Leaning Forward

As I’m writing, the Associated Press is reporting that a suicide car bomb has killed four American soldiers and an interpreter in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Last November, I visited Arlington National Cemetery  and just just looking at all the headstones of our fallen HEROES,  left me  with a greater appreciation for the freedom that I have. I know it’s a cliche, but our freedom is not free. It has come with the ultimate sacrifice. 

I always look forward to Tuesday mornings. That’s the day that I go and spend a couple of hours with the men inside East Rouge Parish Prison.  Prison is not the most ideal place for someone to find freedom, but I have discovered just the opposite. Each week when I leave there I’m speechless. Their countenance, their mannerisms, and the genuineness of their heart speaks life and freedom to me. I leave there asking myself, “how is it that people that are in prison are free and people that are free are in prison?” People are in prison to their past,  their addictions, their mistakes, guilt, condemnation, and failure.  Their  conversations always seem to lead back to what happened yesterday, last year, and what this person did to them, and how they’ve been wronged.  I sense that they desperately want to live the life God intended, but they can’t get past their past. None of us are getting out of world without being offended and/or wounded, but there is no freedom in the past. That’s why the Scriptures talk so much (over 120 times) about hope. Hope speaks of something that lies ahead, something fixed in the future.  Hope forces us to live in the present from the future.

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus came to set the captive free, and whom the Son sets free is free indeed. Freedom is birthed out forgiveness. A life filled with purpose, meaning, and yes freedom, begins with the words “I forgive you”. From the cross, Jesus prayed “Father forgive them …”.  Even before any of us realized just how evil the crucifixion  was, Jesus was initiating and interceding for others and their forgiveness. He was asking forgiveness for people that didn’t want to be forgiven. Forgiveness for people that intentionally and falsely placed pain (literally) and condemnation on someone that was completely innocent.

hope calls us to live in the present from the future.

From the cross, I believe that Jesus saw into the future, into that moment whereby we would be wronged, betrayed, and wounded, and He was telling us to follow His example. I believe He was telling us not to get caught up in the injustice that has been done to us; rather, that these moments will be about our need to be released from bitterness so that we can be free. It’s not that He isn’t concerned about us, how we have been wronged, or the pain we’re experiencing, but He is in essence more interested in the person that we are becoming. He knows that forgiveness requires courage and self-denial both of which move us towards wholeness and ultimately freedom. 

Forgiveness is not forgetting or excusing; instead, it’s about canceling the debt. The Apostle Paul said that he carried around the “marks of Christ”. As followers of Christ,   one of the marks that we bear is forgiveness. Forgiveness comes with a cost to us but so does freedom. Freedom is never free.