding of the way you were saved.

He chose us to be His, so we should walk like Him. He set us apart for His own purposes, so we should obey Him. He loves us, so we should trust Him enough to do what He says. And now we get down to the character that He desires for us, the character traits that He desires to see expressed in our lives, and the following is a list of expectations of the follower of Jesus Christ that Paul is saying should characterize the way that you and I roll day to day.

Now there's some room for conviction here, the list is convicting to me, but I believe that each of us, while we look at this list, we'll immediately see that these are good targets to shoot for, that these are beneficial, that if we take these on and we put these on our lives and we actually live them out and walk in them throughout the day, that our relationships in our households will improve, our relationships with our family, our co-workers, our community will be better.

Not that this is a silver bullet to fix every problem in your life, but that you will indeed be a force for good in your community if these things are yours. I think you'll see that as we go through the list.

The first thing that we are to put on, I've already mentioned, is a compassionate heart. I find it interesting that the first thing that Paul addresses is the way we feel internally. Compassion is more of a feeling type word, it is internal, and it's about the way that we feel towards others.

I believe that we're a bit of a hypocritical society, and bear with me, and we move in and out of compassion based on our feelings at the time. Compassion for those who are hurting? Sure. Do you see that in our culture?

Do you see that as a high value in our culture, in our society? Do you see that in your own heart? I'm sure you do. There's been a lot of compassion in our community in light of the tragic events of last weekend, right?

Have you seen an outpouring of compassion, an outpouring of care? Yes, and that's a great thing. But where is compassion when we're the ones doing the hurting? Where is compassion for our spouse when we are the one who is lighting them up with words of harshness, or criticism, or being angry, or frustrated, or when somebody's cut us off in traffic and we're using digital communication with them?

Hopefully you're not doing that, don't do that. You know what I'm talking about. Where is compassion in the moments that aggravate us and irritate us? Where is compassion when we are the ones saying hurtful words?

This is the compassion that Jesus wants you to put on. Not compassion for the wounds that someone else has inflicted on someone, but a compassion that impacts the way you treat others, the way that you avoid hurting them because of being constrained by your compassion for them.

Do you hear the difference? Do you see how subtle that difference is? But that's why I say we're a hypocritical society because we sure have compassion for someone when someone else has hurt them, but then we go around hurting others ourselves as well.

And that's the compassion that our hearts need. Not a compassion that just feels bad for others, by the way. I really think that a lot of what we express in our culture is mere pity, which is compassion that lacks any motive for action.

That's how I define pity. Pity is, we feel it, right? You feel it when they show the kids on the TV screen who have no food and you feel pity for them, but are you moved to any action? Well, no, then that's pity.

And that's different. But acts of love begin with that sense of compassion in the heart, but they don't end there. That desire for improvement, that desire for others' lot in life to be improved isn't the end, but we should also put on kindness, the second trait, which in the Greek is a word that shows action on behalf of others.

So this is the action part. This is the counterpoint to compassion, which is in the heart, but we are to be people of action who do indeed improve the lot of those that are suffering around us. This is when we do something about the problem that they're facing, and Christians should be quick to act on behalf of those who are hurting.

Humility is the next one, and humility is a life character that serves others by putting their needs first. Many might understand this character trait as putting themselves down or thinking poorly of themselves.

I mean, it's a fuzzy word, right? Like humility or humiliation is a related word, and so is it just saying, oh yeah, everybody else is better than me, I'm terrible at basketball, I'm terrible at this, I'm not very good at that, and is it always just a self-effacing attitude?

Is that what humility is? And I would suggest to you it isn't. Humility is a complete outward focus. It is a focus on the other. That is humility. A truly humble person isn't considering how they stack up against everybody else.

That's something other than humility. You can't be measuring yourself according to others and be humble simultaneously. A truly humble person is just looking around, figuring out how to serve others first.

That's humility. It's not thinking of yourself. It's not, in essence, it's kind of funny, sometimes the way that we think of humility ends up forcing you to think about yourself. It's all, we define it as all the way that you think about yourself, and I'm saying that humility is the very nature, at its very nature, is an other orientation.

It is a consideration of others with very little thought to how you figure into the equation at all. That's humility. But now this next one, this is a word that's fallen on hard times, meekness. Meekness is a character trait on the list that probably has the sharpest teeth in the sense of biting into our culture, taking a chunk out of the way that you and I live, the way that our culture and our society goes.

