In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: To whomever taught whomever you feel resentment, bitterness, hostility, anger, malice, you have a deep desire to get vengeance. I want to tell you that it is a sin against God. I do not care what they have done, you have no right scripturally, biblically, theologically, to hold that. You cannot have resentment in your life, or bitterness, or anger without it spilling over on others, and they are hurt as a result of it.

Now the question is, how do we deal with this personally?

Guest (Male): Do you wrestle with anger, bitterness, or an unforgiving spirit? Today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, you will hear about why those attitudes are deadly to a believer's spiritual growth and maturity. Learn how to remove destructive hindrances to your walk with the Lord in part two of Freedom From Bondage.

Dr. Charles Stanley: When Paul wrote the book of Ephesians, he wrote the book to a group of people, and one of those problems that they had was a problem that oftentimes is experienced by people today and do not even realize it, or if it is there, they refuse to acknowledge, they they just repress it, that is, it is not there. If it is there, and they realize it, they suppress it, they do not want to deal with it.

And so one of those situations is found in Ephesians chapter four, and if you will turn there and let's read two verses, verses 31 and 32. There is a basic form of bondage which results in the actions that Paul mentions here in this 31st verse. So he says in verse 31, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you."

Now, when you and I think about a forgiving spirit, he says, he says, "Let it be put away from you." That is, put it away. And you see, he says that is garbage. Bitterness and resentment and all of these things. And you see, when you grow up with this, years and years and years in your life of this kind of thing, and you and you repress it, that means you deny it is there. You suppress it, you accept the fact that it is there, but you do not want to deal with it.

Listen, no counselor can ever help anybody who represses the truth or suppresses the truth. So, for example, here is what I want you to see. Here are children who grow up in a home where their parents have rejected them. And the kids, I am not saying the parents intended to, but the kids grow up and they are hostile, and they are angry, or they are bitter, and they are resentful. So here is what Satan does. Satan says, "Now look, what you do is you just push that down." Just keep it down there because, after all, that is your father or your mother, and you are not supposed to feel that way. And since you are not supposed to feel that way, you do not feel that way, so you just repress it. "No, I do not feel angry."

Right beneath the surface of our of our consciousness, you can get bitter and angry and resentful toward God and live with that all of your life. And you know what happens? It all takes its toll in your physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional life. So you see, we have to be honest with ourselves, and sometimes it is very painful for us to admit that in our life, in our attitude, we may have an unforgiving spirit. As we said before, it is easy to say that I am disillusioned or I have been disappointed. It is more difficult to say, "I have an unforgiving spirit toward my employer, my father, my mother, or whatever it might be."

Now listen, what makes it worse is if that person dies, there is almost a frightening futility about the fact that you cannot ever settle that situation, but you can, and I am going to show you how. Now listen very carefully. Here is the basis of a forgiving spirit. The basis of a forgiving spirit is that Jesus Christ the Savior died for sin.

Look if you will in chapter two of First John. First John chapter two, I want to ask you a question now, and when he says here, "My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. If anyone sins, we have an advocate." That is, He is the attorney who stands in our place, Jesus Christ the righteous. And then verse two. Verse two says, "And He," that is Jesus, "Himself is is," present tense, "the propitiation or the sacrifice or the payment for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of what? The whole world."

Did Jesus Christ die for the sins of the whole world according to First John chapter two?

Dr. Charles Stanley: Yes, he did.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Did he die for your sins?

Dr. Charles Stanley: Past, present, future?

Dr. Charles Stanley: Did he die for the sins of those who wronged you?

Dr. Charles Stanley: Yes.

Dr. Charles Stanley: All right, when Jesus Christ went to the cross and he died, he paid the penalty for all your sin. Amen?

Dr. Charles Stanley: Did he pay the penalty for the sin of the person who wronged you?

Dr. Charles Stanley: Are you sure about that? That is the person, I mean the person who really set you up and just wiped you out. You mean that Jesus died for their sin?

Dr. Charles Stanley: Then let me ask you a question. That is, he paid the penalty for their sin, so in God's eyes if they are willing to accept the Lord Jesus Christ, your enemy has been forgiven according to the cross. Amen?

