Choose to Forgive
One of the themes that comes up from time to time in my public presentations is forgiveness. For most people, they just take it in stride and carry on without any unusual emotional response, but for others, any talk about forgiveness triggers deep feelings.
After having personal interactions with people for whom forgiveness has been (or is) an issue, one thing has become very clear to me. Forgiveness is a choice. We have to choose to forgive. Otherwise, resentment grows into an increasingly intense desire for revenge.
I recall one particularly agitated young woman who told me the story of her life. There’s no doubt that she had suffered much. My heart went out to her as she gave me a quick overview of life with an emotionally debilitated mother and abuse at the hands of her care-giver’s children. I wasn’t particularly surprised by her emphatic declaration that she “couldn’t” forgive the people in her life who had caused her harm. Forgiveness is often a process to be worked through. What disturbed me most was that she added that she did not want to ever forgive them.
What she had challenged me about was regarding a couple of Bible passages I had read which suggest strongly that there is a link between God forgiving our sin and our forgiving others who sin against us. In what is commonly called the Lord’s prayer given to us in Matthew 6, we find these words: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (v12) and two verses later Jesus clarified this by saying: “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (vv14-15)
A few chapters later, Jesus drove the point home again with a parable in which a man who had been forgiven a large debt refused to forgive a co-worker a small debt. When this came to light, the ungrateful demanding man was thrown into debtors’ prison until his debt was paid back in full. (See Matthew 18:23-35)
The question which often surfaces is “Will God forgive me, if I don’t forgive others?” While a fair question, I don’t believe it is the most important one. It implies an ethic in which we want the greatest possible advantage for the smallest possible sacrifice. This is not the way things work in the Kingdom of God. A more important question is “On what basis does forgiveness stand.”
In everyday life, forgiveness is rooted in injustice. It is the accepting of harm (intentional or otherwise) without demanding retribution. Usually we forgive others small injuries, because we’re nice people, we’re understanding, we know that accidents happen, we know that we have been need of forgiveness in similar situations.
However, God is just. No injustice can be excused. God is merciful, but never unjust. So on what basis does God forgive? How can he forgive sin and not be unjust. There is only one basis for divine forgiveness and that is the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. When Jesus died on the cross, ultimate justice was done. The sin of the whole world was placed on His account and He died because of that. (See John 1:29 and 1 John 2:2)
Because Jesus paid the moral debt that was associated with our sin, God is free to forgive, not “because He is a nice guy” but because justice has already been done. When Christians struggle with forgiveness, they need to remember this. No doubt they have suffered wrong. Harm has been done, but refusing to forgive is not an option, because the moral debt has been paid. Just as God forgives our sin on the basis because Jesus died for them, so we can forgive those who wrong or harm us for the same reason.
Because of the complexities of human nature, we often need a little time to process the emotional pain of being wronged or harmed. However, we can choose to forgive now and let our feeling catch up with it later. Even when we feel deep feelings of injustice, we can choose to forgive because it really isn’t a matter of justice any more, it’s a matter of how we feel. We need not be bound by our emotional responses to situations.
This is wonderfully liberating! The truth of the matter is that when we harbour an unforgiving spirit, we often cause hardly a sorrowful thought in the mind of the one we refuse to forgive. At the same time, we can ruin out physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. When we forgive others their sins against us, we set ourselves free from the obsession to get revenge. If there is any evening of the score to do, God will do it - and He will do a much more thorough job of it that we could ever hope to.
For a first-hand account of forgiveness in the face of horrific circumstances, learn about John and Eloise Bergen - Canadian missionaries who worked with children in Kenya. Attacked with clubs and machetes, they miraculously survived an almost successful attempt to kill them.
Some of us will suffer in such a way that we will struggle to forgive those who harm us. However, regardless of our feelings, we can choose to forgive when we relinquish our desire for vengeance. When we choose to forgive those who sin against us, we leave the door open for forgiveness in our own lives.
