Forgiveness

Luke 17:1-5
1 One day Jesus said to his disciples, "There will always be temptations to sin, but how terrible it will be for the person who does the tempting. 2 It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around the neck than to face the punishment in store for harming one of these little ones. 3 I am warning you! If another believer sins, rebuke him; then if he repents, forgive him. 4 Even if he wrongs you seven times a day and each time turns again and asks forgiveness, forgive him." 5 One day the apostles said to the Lord, "We need more faith; tell us how to get it."
This is really a neat passage to me, if you think about it forgiveness is probably the area most looked over in people's lives. So often we are so quick to get mad when we feel like we have been done wrong, but Jesus basically says "who cares what anybody does to you, forgive them." Have you ever taken the time to think if God really wants us to forgive in every circumstance?
Well the amazing part of this passage is that Jesus is talking about forgiveness and the disciple's first statement is asking for faith. The disciples reply to Jesus seems to give the impression that they heard him and then said "yea, yea, that's nice but tell us about this faith stuff, we want to do some cool things." Today as I was reading this passage, I was hit with a whole different perspective. The disciples in their reply simply realized something far to many people never do, they realized that forgiveness at the level Jesus required cannot be achieved without faith. So often we are guilty of trying to make ourselves forgive, and yet it seems that the harder we try to forgive, the harder it is. Man does not have the righteousness level needed to forgive when we have been treated wrong. True forgiveness, complete real forgiveness, is only attainable by trusting Jesus to work through us, so that we can forgive people as he requires of us. What a great feeling to truly forgive someone to the extent, that even when they wrong you again, you don't remember about the past times that you have been done wrong.
What a wonderful, beautiful, and free life we can have if only we decide to believe Jesus in every single circumstance.