Then let me ask you a question. Why do you keep holding against them something they have been forgiven for? What I am saying is this, you and I have forsaken all rights to hold bitterness and resentment toward anybody because what we will have to say is, "Even though even though Jesus died for your sin of gossip, you have ruined my reputation." Even though Jesus forgave you and he paid the penalty, "I want some more payment." The Bible says, "Owe no man anything but to love one another." Listen, no one should be indebted to you and me.

Tear up the papers of indebtedness toward those who wronged you. Jesus paid the penalty. If he paid the penalty, who am I to require and execute vengeance and require judgment and payment for sin which has already been atoned for in the precious, wonderful, sinless body of the Lord Jesus Christ? I have to give up all my rights to hold grudges and resentment and bitterness toward anybody anywhere on the face of the earth. He has never refused to give you forgive you. You know why?

Because listen, he did it once, at one time, once and for all, 2,000 years ago. And since that moment, the river of God's forgiving love has been flowing unhindered in this world to any and all who are able and willing and ready to receive the love of God. You and I are to live in the state of forgiveness. Not being forgiven, I am not talking about that kind of forgiveness, but I mean forgiving toward others. And this is a day of rights, but I want to tell you my friend, when you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you gave up your rights to defend big "I."

We gave up our rights to defend ourselves. We are vulnerable to this wicked world in which we live, but we are safe in the grace of the Living Christ because, listen, we are walking in the midst of the flow of God's eternal and continuous, unalterable, unhindered forgiveness. We are forgiven children. We are forgiven members of the body. How can a forgiven member of the body allow the love of God to flow through them when they have plugged it all up with an unforgiving spirit that is expressing itself in bitterness and hostility because big "I" has been injured? It does not even fit.

It does not match up. And what Paul is saying in this passage, he says, "Look," he says, "Do away with all that." Look if you will in First John chapter two and look over if you will in verse nine. He says, "The one who says he is in the light, and yet hates his brother or is resentful or bitter toward them, he is in darkness." That is, he thinks he knows the truth, but he does not know the truth. The one who loves his brother is abiding in the light. And watch this, there is no cause of stumbling in him, which says if you and I have an unforgiving spirit toward anybody, then you and I are a stumbling block to those who know us. He says, "If a fellow is walking in the light, loving his brother, there is no cause of stumbling in him." And the implication is, therefore, if I have an unforgiving spirit toward my brother, then I become a stumbling block.

Verse 11. "But one who hates or is resentful or bitter toward his brother or sister, is, listen, is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes," which says, "An unforgiving spirit, an unforgiving spirit distorts our perspective about things." When you have an unforgiving spirit, you cannot see things as they are. And there are so many people who are fighting each other in their families and in with their employers and employees and all the things that go on because defending big "I" love this self-pity, going to have one more pound of flesh, forgetting that the Bible says that God the Father placed upon the Lord Jesus Christ in his perfectly sinless body all the guilt, all the penalty, all the sin of all humanity, eternity past, as long as man has lived from the Garden of Eden all the way to the end of it all.

God placed on him the penalty. He has already paid the penalty. What I am saying is, "I want another trial. I want him tried again. I want him prosecuted again. I want the jury on my side because we are going to, listen, he is going to pay again." And you and I know that is not scriptural. No way for it to be scriptural. What am I saying? That to whomever or toward whomever you feel resentment, bitterness, hostility, anger, malice, you have a deep desire to get vengeance. I want to tell you that it is a sin against God.

I do not care what they have done. You have no right scripturally, biblically, theologically to hold that. I am not saying as I said before, if you are in a situation where your very life is threatened, you may have to get out of the situation to save your physical life, but that does not even give you a right to be bitter and resentful. "Be ye kind one to another." Not except for those who do the following six things. "Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted." Sensitive, compassionate, pliable, able to perceive things as they are. Listen, oftentimes when people wrong us, you know why they wrong us?

And you know, pastors get this all the time. And I have seen this happen, it has happened to me, it has happened to every pastor. We are the objects of people's hostility toward God because we represent him in some fashion or form. We are the objects of their resentment toward God. And I have had people in my life, as every pastor will testify, who want to hurl their vengeance and hurl their anger and hurl their hostility toward a man of God because they are angry at God, and he is the next thing that reminds them of him.

