Bitterness is a prison. It is self-destructive; it is spiritual suicide. That’s why it’s often been said, “The bitter person drinks a vial of poison and waits for their enemy to die.” Therefore, when counseling the bitter person, the warning of Jesus should not be neglected. Use it to direct the eyes of the bitter person away from himself to God and help him to unlock his self-made prison by walking in the obedience of forgiveness.

The heart that has been forgiven much loves much (Luke 7:47). This should mean that as we ponder the depth of our own sinfulness (like the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears) and consider the greater depth of God’s forgiveness, we will grow in our love for Him. One result of this growth should be that our hearts are prepared to respond humbly when others sin against us.
In contrast, when we forget God’s grace, our hearts become proud, and we who have been forgiven much may act like one who believes he has been forgiven little. When this happens, the soil of our hearts is in danger of being fertilized and ready for bitterness to take root. We must, therefore, consciously practice the obedience of forgiveness. If we do not, a spirit of unforgiveness will grow into resentment, leading to bitterness. Bitterness then erodes the effectiveness of our prayers and may, in fact, reveal that something far more serious is wrong.
Therefore, when counseling a bitter person, be sure to bring the following warning from Jesus to bear upon their heart.
[Pray in this way:] And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors … For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions (Matt. 6:12, 14-15).
This post explains how you can minister this Scripture to a bitter person. Jesus’ words describe three characteristics of the forgiving heart and warn against the pride that actively works against the obedience of forgiveness.
The Forgiving Heart is Energized by a Healthy Awareness of Personal Sin, but the Proud Heart Thinks it is Superior to Others (v. 12a)
Jesus includes confession of sin as a necessary element of humble prayer. We ought to pray, “forgive us our debts.” A daily awareness of our sinfulness will lead us to regularly ask God for forgiveness, which is a healthy part of spiritual growth. When we remember that we are wretched, we will, in turn, praise God for the victory found only in Jesus (Rom. 7:24-25).
The bitter person, on the other hand, thinks himself superior to others. A shallow recognition of his depravity makes it difficult for him to imagine that he is quite capable of committing the very sins for which he stubbornly refuses to forgive his brothers and sisters. The unforgiving person has not lately thought about the gravity of his own sin.
In contrast, those with forgiving hearts humbly acknowledge their own need for a daily supply of God’s grace and mercy.
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Easter and Christmas do belong together. There is no hope of eternal life and the glorious hope of resurrection bodies that can pass through clothing and leave it undisturbed without the determination of the Creator of the universe not to abhor the virgin’s womb and willingly wear in humility the swaddling clothes of a baby in a feeding trough in a stable in the little town of Bethlehem and in that lowly body, bear our sins in our place.

