Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
What it means to be initiated into the secret of the mystery, Part 82. The love of God in gentleness and forgiveness.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
1. Personal love for God and then impersonal love for all mankind.
2. Joy or inner happiness.
3. Peace or overt prosperity.
4. Patience as well as longsuffering.
5. Kindness and-or graciousness.
6. Goodness or the production of divine good.
7. Pistis or faithfulness.
8. “Gentleness” - nominative singular feminine noun praotes - prau?th" = gentleness, humility or meekness. Gentleness or humility is one of the most important ingredients from the fruit of the Spirit, inasmuch as vanity and pride are the most common human traits.
Humility does not consist in pretending to be less than one really is but rather is demonstrated when one does not pretend to be more than one really is.
1. Personal love for God and then impersonal love for all mankind.
2. Joy or inner happiness
3. Peace or overt prosperity.
4. Patience as well as longsuffering.
5. Kindness or graciousness.
6. Goodness or the production of divine good.
7. Pistis or faithfulness.
Gentleness has to do with Forgiveness.
Forgiveness = to give up resentment, excuse a guilty party, to release from payment, to forget an offense never bringing it up again not even to discuss it.
The principle of legal pardon is no different from the principle of personal pardon and forgiveness.
If someone asks for your forgiveness, and in honor you forgive them, then integrity and loyalty to doctrine demand that you forget whatever was done against you.
It also means that you never again recall what the individual has done to you or penalize the individual for doing so.
Arrogance has no ability to forgive.
The greatest illustration of forgiveness is the cross itself, where all the personal sins of the human race were imputed to our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.
The world is filled with acts of injustice and only the grace of God, understanding our subject of forgiveness, and you being gentle, can get you through.
Joseph had a change of circumstances but not a change of God’s grace support.
1. Joseph was thrown into the pit by his brothers which was a part of God’s plan for his life, which he failed to recognize, GEN 37:1-24.
2. Joseph was sold to a caravan, which just so happened to be coming by, and the caravan took Joseph to Egypt, God’s geographical will for Joseph, GEN 37:25-36!
3. Joseph then became a servant to Potiphar, who was an officer of Pharaoh, and Joseph learned that God can provide prosperity in any situation, GEN 39:2-6.
4. Joseph was then tempted many times by Potiphar’s wife to have sex with her, and he passed the test magnificently, GEN 39:7-10.
5. Mrs. Potiphar reacted against the rejection by Joseph and falsely accused Joseph of trying to seduce her, and this was a total act of injustice, GEN 39:11-18.
6. Potiphar believed his wife and threw Joseph into the dungeon for his second “pit” experience, GEN 39:19-20.
7. In GEN 40:1-4, Potiphar abuses his authority and gives Joseph double duties as a slave to two aristocrats in the Egyptian prison.
8. In GEN 40:14-15, Joseph fails again by relying on man and human viewpoint rather than the Lord or divine provisions, and the two men both forget to help Joseph in his prison experience.
In GEN 45:1, Joseph’s brothers, unknowingly, are begging Joseph for some help and food for the famine!
After putting his brothers through certain tests, Joseph discovered that their attitude toward each other had apparently changed, and Joseph would still be gentle.
Joseph discovered that their love for each other had apparently changed through certain tests.
Notice his humility and his gentleness after being so mistreated!
He brings their fears and worries right to the surface by stating what they lived in fear of, the fact that they sold him into slavery!
No bitterness! No resentment, No anger, No spite, Just unconditional love and total forgiveness!
When God blesses and God promotes, the disasters, tragedies, and heartaches of life are all blotted out.
So great is the blessing from God that the bad times are completely forgotten.
In all of these years of seeing how God has blessed Joseph through grace and through B.D., they still have not learned a thing!
Joseph’s brothers have learned absolutely nothing from the principles which are found in the life of Joseph. The brothers are believers, but they are losers!
They are in self-induced misery; they are actually making their own unhappiness!
They actually think that Joseph will do to them what they have done to him!