Let’s Talk About Love: The Purpose of Love: Forgiveness
What purpose does love serve in our lives? What function does it perform?
One purpose or function of love in our lives is forgiveness. God forgave us and through His love we must learn to forgive others in our lives in order to experience the fullness of His grace toward us.
In the Bible Dictionary forgiveness means: the giving up of resentment or claim of requital on account of an offense. The offense may be a deprivation of a person’s property, rights, or honor, or it may be a violation of moral law. Forgiveness is conditioned on repentance and the willingness to make reparation or atonement; the effect of forgiveness is the restoration of both parties to the former state of relationship. The ground of forgiveness by God of man’s sins is the atoning death of Christ. Christ’s atonement was retroactive in its effect (Hebrews 11:40). God’s forgiveness of our sins enabled us to enter into the fellowship with the Father that Adam and Eve enjoyed in the Garden of Eden before they sinned, and ‘died.’ This is why we call the renewed relationship being ‘born again.’ When we enter into fellowship with God, He then ‘breaths into our nostrils the breath of life.’ We then become a ‘living soul’ just as Adam was when God first created him.”
1 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) says of this ‘rebirth,’ “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” We are not just “fixed” or “repaired,” but we are a whole new creature! This means we have made communion between our human spirit and the Holy Spirit. If you recall the meaning of communion from an earlier post, it means to join together or move things to make them something better than their individual components.
This means that we are no longer subject to our earthly predecessors, but we are made heirs with Christ. It doesn’t matter any more what “runs in your family.” You have a new family, and a new definition of “what runs in God’s family.” This is the character and nature of God that Paul speaks of in Galatians. The Fruit of the Spirit is now your inheritance!
So one purpose of love is forgiveness!