Forgiveness is the greatest gift to receive, but the most difficult to give. To forgive means to "give up resentment against."

We can feel resentment for a lot of reasons. Someone can willfully hurt us with the intent to injure. We may feel we have grounds to resent, but our resentment toward another yields no good result.

We can resent people because of the way they are: someone might just irritate us, or we may resent a person's skin color, religion, lifestyle, etc. For whatever reason we might feel resentment, we must forgive.

Jesus Christ taught His disciples in Matthew 6:14, "If you forgive men [people] when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you." There is the strong implication here that people will offend us; that is just life.

Our life practice must be forgiveness; that is, we must never allow anything to build resentment in our hearts. The question is, how?

First of all, we should consider that we have been forgiven by God. Our offenses (sins) against God--His holiness and righteousness--far surpass anything that another person could do to us. God gives us grace (unmerited favor) and forgiveness. In the same way, we should extend grace to others and overlook whatever they have done to us.

When Jesus taught the forgiveness principle, He linked God's forgiveness toward us to our forgiveness of others. This does not negate God's grace to forgive us, but it does lead us to believe that if we are the kind of person who holds grudges and who lives resenting someone else, we have set ourselves against God and His love for us.

To come to God for His salvation, we must come with open hands, not clenched fists. It does not matter what someone might have done to us; it must be forgiven and laid aside when we come to God.

The apostle John challenges us, "If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar" (1 John 4:20). We cannot have a good relationship with God if we have not attempted to resolve problems with people.

The key is love. The apostle Peter tells us, "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8).

The source of all love is God. God forgives because He loves.

We must love as God does, and from that love, we can forgive people immediately and without reservation. We want nothing to block God's forgiveness to us.