When it  comes to holding us back from living the life our Heavenly Father wants us to have--a life of freedom, peace, and unmitigated joy--there aren't many shackles stronger than an unforgiving spirit.

God makes a straightforward promise to us in I John 1:9: If we confess our sins He will forgive us.  He will wipe our indiscretions away, then scrub us clean from the stains our sins often leave behind. What a liberating thought: If we come clean, we will be clean.

But there's a catch. God's stipulation is that His children not just experience His forgiveness, but that we extend it. In fact, His forgiving us is dependent on our forgiving others (Matt. 6:15).

Whoa. God can't mean that, can He? We're supposed to forgive parents who have abused us? God wants us to forgive ex-spouses who have betrayed us? He is asking us to forgive people who have hurt us, destroyed our reputation, and who have showed zero remorse and would do it all over again if given the chance?

The answer is yes.

When it comes to experiencing all that our Heavenly Father has to offer us, we must be on both the receiving and giving ends of forgiveness. Offering forgiveness to others, no matter how gut-wrenching their infraction, is not optional. Forgiveness is not always easy. It is not always fair. But it never optional.

The weight of unforgiveness can be paralyzing. If left unresolved, the offenses of others can dominate our thoughts, destroy our bodies, and deplete our souls. We must offer forgiveness not because the offending party deserves it. We must offer forgiveness because we deserve it. 
 
Leonardo daVinvi’s masterpiece, the Last Supper, is one of his most memorable works. The story is told that there was a bit of a delay in completion of that painting. It seems that when daVinci was putting the finishing touches on his project he had a violent disagreement with a man. Leonardo became so incensed that he lashed out at the man, threatening to harm him.

After the incident, still seething, da Vinci went back to his place to continue work on painting. He was up to the point of painting face of Jesus. But he found that he couldn’t do it. There was too much evil stirring inside him. He was angry. He was consumed by thoughts of vengeance.

Robbed of inner peace, daVinci knew what he had to do. He put down his brushes, left his unfinished painting, and went looking for the man he fought with. When he found him he asked his forgiveness. Only when he was freed from the bonds of unforgiveness could daVinci return to his studio and paint the face of the Savior who had forgiven him.
 
Forgiving others does not mean that we are absolving them from their actions. It does not mean we are giving them a pass. It does not always mean that relationships are fully restored. It means that we are so deeply grateful for the way that our God has treated us despite our unworthiness that we long to treat others the same way.

Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.--​Eph. 4:31-32.

Most of us know how it feels when we’ve made that last payment on something—whether it’s a car, a credit card, a student loan, a house. It is so freeing, isn't it, to finally be done with a debt?

But what if, out of sheer habit, we just kept making payments? What if we continued to write checks every month to old creditors even though our debt had already been taken care of? That's just crazy, isn't it?

Yet that is exactly what many of us do with our spiritual account with God. We keep trying to pay on our debt to Him even though He has already stamped it PAID IN FULL.

We often operate as if Jesus made a partial payment on our sin debt and that the balance is up to us. It's as if His grace wasn't quite enough to get the job done in putting us in right standing with God. We convince ourselves that we must rely on our works to fill the gap.

So rather than placing our trust fully in Christ to cleanse and redeem us we attempt to pay God back for the bad things we've done by doing even more good things. We set out to prove ourselves worthy of His forgiveness and grace with good and noble accomplishments. But, in doing so, we miss the main point of grace. We are not saved from our sins because of our goodness. We are saved because of God's goodness.

Our gracious God, solely out of His great love for us, sent His Son to the world to pay the price for our sins. Our debt was fully covered at the cross.

The last utterance of Jesus at Calvary was the gasp, "It is finished" (John 19:30).  The Greek word used by the Apostle John in his account of the crucifixion of Christ is tetelestai--a word is found nowhere else in the Bible. It means fully completed, paid up in full, no longer having any outstanding debt. In that culture, the word was often written on business documents indicating that a bill had been paid. John's Greek readership would have made that connection immediately. There was no mistaking John's message: Christ died to pay for their sins. Fully. Completely. 

If we find ourselves--out of guilt or obligation--still trying to cover the cost of our sins we need to let this incredible truth set in: Jesus paid the price so we wouldn’t have to. The Bible says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 6:23, NLT).
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Did you get that? Grace is a "free gift." It can never be earned. We can't possibly do enough good things in our lives to repay God. But, thanks be to God, we don't have to. Jesus paid it all. We can put our checkbooks away. Our account was closed at the cross. 

Every family has rules. Many family rules are spoken, some of them often. Look both ways before crossing the street. Come when you're called. Don't talk back. Tell the truth. Be in by ten. 


