Monday, March 23rd | Daily Devotion
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." –Ephesians 4:31-32
TRANSCRIPTION:
Good morning. Grace and peace be unto all of you, my Father’s children on this incredible Monday.
We are entering the home stretch of our Lenten season. The past two weeks have been a social media fast, and this week we begin our Daniel Fast — and alongside it, we turn our focus to one of the most essential and often most difficult areas of the Christian walk: forgiveness.
We go today to Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, the fourth chapter, beginning at the 31st verse.
Forgiveness is not peripheral to our faith. It is at the very center of it. We are, by the nature of what God has done for us, a people created through forgiveness. Everything we celebrate at Easter — at Resurrection Sunday — is rooted in it. Paul understood this when he wrote to the Ephesian church, and he understood that even among believers, forgiveness would be a constant challenge. Not because the people were malicious, but because they were human. And humans offend one another. They say the wrong things, do the wrong things, move in ways that wound and frustrate and disappoint.
And yet the call remains: walk in forgiveness.
I know that is easier said than done. Forgiveness can be unnerving. It can feel tedious. It is not a single decision but a continuous posture — a constant movement of how we live and operate. But here is what I want us to sit with today. Christ, looking at the fullness of our humanity — every flaw, every failure, every repeated mistake — still positioned Himself to forgive us. Completely. Without reservation.
So the question that passage puts before us is this: what makes us so above extending that same latitude to our brothers and sisters? Do we believe we are perfect? Of course not. None of us would claim that. But we forget that we are not. We move through life holding the mistakes of others to a standard we quietly exempt ourselves from. The offenses of others loom large while our own quietly fade into the background.
Forgiveness dismantles that double standard. And here is the freedom in it — forgiving is freeing. Not just for the person being forgiven, but for you. Bitterness, wrath, clamor, slander — Paul lists them all and says: put them away. Not because the offense was not real, but because carrying them costs you more than releasing them ever will.
When we take communion, when we acknowledge the sacrifice of Christ, we are also acknowledging that He forgave us while we were still unworthy. That means merit cannot be our measure for extending forgiveness to others. We do not forgive people because they have earned it. We forgive because we have been forgiven — and Christ calls us to nothing less than that standard.
So as we move through this week, let forgiveness be the mark by which you live, move, and have your being. Not just as an occasional act, but as a way of operating.
Have an incredible Monday. God bless you — I will see you soon.