“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Colossians 3:13
Sometimes walking with God means that we must forgive others. And sometimes that forgiveness may be hard for us. Joseph’s brothers sold him to strangers and forced him to live in a foreign country as a slave. Many years later Joseph was reunited with his brothers. Instead of punishing them, he forgave them.
During World War II the German Nazis hated the Jews and imprisoned, tortured, and killed millions of them in concentration camps. We hear the story of a Christian named Corrie Ten Boom who along with her family in the Netherlands, spent all their resources hiding Jews in their home in hopes of rescuing them from the Germans. The Ten Booms built a special false wall in Corrie’s bedroom where the Jews could hide whenever the Germans came to inspect the house. One day someone tattled to the Germans about the Ten Booms secret hiding place. Corrie and her sister were arrested and put into a horrible concentration camp named Ravensbruck, where they were fed little, slept on wooden bunks, and were tortured if they did not cooperate. Soon Corrie’s sister died in her arms. She said in her dying breath, “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”
Due to a typing error, Corrie was accidently released from Ravensbruck in December, 1944. The war ended a short time later and Corrie returned to the Netherlands. For years afterward she traveled around the world telling about the love of Jesus. She wrote a best-selling book titled The Hiding Place that told of her times during the war.
One day in 1947, after one of her speaking engagements, a man came to her who looked familiar. He was one of the cruelest guards at Ravensbruck. He told Corrie that he had come to know the love of Jesus and was sure that Jesus had forgiven him. Now he was asking for Corrie’s forgiveness as well. What would she do? This man was responsible for the deaths of many of Corrie’s friends including her sister. She prayed that God would give her a loving heart to forgive this man. She took his hand and said to him, “I forgive you with all my heart.”
People like Corrie Ten Boom teach us about forgiveness. Let’s remember that if God will forgive our many sins, we should be willing to forgive those who sin against us. That’s why the Lord’s Prayer says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Chief of sinners though I be, Jesus shed His blood for me;
Died that I might live on high, lived that I might never die,
As the branch is to the vine, I am His, and He is mine.
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