All of these others are really hard to apply, but at least we recognize them as beneficial, right? You recognize some of these, how many of you recognize compassion as a beneficial trait to have? Probably your employer would say compassion is a good trait to have.

But meekness? I don't know where you work, I know where I work, and fortunately meekness is acceptable where I work, but I'm guessing that in a lot of your places of employment, meekness isn't rewarded regularly, that ultimately it is putting yourself forward and propelling yourself and creating a great and awesome resume for yourself that helps you to propel forward in your business, in your corporation, in your industry.

At least that's what I gather from what I see out in the world around me and when I talk with people, it seems like that's more and more increasingly the case, not advancement by meekness, advancement by self-promotion.

And so in our society, meekness is not really that respected. Am I getting that right, by the way? I'm not necessarily getting feedback. Is that correct? Raise your hand if you think that that's pretty accurate, at least as far as what you see in your workplace and in the society around you.

I think it is. I guess I could just go here, you don't need to do more than turn on the news and watch the current political process to see that our culture values brash, loud, self-promoting people, right?

Meekness is rarely found in our political process and the meek are quickly marginalized in a society that is enamored, that falls in love with brash pride and self-confidence. But the character of a follower of Jesus is meek, meekness.

I'm going to define that for you. You're going, what does he mean by this? A calm gentleness, a calm gentleness. And that is the calling of the Christian life. Now some of you in this room, you're like ready to just shout, because it's your personality, you'd like to just shout right now, Don, God made me with a boisterous personality.

I can't help it. I mean, just the way I was raised, the character, quality that God has put in me, I'm confident, I'm strong. I tend to accidentally find myself in the center of attention all the time.

I'm a loud individual. Some of you are laughing because you're ribbing your spouse right now, like see, here he's talking to you. If that's so, I would just tell you this. God wants you to express that personality in a calm and gentle way.

He wants you to express that boisterous, outspoken, loud, center of attention kind of personality in a calm and gentle way. Figure out what that means for you. Figure out what that means for the way that you need to figure that out in your moment by moment, day by day, because you are to be putting on meekness moment by moment in the way you roll in life.

Gentleness as a fruit of the Spirit, I don't find it very often mentioned. I don't remember hearing a message on meekness before. I think it's something that we need to recognize as a central character trait of the Christian life.

We're a boisterous, loud, brash society asking a European that's ever met an American. Right? That's just our culture. That's the way we roll. That's not Christ-like. Paul next turns to patience. Patience, by the way, I would define as simply, and having studied it this week, is simply enduring wrong without vengeance or rage.

That sounds a little different than maybe what you think of as patience. We turn that word around to the more nebulous concept of waiting for something. You can just say, okay, well, I was playing Angry Birds on my phone and I was patiently waiting at the Secretary of State's office or something like that.

We think of it as simply waiting out a long line at the Secretary of State's office or something like that. But it is waiting there, maybe at the Secretary of State's office, without rage, hear me carefully, when it aggravates you.

When it aggravates you. You cannot, you cannot exercise patience unless you are first bothered, okay? Being bothered, being aggravated is a necessary starting point for patience. If you enjoy Angry Birds, you are not exercising patience, you're exercising entertainment.

You get it? But if you have some place to be and you're running late, now it's time to exercise patience. Because how many of you know that when you're okay texting on your phone or doing whatever, waiting for something, you're alright by that?

But how many of you have ever been, like, kind of felt like shouting at the person you're waiting for to hurry up? Anybody ever felt that way? Ever? Kids getting the shoes on, getting ready for church in the morning, or anything like that?

I can confess that I have felt compelled to yell at somebody who was holding up my time, my day. Patience is not responding in vengeance, not responding in rage. But you cannot exercise it unless you're bothered, which, by the way, means that Paul recognizes that Christians, you will be bothered.

You will be bothered. And not only will you be bothered out there in the world, in the long line at the Secretary of State's office or wherever, but you're going to be bothered in here. I know that comes as a shock to you because this has just been perfect for you up to this point, but there's going to be times where you're bothered in here.

Look at verse 13. We need to exercise patience with one another in the church because we will at times have complaints against one another. There will be times when we rub each other the wrong way and we will need to exercise further than patience.

Another word, forgiveness. The pathway forward in the church is forgiveness when there is complaint. And a word of caution, I'm misapplying this text real quick. Paul is giving the general tenor of the Christian life here.