And the problem is, the tragedy is, they do not even know what they are doing. And that is the tragedy. They are wrecking their life. You see, you cannot have resentment. You cannot have resentment in your life or bitterness or anger without it spilling over on others. When you are bitter, listen, you cause a blight to everybody close to you. When you are angry, the acid of that just spills over on other people, and they are hurt as a result of it.

Now the question is, how do we deal with this personally? You say, "Well, he says put it away." How do you put it away? So I want to give you just two or three things, jot them down if you will. First of all, I have to acknowledge honestly that I am resentful or bitter. Now, you say, "Well, suppose that person has passed on because this is a question I get lots of times. But suppose it is my grandfather or grandmother, and they harmed me or whatever it might be." It does not make any difference, it is all the same. So dead or alive, the answer is the same. Watch this.

First of all, I acknowledge that is the way I feel. "I am not just hurt, I have an unforgiving spirit, God." So I confess it to him. I acknowledge that I have it. I confess it to him. Thirdly, I own that it is my feeling. This is not somebody something somebody did to me. I own this feeling. This is a feeling that I personally own. Fourthly, I acknowledge my responsibility to deal with it. I assume my responsibility to deal with it. It is not somebody else's responsibility. It does not make any difference how wrong they may be. That is not the issue. The issue is, I have the feelings, I am the one who is bitter, I am resentful, I have the unforgiving spirit. I assume the responsibility for dealing with this unforgiving spirit in that person.

Then, having done that, I get myself two chairs. I sit in one of them, put the other one in front of me. I sit the other person in that chair. You say, "But suppose it is my grandfather who has been dead 15 years." Sit him in the chair. Let's say it is your wife. Sit her in the chair very gently. Let's say it is your husband, you you put him in there very gently. Or a child, you sit him in the chair. Now, they are not really there physically, but they are there emotionally and spiritually in your thinking.

Let's say it was really the truth. What you feel, they really did it. They they just they really just wiped you out. So you say to them, "I want you to know that I have felt bitterness and resentment or hostility or whatever you felt toward you. I want you to know also that because the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sin and your sin, that I confess that I have no right to hold this against you. And so I am releasing my feeling. I am releasing my attitude. I choose today to forgive you and to be forgiving toward you. And I will hold this against you no more. I choose, I make a decision, I choose today to forgive you for that. I will hold it against you no more. Even if it comes up in my memory, I will not hold it against you because I am forgiving you on the basis of which I was forgiven by the blood of Jesus.

And I know as he has forgiven me, he has forgiven you. So I know that from God's perspective, you have already been forgiven forgiven. And so I am forgiving you for the way I have been treated, and from this point on, I will hold it against you no more." And so what do I do? I choose by an act of my will, verbally and with my spirit to forgive the other person, and by faith, I accept the fact that it is a finished and completed act based not on my feelings, but the fact that God has forgiven me. He has forgiven the other person, and because they are forgiven from God's perspective, I do not have any rights to hold anything against them.

If it is something, if it is something that person has done to you that you need to go to them, and they are aware of it, and maybe the situation is such that you may need to go to them, but most of the time, and the reason I I I just leave that little out here is because I want to say this very clearly, you should never go to your parents and tell them things like that because it will wipe them out. You see, so many mistakes they made, they do not even realize it. If you were to go to your parents and say after 30 years, "Well, Father, 30 years ago, you absolutely destroyed my self-image."

"But I want you to know that today," and and and give him all the details of what he did to you and all the suffering, "today I want you to know you are forgiven." No, I say that to simply say, only with exception should you go to the person. We are to be forgiving toward those other people. Sometimes, if you you see, if you went to if you went to every person and tried to settle up, you would go to somebody that you thought felt something that had never even crossed their mind. And it would be a total shock to them. So you have to be very careful if you are to go to a person and say to them, "I want you to know that I want to settle up something between us."

Sometimes, but most of the time, you and God settle it. And if you and God settle it, it is amazing how God will work in the other person's life. But I want to say to you, "Do not go to someone like your parents and just dump all the garbage." Even if they knew what they were doing, I believe that is very unwise. You listen, if you put them in the chair, and you are forgiving toward them, as far as God is concerned, it is settled. As far as you are concerned, its effect on you, it is settled. And then let God deal with the other person in his own timing.

