Following Jesus

The previous entry is perhaps the easiest to shrug off because it’s about Jesus. Of course Jesus can forgive others while they sin against Him. He’s Jesus. He’s capable of doing things we could never do. No one else could ever live up to his standard. Jesus is God, and we are man. We never could forgive like Him.

Unfortunately for anyone who wanted to get away with that, Jesus is not the only one who ever forgave others as they persecuted him. If you doubt that you must forgive others as they sin against you because you are only a servant of Christ and not Christ Himself you should consider the actions of Stephen in Acts 7:59-60 as he was being stoned to death:

“And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not charge them with this sin.”

Before he was stoned Stephen gave one of the most brilliant sermons recorded in the entire Bible. He traced the existence of Jesus through the entire scriptures before the Jewish leaders who refused to believe, and made a strong case for Jesus being the Messiah. He was guilty of nothing more than following the will of Christ. For doing this he was stoned to death.

I don’t think any of us would hold it against Stephen if the scriptures instead read that he called down hellfire on his persecutors, and they were all killed right then and there. We’d probably then refer to this set of scriptures as one of the greatest Christian victories against persecution. Instead, Stephen showed his worthiness and asked the Lord to forgive them seconds before death.

Anyone reading this has never been killed in service to the Lord, and sins committed against us cannot be as great as those committed against Stephen. He followed the example of Christ, and forgave those who persecuted him. Christ expects all of us to do the same.