When God Forgave Us // Forgive and Forget, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Release Date: 02/11/2026
Forgiving the Really Big Things // Forgive and Forget, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
You have a son. He’s out walking one night. A car hits him. Leaves him for dead on the freeway so that a few minutes later, the next car on that dark road kills him. Imagine. This week on a different perspective we've been talking about forgiveness. In a world where we often experience emotional bumps and bruises it turns out that forgiveness is as important to our emotional well being as physical healing is to our bodies. But every now and then in life a tsunami hits, something so incredibly overwhelming that we could have never predicted it or imagined how we would cope. I always thought...
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Forgiving Brings Healing // Forgive and Forget, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
How do you get over the hurts of the past? You know, really let go so they don’t hurt anymore. Well, today, we’re going to meet an amazing woman – Lorraine Watson – who has a real story to tell. These days psychologists and psychiatrists talk about the fact that the act of forgiving someone often results in healing. On Monday I talked about some research with some incest survivors. Fifty percent of them were asked to participate in some workshops on forgiveness. The psychologists who conducted the research concluded that the forgiveness resulted in dramatically reduced anxiety and...
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When God Forgave Us // Forgive and Forget, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
We all know that we need to forgive people. That’s the theory, But let’s now put the shoe on the other foot and talk about God’s forgiveness. Does He really need to forgive us? Really? Forgiveness is one of those fluffy words that quite often we pay very little attention to. But when you think about it, it’s pretty obvious that without forgiveness, we can’t have effective relationships. Without forgiveness on a daily basis between husband and wife a marriage falls apart. And they do in epidemic proportion. Without forgiving our work colleagues for their shortcomings and...
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Forgiving is Accepting // Forgive and Forget, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Every person we will ever meet, is going to annoy us at some point. Something in their personality will grate, something they do will hurt … so what’s the secret of having a great relationship anyway? It seems that there are really only two types of people in this world: those who love getting up early in the morning and those who don’t, those who love cats and those who hate them. Or, you know what I mean. It seems that different people just come out of different moulds. We have different likes and dislikes, different strengths and weaknesses. And as much as those differences make life...
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Forgiving is Forgetting // Forgive and Forget, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
When someone does something wrong – something that hurts us, it’s easy to say, “I forgive you”. But actually living out that forgiveness – what does that look like? In a recent edition, the magazine, Psychology Today, carried an article on forgiveness. In part, the article reports that until recently psychologists regarded forgiveness as the business of the clergy and theologians. But now, mental health experts are subjecting forgiveness to the microscope of scientific scrutiny with no apologies. It goes on to tell of 2 psychologists, Drs. Robert Enright and Suzanne Freedman, working...
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The Year of the Lord's Favour // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 5
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Sometimes, life gets so rough and rocky and we think to ourselves, surely, surely it must get better soon. But some people give up hope completely, and just live their lives in a constant state of despair. When we think about God, whoever that is, it’s easy to get a distorted picture. The older we are the more we tend to think of Him as being judgmental, and the younger we are well, younger people, how do they see God? I saw an article published recently that reported younger peoples’ views of God, it was based on a survey that had been conducted nationally in Australia with young people,...
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Let the Oppressed Go Free // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 4
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
We tend to think of oppression in global geo-political terms. But normal, everyday people experience all sorts of oppression – sometimes, in the most unexpected of ways. Oppression is just a fact of life in this world, we tend to think of it in political and in social terms, on a national or international scale, and it is huge. But oppression happens right at home too, oppression isn’t about nations, it’s about individuals like you and me. To be oppressed means to be down trodden. A husband can oppress his wife, a mother can oppress her child, a boss can oppress their employees, and...
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Sight for the Blind // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 3
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Imagine just for a moment that you’re blind and all of a sudden, your sight is restored. What would that be like? How would it feel? As a young man I used to have 20/20 vision but like just about everyone else, when you get to your late 30s and early 40s the old vision gets a bit blurred, and I needed glasses. These days I wouldn’t even think of driving a car or reading a book without the old multifocals. When you think about it, little by little without us even noticing, our vision becomes distorted. It’s like that with glaucoma too, little by little people lose their sight and by the...
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Release to the Captives // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 2
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
It must be an amazing feeling for a prisoner to be set free after years of incarceration. I wonder when they step out of the prison – what that freedom looks like, tastes like, smells like. I’m not sure if you every saw that movie in the mid 90’s called The Shawshank Redemption with Morgan Freeman. But it’s about two men essentially who find themselves in jail, one played by Morgan Freeman is there because he committed murder, the other one is there because he’s been framed. Anyhow there’s a scene in the movie where the Morgan Freeman character finally gets parole after decades,...
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Good News for the Poor // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 1
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
Most of us like to watch the news, or listen to it on the radio, or read the newspaper. But really, there’s precious little good news these days. It all seems to be bad news, especially for the poor. But Jesus said that He had good news for the poor. So what did He mean? One of the little rituals that I love to perform every night is to watch the evening news on television. It’s just, I don’t know, my way of unwinding for the day and I guess it’s my way of finding out what’s been going on at home and around the world. But have you noticed whether you watch it on TV or listen to it on...
info_outlineWe all know that we need to forgive people. That’s the theory, But let’s now put the shoe on the other foot and talk about God’s forgiveness. Does He really need to forgive us? Really?
Forgiveness is one of those fluffy words that quite often we pay very little attention to. But when you think about it, it’s pretty obvious that without forgiveness, we can’t have effective relationships. Without forgiveness on a daily basis between husband and wife a marriage falls apart. And they do in epidemic proportion.