He's telling us the way that we should roll, the types of clothing that we should wear, if you will. But he's not explaining in detail, for example, the way that we handle church discipline. It's clear that Paul had no patience for false teachers.

He had many strong words and even strong actions for those who were sexually immoral, for example, in the church of Corinth and were not repenting of their sins. So he's not saying that we always just forgive as a blanket statement, always just let it go, always just milk toast, always just weak and just kind of like, oh, just let sinners sin.

And when he's saying that forgiveness must characterize our lives, must characterize the Christian life, we are to personally forgive the wrongs that others do to us, even though the church may need to take some disciplinary action from time to time.

And I want to be clear that after reading a book on forgiveness this past year called Unpacking Forgiveness by a guy named Chris Braun, I actually have two copies of it out there. I ordered a couple copies just in case somebody wants to pick one up.

I don't know if you've noticed, we're going to start having some books out there at the table. And I just, I like the idea of getting good resources into your hands. There's a suggested donation envelope in there.

If you can't afford it, you just take it. We want people reading good resources. And so those are available for you out there if you can. Those suggested donations are just the cost. We're not making money off of those.

This is not a racket going on out there, but it is primarily to get good resources. But this is Unpacking Forgiveness that I read. And it really helped me to form a better view of what it means to forgive.

And I've come to a new conclusion on the way that Christians are called to forgive. We are to forgive, as this text says, as Jesus Christ forgave. We are to hold out a pathway to others for them to be restored in a relationship with us.

Forgiveness is about relationship. It's about... There is no forgiveness if there is not an attempt to restore relationship with the other. That's not forgiveness. That might be trying to appease your own conscience or trying to solve an issue in your own heart.

But if you are not trying to restore a relationship with that other individual, then you are not extending forgiveness yet. We cannot, by the way, make them reconcile with us. But we can provide a bridge upon which restoration can happen.

So being a person of forgiveness means being the one who builds the bridge. Whether or not the other party chooses to meet you on that bridge is up to them. But build it strong. Build it clear. And build bridges to reconciliation with others that says, I really am ready to do what I can to try to make this right.

One other quick side note on forgiveness that really gets me going is this misguided pop psychology drivel that has found its way into the church and permeates the church to the point where I think probably when I mention forgiveness, all of us in the room have heard this.

And that is this false notion that forgiveness is for you. Forgiveness is for the one who is forgiving someone. That it really is... If you have unforgiveness in your heart, it's holding you back and it's keeping you down and it's keeping you from reaching your potential.

Some good sounding advice that we forgive others so that we can feel better. Scripture does not say that anywhere. It never says, forgive so you can feel better about yourself. Forgive so that you can be okay.

Now does forgiving someone else deal with bitterness in your own heart? Does it help? Yeah, but that's not the motive. That's never the motive. Scripture says something so much more beautiful than what our culture and society says about forgiveness being for you.

Like we forgive because we have been forgiven so much. That is the consistent message of forgiveness in the pages of scripture. Forgive out of gratitude and thankfulness for the great weight that was on your shoulders that has now been removed.

That's the motive for forgiveness. Scripture uses forgiveness to speak and demonstrate the gospel. If we just accept the psychobabble of society about forgiveness, we end up making forgiveness about a humanistic self-fulfillment project.

Well, I had some hurdles in my way, you know, trying to make myself better, trying to advance and get ahead and I found out, well, I got a little unforgiveness in my heart here so I just fixed that so I can move ahead and surge ahead in my life and meet my goals and boom, boom, boom.

I'm just ticking these things off and removing hurdles from my pathway to make me a better person. Is that the motive for reconciling? Is that the motive for restoring relationships? Not at all, not at all.

I mean, people will tell you by not forgiving, you're just holding yourself back. No, by not forgiving, you are missing the gospel. By not forgiving, you are missing the gospel. You are acting proud and forgetting the heavy burden of sin that was set against you that has now been released and you're forgetting that Jesus Christ took that burden for you.

You're missing a chance to live out the gospel in the eyes of others. Forgive, but don't forgive for yourself. Forgive because you have been chosen by God. Forgive because you are set apart, you are holy, you are owned by him and forgive because he loves you and told you to build bridges to those who have hurt you, just like his son modeled for us, building bridges to even those who crucified him.