Provided by: JesusFilm.org
Greenlit by Antoy Grant

Lanuage: ENGLISH
Length: 5 mins

A son nervously picks at some index cards in his hands. His father looks on expectantly. The son finally starts showing him the cards one by one. They each tell the story of a father who hurt him… and his mother.

The father tears up, affected by his son’s words. But the son writes something on a new card. Through tears, he holds up a card that says, “I forgive you.” He falls to his knees in front of his crying father. Words flash across the screen from a quote by a Virginia Tech victim days before she was shot.

“When deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive. Forgiveness does not change the past. But it does enlarge the future.” -Mary Karen Read

The son waits to write the final notecard. Why do you think he waited?

Why do you think so many people experience broken relationships in life?

What does forgiveness do for us? Have you experienced forgiving or being forgiven that’s changed your life?

This short film is not intended to directly communicate the gospel, but to facilitate a conversation that reveals our need for the gospel. Think about how your own story and the stories of those with whom you may be watching connects with the story of the film and the story of Jesus.

The son tells the father every way the father has hurt him. Though they’re both hurting, he makes it clear that everything the father did wasn’t right and caused damage, or a separation, to form between them. Like the characters, God has made clear exactly how we’ve hurt Him by disobeying Him, not believing in Him, and not trusting Him This is called sin. And it hurts God. Our sin offends Him.

The father obviously feels guilty. He acknowledges each thing the son says and cries because he knows he did wrong things. Everything in this world is broken and imperfect. Even one wrong thing causes a separation between us and God. When we want to make amends with God, we have to acknowledge that our “sin” has hurt Him and offended Him.

Like the son in the short, God doesn’t want to be separated from us. He hasn’t given up on or walked away from us. He continues to stand by us. He loves us and wants a relationship with us.

But because God is just and right, He can’t just forgive everything we’ve done. A sacrifice had to be made. He sent Jesus to be our sinless, perfect sacrifice. Only through Him can our sins be forgiven.

The son in the film offers the father forgiveness. It’s a sacrifice. He’s setting himself aside and offering something to the father: grace. God does the same for us. He offers the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins and asks us to accept that grace. We can’t do anything to make up for what we’ve done, just like the father can’t really make up for what he did to his son. But he can accept the son’s forgiveness.

We can once again be in relationship with God if we confess that Jesus, the perfect, sinless sacrifice, is our Lord and Savior, and we turn from our sins back to a restored relationship with our Heavenly Father.

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