There are two miracles associated with the life of Jesus, his birth and his resurrection. At Christmas we celebrate the miracle of his birth and at Easter the miracle of his resurrection, but they are related—in particular by clothes.
The Easter event was not the resuscitation of a corpse, as when Jesus raised Lazarus. This was certainly an amazing event but Lazarus subsequently died. Jesus raised him after the decaying process took over, restoring his flesh, yet they had to strip off his grave clothes. The text says: The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go” (Jn. 11:44). However, in the case of Jesus, something very different happened and it was shown in the case of the clothes around the body of Jesus. The Gospel of John, written by one of the eye-witnesses of the event, states: Then Simon Peter came, following him [John], and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself (Jn. 20:6-7). The verb translated “folded” here, in the two other times it is used, Matt 27:59 and Luke 23:53, speaks rather of being wrapped or rolled.
“Folded” gives the impression that the resurrected Jesus got up, folded his clothes the way any well-brought-up adult would do, and then left the tomb in an appropriately tidy state. Actually, what Peter and John saw was the linen scarf that had been wrapped around the head of Jesus, (as in the case of Lazarus) lying apart, still wrapped or maintaining the rolled shape of the head of Jesus who was no longer there.
Since this is a Christmas letter, Christmas will help us. The blown-up, lit-up decorations we see in the evenings on the lawns of many houses end up in the morning lying flat with no air in them. That is what the disciples saw. The body had passed right through the clothes without disturbing them. Jesus did not need to be unbound. He passed right through them and left them empty. The miracle of Easter is not only the empty tomb but the empty grave clothes, and the transformation of Jesus’s earthy body into a glorious spiritual body is like the bodies we will get one day!
The miracle at Christmas was not in the clothes as such but in the fact that there was actually a baby in those swaddling clothes. This baby had no earthly, physical father. Babies do not come from nowhere so we are faced with the miracle of the Virgin Birth. Either Mary was an adulteress and Jesus was the illegitimate result of her sin or what Scripture says is true: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God (Lk. 1:35). Just as Jesus was raised by the Spirit of holiness (Rom 1:4), he was also born by the Spirit of holiness in a miracle as comparable to that of his resurrection.
I gave myself a Christmas present this year. I re-read very carefully the impressive study on the virgin birth by J Gresham Machen, the father of modern Christian orthodoxy. At the beginning of the twentieth century as he fought liberalism in the mainline Church, and while he was engaged in the politics of maintaining the faith against the powerful bureaucracy of the Presbyterian church, and the powers of liberalism in Princeton Seminary, he was also a faithful and gifted scholar who defended true religion by serious scholarship. His study of 415 carefully argued pages, The Virgin Birth of Christ (Harper and Row, 1930), took on all the critical thinking in English, German and French, on this essential subject of the birth of Christ, showing that the supernatural explanation of the birth of Jesus is the only one that makes ultimate sense of the Gospel witness. I was impressed to note that the greatest liberal scholar of his day, the German Adolf Harnack actually twice cited Machen’s work. Machen shows that there was no early textual evidence that did not include the account of the virgin birth, and that the biblical doctrine of Christ’s sinless and atoning death cannot be maintained without the fact of the virgin birth. He states: “…the two elements of Christian truth belong logically together; the supernatural Person of our Lord belongs logically with his redemptive work: the virgin birth belongs logically with the cross” (p.391). In other words, there is no good news of redemption without the supernatural fact of the virgin birth.
Easter and Christmas do belong together. There is no hope of eternal life and the glorious hope of resurrection bodies that can pass through clothing and leave it undisturbed without the determination of the Creator of the universe not to abhor the virgin’s womb and willingly wear in humility the swaddling clothes of a baby in a feeding trough in a stable in the little town of Bethlehem and in that lowly body, bear our sins in our place.
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.
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Now for a blind spot to something no less obvious: Most elders in the Reformed tradition take exception to the Reformed view of Christian Sabbath recreation as taught in the Westminster standards. As unfortunate as that is, many among that number go even further by supporting going to restaurants and ordering out food on Sundays, which pertains not merely to the question of rest vs. recreation but to unlawful work on the Lord’s Day. Ironically, most elders would say they affirm the Confession’s Christian Sabbath position with respect to work; yet their views on transacting business with restaurants on the Lord’s Day end up contradicting their own theology and professed scruples.

My father grew up in the borough of Brooklyn, in a neighborhood just north of “Bed-Stuy” called Williamsburg. Those familiar with the district know that in the early 1900s with the completion of the bridge that bears the neighborhood’s name, Hasidic Jews from the “Lower east Side” began populating the community along with other immigrants like my Italian grandparents and great grandmother. Eventually, Williamsburg became the most populated neighborhood in the United States.
As a boy, my father could earn a penny on Saturdays from any number of Hasidic Jews for turning on a light in an apartment or hallway. (To put things in perspective, when my father was eight years old the Williamsburg Houses initially tenanted for just under two dollars per week for a single room. A busy Saturday of flipping switches could earn a day’s rent!)
Without getting into possible Jewish rationale for such a seemingly pedantic Shabbat restriction – whether it be tied to kindling a flame, creating something new, or just mere tradition – it’s not hard to discern a legalistic and hypocritical Jewish mindset.
First, let’s dispel a common sentiment. Legalism is not tied to obedience, lest Jesus was a legalistic. No, legalism pertains to trying to earn that which can only be received by grace. Legalism also pertains to finding loopholes in order to “obey” or not “disobey” by way of technicality. It is the second kind of legalism that I have in mind.
The Williamsburg Jews got the electricity turned on without themselves flipping the switch. And how did they do that? Well, they paid someone else to break their law for them. So, technically speaking, they didn’t break the letter of the law; they got someone else to break their law for them, hence the legalism.
Their hypocrisy is due to believing they were more obedient than my father because they would never do what he had done for money. Their money!
The point is not that certain Hasidic Jews believed wrongly they may not turn on electricity on the last day of the week. In other words, whether their law was according to God’s word misses the point. The point is these Jews were all too willing to violate their own personal moral convictions by paying someone else to do what they believed was forbidden by God. I trust that’s obvious,
Now let’s play with some analogies:

I may not pray to false gods, but I may pay someone else to pray to false gods for me. As long as I don’t commit idolatry, I have not broken the moral law.

I may not murder, but I may pay someone else to murder for me. As long as I don’t pull the trigger, I have not broken the moral law.

I may not steal, but I may pay someone else to steal for me. As long as my accountant falsifies the tax forms, I have not broken the moral law.

I may not lie or deceive, but I may pay someone else to lie and deceive for me. As long as I don’t speak false words, I have not broken the moral law.

The legalistic hypocrisy is glaring. Obviously, we see the absurdity.
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