Most of us, many of you, and many of you, for example, who are fine, wonderful Christians, you grew up in homes maybe, things happened that you had nothing to do with, and maybe you had to deal with some resentments and bitterness. You deal with it, but do not go back and dump that on your parents because, first of all, they were probably totally ignorant. They did the best they could. They could not have done any better knowing what they knew, and you dump that on them will be an absolutely unbearable sense of guilt and burden that you do not want them to carry with them to the grave.

And sometimes the reason we do that is because, you know what we are doing? We put them in the chair, but if I go back and dump it on them, I am getting in one last jab before I have cleaned it up. And I want to say that is not forgiveness. I have to be willing to bear the responsibility. I am talking about my attitude regardless of what they have done. And my friend, I want to say to you that whoever you are, if you have an unforgiving spirit toward anyone, it is hindering you, it is thwarting God's purpose in your life. It will drain you of your energy, affect you physically, spiritually, mentally, it will affect you in every facet of your life. And I will tell you something else it will do in the church.

It closes the door to revival in the church. The free flowing of God's forgiveness must be a reality in our hearts.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. An unforgiving spirit will keep a believer from enjoying God. Rely on the Holy Spirit to help you live in keeping with the truth and find freedom from bondage. Find encouragement for your walk with the Lord when you stop by intouch.org, and to hear this message again, click on the link to today on radio. If you go to our bookstore page, you can order a copy of Dr. Stanley's complete message, Freedom From Bondage. Again, that is intouch.org. You can also call or text 1-800-INTOUCH. If you prefer to write, our address is In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357.

The only way to have a relationship with God is to receive his forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ. Here an explanation coming up in today's moment with Charles Stanley.

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Dr. Charles Stanley: Now watch this.

Guest (Male): In Touch Plus, streaming free on local now. Does your prayer life need a jump start? With the In Touch praying with purpose cards, the time you spend talking with God will take on a whole new level of energy and intimacy. Beautifully designed and easy to use, or to share with a friend, there are prayers to lift up each day of the month along with corresponding Bible verses and more. For your set of praying with purpose cards, call 1-800-INTOUCH, or go to intouch.org/store.

You are listening to In Touch. Peace with God comes through faith in Christ. Here is a moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: God through the cross bridges the gap and sinful man and holy God come together through the cross of Jesus Christ. Listen to me, every single thing in the Christian's life will all finally ultimately go back to the cross. Without the cross, we do not have anything. Not one thing.

The only way anyone can make peace with God is by accepting His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. And that is why Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me." Now watch this, here is the problem, remember. Here is righteous, holy God, sinful, rebel, alienated, hostile man. There is only one way to get these two together, and Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." And what is the way? Here is the way. He says it is the way of the cross. The both arms of the cross stretching forth what to God the Father and sinful man, and God the Father and sinful man meet in the person of Jesus Christ, and that which was warlike, hostility, and conflict becomes oneness in God in Christ Jesus.

God takes all the initiative, man is a responder. It is the gift of forgiveness. It is the gift of a right relationship. It is the gift of peace. It is not the effort of man. It is the response of man. What is man doing? Man is saying, "Yes, God, I do believe what you said. Yes, Father. Yes, I do surrender." Now, here is the whole issue. If sinful man and holy God are to come together in peace, and a man or a woman is able to have a relationship with God whereby they know that they are going to heaven when they die, they can walk with him daily in their life. The only way for that to happen is for God the Father and that person to meet in the person of Jesus Christ. It is the gift of Christ. And that is why we say that there is only one way, not because we are Baptists or Methodists or Presbyterians or anything else. It is because that is what God says. "Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ and through none other." There is no other way.

Guest (Male): Have you received God's gift of forgiveness? You can ask him today. Learn more about trusting in Jesus Christ for salvation from the penalty of sin at intouch.org. Have you been encouraged by what you heard today? Take some time to let us know. Coming soon on In Touch, does your walk with God feel a bit out of sync? We will soon begin a series helping you get in step with God on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.