Stop Drinking Poison
Friday, September 19, 2025
“When I fail to forgive someone it’s because I’ve exaggerated the offense against me, and I have minimized my offense against God.” – Alistair Begg
“God told me it was O.K. for me not to forgive her.”
Believe it or not, someone actually told me that once… and with a straight face. Even more unbelievably, that person was a professing Christian, who in every other area of her life was apparently walking closely with Jesus.
However, someone had hurt her feelings many years ago and she simply couldn’t let go of the grudge. And so, the wound festered until it reached the point where she had deluded herself into thinking it was O.K. not to forgive the offending party.
I lovingly confronted her by saying that forgiveness is not an option; it is a command. I also told her that God would never tell her something that violated His Word, but she wouldn’t give an inch.
My friend, I once heard that holding a grudge is like drinking poison and then expecting the other person to die. In most cases, the offending party is oblivious to – or couldn’t care less about – the hurt they caused. Meanwhile, you are killing yourself slowly but surely as the unforgiveness in your heart eats away at your soul minute by minute, day by day.
If you wrestle with an unforgiving heart, here is the remedy: look in the mirror. When you do, staring back at you will be a person who has lied, lusted, and committed one heinous sin against God after another. And yet, in His tender mercy and unfathomable love, He forgave you your sins by laying them upon His one and only Son, the Lord Jesus.
Please don’t be like the unforgiving servant whose master forgave him an enormous debt in Matthew 18:23-35, only for him to turn around and fail to forgive a fellow servant of a relative pittance.
In other words, stop drinking the poison!
“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.” Matthew 6:14-15 (BSB)
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
