How Moses Learnt About Forgiveness – by Eliezer Gonzalez

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• Dr Eliezer Gonzalez
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• Forgiveness
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Feb 29, 2016 7772

The hardest lesson that the great men and women of God have always had to learn is the lesson of forgiveness: what it means to be forgiven, and what it means to forgive. Moses learnt that lesson, like all of us do, the hard way.

Moses is described by God as the meekest, or most humble man on earth (Numbers 12:3). He typifies the Good Shepherd who leads his people to the Promised Land. However, that is not because he wasn’t impatient and prone to anger. He fought against this propensity all of his life. But God calls him the meekest man on earth because he was willing to learn the lessons of forgiveness.

At the foot of Mount Sinai, as God is about to wipe out the idolatrous and rebellious people of Israel, Moses interposes himself between the people and God, and says to the Lord,

 But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written. – Exodus 32:32

At the foot of Sinai, Moses learnt that forgiveness has a cost.

Then forty years later, Moses in his anger at the people of Israel struck the rock instead of speaking to it as the Lord had commanded. Now he was an old man.

There at the borders of Canaan, Moses learnt that he would always need the forgiveness of God himself, no matter how long he had followed Him.

It is the same with us. When we learn that forgiveness has a cost, it transforms our lives. The cost was the life of the Son of God himself. And when we understand that we will always need that forgiveness, and that it is our only hope, then God will also be able to say of us that we are the meekest, most humble person on earth.

These are the secrets that open the gates of Paradise.

– Eliezer Gonzalez