As we practice the work of forgiveness we discover more and more that forgiveness and healing are one.
~Agnes Sanford
Beloved, as Jesus walked on this planet, He never refused to heal anyone who asked and believed Him for help. Neither did He force His healing on anyone who denied their need of Him. And another dynamic was most often at work. Forgiveness of sin preceded the healing of the body.
What is going on here? Might this writer be so bold as to suggest that there is immensely important principle at work here?
Freedom.
What?
Yeah, freedom, that absence of subjection to the tyranny of something. It is for freedom that we have been set free. We no longer have to be bound to anyTHING (including our own lusts and desires)! In Christ, we are bound to only One Person: Him.
Now in freely accepting Him, we are surely bound to Him, and our lives will flow with true and right action. But that truth and right action now has its source in the Source Who’s throne is founded on His righteousness. We no longer live under the illusion that we have any righteousness of our own. It is His righteousness imparted to us through the engaging power of faith.
Are we getting this?
In Him, there are no rules. There is only Him. He is totally free, and He is totally true, and He is totally righteous, so He sets the stage for freedom and truth and right action in our lives – not us.
In Him, we are free. We are absolutely, astoundingly free to live lives of profound righteousness, peace and joy in and through the power of His Spirit. It is Him who lives in us, and now even through us.
We have been freed from the penalty of sin. We are free from the power of sin. This is what forgiveness means. And this freedom then sets our physical bodies at ease. It sets the stage for us to be free from bodily dis-ease and sickness. This is simply true.
And notice something here. He did not force any of this on us. Oh surely His grace made the way. His foreknowledge created the path of our destiny. But we are not puppets into which He is pumping forgiveness. The pathways of foreknowledge are but mysterious conduits to most effectively channel the glory and goodness of a glorious and good G_d towards a living and receptive tripartite being.
There is a huge takeaway here; an application that we can apply to all parts of our own life. We cannot force our forgiveness on anyone (i.e., we cannot make them accept it), and we cannot heal anyone who will not be healed.
The grace that we pour out on one another must be unforced. It is a precious treasure – so precious – that it cannot be bought, bartered, sold or stolen. It can only be offered as a free gift.
So, as we give this gift (from Him) to others, we may sometimes find that they may squander, or even reject the freedom we offer. And, oh my, this is a mystery (even those of us who have been set free wonder what in the world we ever continued to hold on to). But, this is what freedom is all about – AND what makes it so very precious when it is totally accepted by one who learns that they have ever yearned for freedom in Him.
