Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Colossians 3:12-14

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “The first call which every Christian experiences is the call to abandon the attachments of this world.”

That’s a start, if abandoning the world is the first call, the second is to fill the void of those old attachments. In the third chapter of Colossians, Paul tells each of us to put away what is earthly and put on the new self. The committed follower Paul describes is holy, compassionate, kind, humble, patient, forgiving, and thankful. 

As I read the passage above, it seems that forgiveness is central to the theme. So we must remember that God didn’t make us with the capacity to carry all the negative residue from what we are unwilling to forgive.

Forgiveness is what God gives to free us and others from the weight of relational failure. If we want the kind of life that God promises us, forgiveness is God’s solution. 

Forgiveness is a decision to release a person from the obligation that resulted when he or she injured you.

And according to the example of Christ, forgiveness is without limits.