Making Restitution

"And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void to offence toward God, and toward men" (Acts 24:16).

"Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing" (Matthew 5:23-26).

Because of Acts 24:16 and Matthew 5:23-26, I believe we need to find anyone who could be angry with us in the slightest for any way we've harmed them in the past, and make it right with them as soon as we possibly can. This may take months as we remember past offenses against others (whether pre or post-baptism), track the people down, and ask forgiveness from them and make our restitution to them. But as we do this I believe we will feel wonderful, and will be making a witness to them as well.

"If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men" (Romans 12:18).

I believe if we find it isn't possible to track some of them down after doing all that we can to find them, we can ask the Lord that he would give them grace toward us and that they would forgive us, and if we have material restitution to make to them for theft or damage to their property, we can give that amount of money to a Christian charity in their name (compare Numbers 5:8) and ask the Lord that the credit for that gift be put to their account at the judgment.

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Forgiving Others

"And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us" (Luke 11:4).

"But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses" (Mark 11:26).

Because of Luke 11:4 and Mark 11:26, I believe we need to review our past and find anything we haven't forgiven someone else for. While it says we're to "forget those things which are behind" (Philippians 3:13), I believe sometimes we think we've forgotten things when deep down we haven't really. To test ourselves, we can think of different people from our past and think "How would I greet them if I saw them in the mall one day by accident? How would I feel about seeing them?" We may find that as we think of some people we get angry and see ourselves turning and walking away from them as fast as we can without saying a word to them we are so angry. We would know then that we haven't really forgiven them yet.

I believe that as we cleanse our past so will our present and future be opened up into new possibilities in the Lord (2 Timothy 2:21).