blood sucking leeches
The great commentator William Arnot told the following account to illustrate how believers are enabled to obey the command to forgive each other. After fording a river, a traveler in Burma discovered that his body was covered with small leeches, busily sucking his blood. His first impulse was to pull them off, but his servant warned him against it, explaining that to do that would leave part of the leeches buried in the skin and cause serious infection. The native prepared a warm bath for the man and added certain herbs to the water that irritated but did not kill the leeches. One by one they voluntarily dropped off. “Each unforgiven injury rankling in the heart is like a leech sucking the life-blood,” Arnot goes on to explain. “Mere human determination to have done with it will not cast the evil thing away. You must bathe your whole being in God’s pardoning mercy; and those venomous creatures will instantly let go their hold.”
When someone says or does something against us that seems unforgivable, it is helpful to offer a prayer such as this: “O God, put in me the heart of forgiveness, so that I may commune with You in the fullness of fellowship and joy and not experience the chastening that comes when You don’t forgive me because I won’t forgive a brother or sister in Christ. May I remember that for everyone who sins against me I have multiplied times sinned against You, and You have always forgiven me. At no time has any of my sin caused me to forfeit my eternal life; therefore, no one else’s sin should cause them to forfeit my love and my mercy toward them.”
John F. MacArthur Jr., Matthew, vol. 3, MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1985), 157–158.