Some family rules are unspoken, yet just as clear. Don't bother your father when he's watching sports. Kids who get Cs and Ds in school are losers. You must go to church every Sunday. Don't think outside the box. Hang around with people who look, act, and dress like you. 


In family systems infiltrated with serious dysfunction--divorce, alcoholism, abuse, depression, workaholism--children often strictly adhere to three unspoken family rules: 

1.  don’t talk
2. don’t trust
3. don’t feel
   

Children from troubled homes learn at an early age not to talk about family problems. We keep them to ourselves either because we are embarrassed about what’s going on or because we’re convinced no one could possibly relate. So we stuff our family stuff.

We learn not to trust others. Children are, by nature, very trusting. Not trusting is a learned behavior. When children are unable to trust it is most often the result of their trust having been violated by the people closest to them.

When children find they can’t talk freely about what is going on in their life and when they are distrusting of those around them, they tend to shut down emotionally. They “turn off” feelings like anger, fear, frustration, loneliness, or sadness because they have nowhere to go with them anyway.

As children, following these three rules makes sense. Kids somehow believe that by not talking, not trusting, and not feeling their suffering will be lessened. But continuing to adhere to these rules as adults can have serious consequences. The rules that help us as children harm us as adults. The same rules that protected us from hardship as children prevent us from wholeness as adults

The first step in overcoming a painful childhood is to break the rules.

We must talk about the things that caused and, more than likely, continue to cause so much pain. We must bring to the surface those things we didn’t or weren’t allowed to talk about. Our dark family secrets must be brought into the light if they are ever to be stripped of their power. We can’t ignore them. We can’t pretend they aren't there. We must talk through them.

The key to breaking the “don’t talk” rule is to first break the “don’t trust” rule. We must find safe people we can talk to. People who have our best interests in mind. People we can be comfortable confiding in. People we can trust. 


As we seek to recover from a painful past we must assemble a support base of trust-worthy people and lean on them often. Yes, this involves risk. Yes, risking is scary. But trust is the single most important element to a healthy relationship so it is well worth the risk. Find a counselor. Talk to a pastor. Confide in a close friend. Learning to trust is not easy. Know that going in. But it’s crucial to our recovery.

And, finally, we must learn how to feel. When we’ve found people we can trust, when we’ve discovered that we can talk about things we may have never talked about before, we must begin to deal with any feelings that may pop to the surface. We must process those feelings we have spent a lifetime trying to suppress. We must feel our feelings and feel them all the way through if we are ever to be done with them. That is the only way the pain of our past will no longer pervade our present.

Does your painful childhood still hang like a dark cloud over your adult life? Life-giving freedom comes from breaking the rules.

Experiencing true freedom in Christ is a two-step process. The first step is understanding that, no matter what awful things we've done, we are forgiven. The second step is offering that same forgiveness to those who've done awful things to us.

We live in freedom when we acknowledge our sin but focus on our Savior. We live in bondage when we acknowledge our Savior but focus on our sin.

Most of us know how it feels when we’ve made that last payment on something—whether it’s a car, a house, a credit card, a student loan.

It is so freeing, isn't it, to finally be done with that debt? But what if, out of sheer habit, we just kept making payments? What if we continued to write checks every month even though our debt had been paid in full?

That’s just crazy, isn’t it?

And yet that is exactly what many of us do with God’s grace. We still try to pay on an account that has been paid in full. We keep trying to impress Him with the good things we do. But our good works not done out of a profound sense gratitude for all God has done for us. They are born out of guilt; performed in an attempt to prove ourselves worthy.

We continue to try to earn God's gift of grace, even though it's been given to us for free.

The truth of the matter is this: Our Heavenly Father didn’t simply help us out with a couple of payments on our debt to Him. He tells us over and over again in His Word that He has paid our debt in full. He paid the price for our sin--the wrongs we've done in the past and the mistakes we continue to make--through the death of His Son. We owe nothing. We are in the clear. The cross of Calvary stands as an exclamation point that we have been declared debt free! 

When we find ourselves spiritually strapped, trying desperately to compensate for our sinful behavior; when we continue to try to wrestle our burden off of Jesus' shoulders so we can carry it ourselves, we are not experiencing the freedom that Christ came to give us. We must let this incredible truth set in--Jesus bore our sin so we don’t have to. Our Heavenly Father has issued this statement: So if the Son sets you free you are free indeed. (John 8:36, NIV)  At the bottom of our personal account, God has stamped, PAID IN FULL.

Our Heavenly Father’s astonishing gift of grace can never be earned. We can't possibly do enough good things in our lifetime to repay Him. But, thanks be to God, we don’t have to.