Narrow Way with Steve Phillips Iron Cage
You are crafting your own Iron Cage. Standing on steel plates of hatred, bronze bars of bitterness are welded tightly around you. They are reinforced with grates of grudge and metallic malice.
And you are fabricating on the inside as rods of revenge shut the voids with vengeance. You are surrounded. All too soon your project will terminate, and your Iron Cage will have become your tomb.
You have built it for yourself, even boasting of your progress. But successively, each bitter bar shuts out more of the light, makes you more of a prisoner of your own creation. You are never at peace as you weld. Joy has long since fled your miserable merciless cell. You have become your own captor.
Finally there remained not one centimeter of space that had not been filled with your fury. No cheering ray entered your dark and deathly dungeon. You have shut them all out. And now you expire.
Descending into outer darkness, you continue to rage in bitterest hatred. It is what you chose, what you wanted, and what you created. Torment shall be yours unendingly, and that worm will never die.
There is only one key to release you from your Iron Cage: forgiveness. You never experienced it upon earth; you never received it from Christ nor extended it to others. Throughout your futile existence, you breathed out malice, grudge, bitterness, hatred, contempt, and vengeance; and thus you perished.
There is no remedy then. Forgiveness is a matter for the present, not a hastily sought after commodity once plunged into the pit of fury and flame. Yes, you must forgive now; you cannot hereafter.
You cannot be forgiven by God if you do not forgive men. “If you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions” –Matthew 6:15. This is the blunt and raw decree of heaven.
Bitterness in the heart blocks forgiveness from heaven. Malice against man means mercy is missing. Holding grudge withholds a Father’s pardon. Seeking vengeance brings Divine wrath to your door.
The word “forgive” means to send away: a dismissal/release. Nothing is kept in the heart against another; it is released and sent away. No bitterness abides. Malice, that vicious character wishing harm to others, is absent. Envy, with its displeasure at other’s blessings along with the smoldering desire to see them deprived of it, has vanished. You have forgiven. Nothing burns in your heart against others.
That is forgiveness. But beware lest the erection of your Iron Cage continue. “‘Should you not have had mercy upon your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? Hand him over to the torturers.’ So shall My Father do to you if each of you does not forgive his brother his sins from his heart” –Matthew 18:33-35.
“Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul abusive speech” –Colossians 3:8 are the things real Christians have laid aside being joined to Christ, the One who forgives. Retaining them is rejecting Christ.
“Slander no one, be peaceable, gentle, showing complete courtesy to all people. For we too were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our lives in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another” –Titus 3:2,3. Yes, once we were so, but not now: if we forgive.
“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” –Ephesians 4:31,32. This is the standard and the measure of forgiveness. Do not fail here.
“Hatred stirs us strife, but love covers all transgressions” -Proverbs 10:12. “A man’s discretion makes him slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression” –Proverbs 19:11. “Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins” -1 Peter 4:8.
Love does not stir up sin and evil; it does not keep digging it up to avenge wrongs done. Love and forgiveness send away offenses. Love releases any thoughts of punishment and harm against offenders.
And how is this possible? “We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” -1 John 4:19,20. That’s how that is done: by loving the forgiving Christ.
But if you do not forgive, throughout all eternity you will be the prisoner of your own Iron Cage.