Without forgiving our work colleagues for their shortcomings and failures, workplaces become a sieving bed of politics and strife. And you know, they are. We can’t do anything really effective in a relationship when there’s resentment and strife. Forgiveness is the first and only real step towards really dealing with issues. But what about God? I mean, if God’s God, why is forgiveness really such a big deal for him? Surely none of us is really that bad.
For me this whole issue of God forgiving us is one of the toughest issues I’ve ever had to get my mind around. Now I’m the first to admit I have faults and mistakes. Absolutely. And you can too. We all say, “None of us is perfect.” But if there is a God. If God is God, all powerful, all loving. Why doesn’t He just look at me and say, “Well there’s a guy who’s trying to live a good life. He’s not perfect, but hey, who is? He’s in. Heaven, eternal life. This guy is trying to live a good life. He’s good enough.” Have you ever wondered that? I mean, come on God, if you make the rules, if you can do whatever you want, why don’t you just accept me for who I am.
And yet, we turn around and we watch the evening news. You know, the latest drunk driver who’s killed a young kid. The latest sex abuse scandal, the latest corporate executive who’s taken a short-term unauthorised loan and neglected to pay it back. And something rises up inside us . You know, they should be punished. That drunk driver who walked out of the pub and got in his car and ran over that kid. He deserves to be locked up for life.
That’s our reaction isn’t it? Are you with me so far? On the one hand, we all have in-built innate sense of justice when it comes to other people. On the other hand, when it comes to us, to you and me, we want to rationalise our mistakes, explain away our selfishness, ignore some of the destruction that’s left in our wake.
I remember thinking, well that’s all well and good. I’m not a drunk driver who’s killed a kid. I’m not a murderer or rapist. I’m not any of those things, so why should God have to forgive me? I’m just human. Hmm. But imagine. Imagine if His standard is one of perfect love. A love that never fails. A love that never stops searching for, caring for us. What if this God has a love so wide, so wide, so deep for us that we can never fathom it.
Just imagine you go outside at night away from the smog and the light of the city and you look up at the sky and you see all the stars of heaven lighted above, and God says to you, “Compared to the vastness of the universe that I’ve created for you, you are so much more important. Those things are just a drop in the ocean in my heart. I love you. I love you with a perfect love.” Imagine if that’s the standard that God applies.
Now let’s apply the same innate sense of justice that we feel when we’re watching the evening news set against this standard of perfect love. And anything short of that perfect love, well, it just falls short in this deep and mighty Father-heart of God.
There are two things. There is love and there’s justice. Both need to be satisfied. It’s in our nature. So why wouldn’t it be in God’s nature?
If we really, truly love someone, we won’t sweep their selfishness, their failures, their rejections, their alienations, their addictions, their anger, their resentment, their hatred – we won’t sweep those things under the carpet. If we really love someone, we’ll do whatever it costs.
You know when we look at God and we say, “Well why doesn’t God just accept me the way I am? Why doesn’t He just accept me and give me eternal life and say, ‘Hey, this person is human?’”
When we look at God like that, we’re judging God by the wrong standard. We really need to judge God, if I can use that term, by the standard of His perfect love. A love so great that He would send His Son Jesus Christ, the most valuable person in His life, and allow Him to be beaten, to be spat on, to be abused, to be nailed to a cross to die for you and me. God is a just God, and justice needs to be satisfied. But God is a God of grace, a God of love. And when He looks at you, when He looks at me, His heart just overflows with love.
There are no words to describe this. And so He sent Jesus His Son to die on a cross for me so He can look at me, He can look at you and say, “There’s a person who has placed their faith in my Son. There is person who has said, ‘I fall short of the glory of God. I fall short of God’s standard of perfect love. Nothing I can ever do will ever bring me up to that standard. And I know that God has to judge by the standard of perfect love, and so what I’m going to do is this. I’m going to look at this Jesus who died for me on the cross, and I’m going to place my faith in Him.’”
What the world says is, “Hey, I’m beautiful. Hey, I’ve got some mistakes, but go out there and have fun. Go out there and enjoy life. Do what feels good.” That’s fine, until you look at Jesus hanging on the cross. That’s fine until you encounter a love so tender, so beautiful, so high, so wide, so deep, that we just can’t fathom it. And as we walk through that love, as we look at God, as we look at the pain that Jesus suffered for us on the cross, we can do nothing but come to the realisation that we fall short of that love.
And more than that, Jesus went to the cross. God sent His Son to die on a cross for you and me, knowing full well that when you and I came into this world, we’d reject that perfect love on a daily basis. While we were still out there rejecting Him, in a sense, Christ died for us.
Sin is such an old-fashioned word. We talk about low self-esteem. We talk about selfishness or poor choices or whatever we use. Whatever term we use, we fall short of that perfect love, a love so great that it’s not in the business of sweeping those things under the carpet. It’s a love so great that it’s in the business of dealing with our failures to set us free, to live a life eternal, free from those things.
We need to call those things in our life exactly what they are; wherever we are, whatever our circumstances, whether we’ve never believed in Jesus, whether we’ve been walking in faith with Him for 50 years, let’s call sin, sin. Let’s name it and let’s judge it by the perfect love that God has for us. And then let’s say, “Hey, I can’t do anything. I can’t please God because I know that I have sinned in my bones.” But what I can do is look at this Jesus hanging on the cross for me and say:
Father I believe. I believe in this Jesus. I accept this Jesus as my Savior. And I want to experience and taste the perfect love that you have for me today tomorrow, and next week, forever.