Reading in Matthew 18:21-35 it’s about forgiving your brother seventy times seven then 19:1-12 is about divorce.

I never connected the two until last night. I sat there with my mouth wide open thinking thank you God.

Here we have Jesus teaching that it doesn’t matter how many times or how bad someone hurts you He has forgiven us for much worse. How then can we not forgive? The man that was forgiven a huge amount of debt by the king refused to forgive one of his debtors a much smaller insignificant amount. How many times do I do this? Ouch! The king found out and the man was held accountable, made to pay every bit of his debt.

Then in the very next chapter, strategically it contains how God feels about divorce. I have to say I read it in a whole new perspective in the Message. The Pharisees were looking for justification of their own sins. They were using a law put in place by Moses to cover themselves rather than taking responsibility for their choices. To me it looked like they were allowing divorces for invalid reasons. When Jesus called them on it they basically answered with what’s the point of marriage then if we’re trapped with someone we’ve fallen out of love with or irritates me to no end or doesn’t close the toothpaste top? They were slapping God in the face! He created man and woman for each other, started the whole marriage thing. They could care less that they were messing with God’s plan for marriage.

Marriage is work and the greatest difficulty I think is forgiving your spouse for the everyday stuff that irritates you, then when the big hurt comes it’s so easy to not forgive and end up divorced regardless of the wound. Yes some have greater consequences, but I believe that if we practice forgiveness with the little things it may be easier to see the plan of forgiveness in the big things, because their will be big things.

When we don’t forgive we pay a much greater price. We end up being accountable and unforgiven for the very things God wants so much to forgive us for. He activated His plan when He allowed His Son to be the sacrificial lamb and die in our place for our sins. When we accept His plan for us we are forgiven.

Now that is huge. So what is required of us? To forgive others. How? Love God with ALL of you, with EVERYTHING you are, love your neighbor (spouse) as well as yourself. Love is the activator.