A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine where he confessed that he had strong feelings of animosity in his heart towards another brother who had done some harmful things to him. When he thought about his brother hatred arose for how he had hurt him and his family inadvertently through some foolish actions. While the brother had undergone church discipline and was no longer directly involved in my friend's community, my friend still harbored bitterness in his heart towards him. This situation was hard for me to swallow. It broke my heart to know of the sin in my brother's heart that was being justified by sins against him. And it got me thinking about forgiveness. I feel like over the past weeks, God has used this situation along with a book I've been reading and most recently a discussion in a small group in my church this evening to bring the idea of forgiveness and more specifically reconciliation to the forefront of my brain tonight. You dear friend, are the beneficiary of my meditations.
The most obvious truth about forgiveness is that we who have been for forgiven
must forgive. It is not as easy as saying, "Yeah... I should probably not hold it against her any more." As someone once said, we need to stop shoulding all over ourselves. Forgiveness (and any mandate of Christ) is not motivated by any sort of legalistic shoulds or shouldn'ts.
I had a unique experience about a month and a half ago at a coffee shop. I was walking in to have a quiet time and passed a guy on a bench who asked for some change. I truthfully told him that I didn't have any. As I walked away into the coffee shop, I thought to myself, "I probably should have helped and maybe I should probably help him still by giving him my free pastry I'm about to receive for buying a cup of coffee." Feeling justified in the truth that guilt is a poor motivater for any action, no matter how just or merciful, I did nothing. As I read in John chapter 1 that day about how the eternal Word, through whom everything that we can sense, became a part of his creation, I was moved by the humility of Jesus. As I meditated on the fact that he is in me, and I am in him, I realized that my previous action didn't make any sense. I don't live according to a standard where I should do certain things to be better. Christ lives in me, and his character is such that he humbles himself. If he is one who humbles himself for the sake of others, then I
must out of my very nature do everything in my power to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothe the naked. It's not some sort of test I need to pass. I don't play that game any more. Jesus passed the test and took up residence in my heart. It is out of this new nature that the born again have no choice but to forgive.
This is why the Bible says that unless we forgive then we will not be forgiven. It's not that we have to pass the test to get the reward, but that those who know they have the reward cannot help but get the right answer on the test.
That being said often times to forgive is painfully hard and rubs against our pride in such a way that repulses us. Not just our pride either. Often times we have suffered grievously at the hands of people who screwed up either intentionally or unintentionally. I've been reading
A Grace Disguised by Jerry Sittser. In the book Sittser describes his journey through the loss of his mother, wife, and daughter after a single car accident caused by a drunk driver. Through a less than stellar prosecution the driver is let off the hook. Sittser describes how he wrestled with the fact that justice was not served. That the drunk driver did not in some way feel pain equal to that which he had caused. After describing the struggle in his heart and the difference between healthy grieving and unforgiveness Sittser remarks that victims must acknowledge that they cannot change the past, there is no going back, but there can be moving forward. He says that "though forgiveness seems to contradict what's right and fair, forgiving people decide that they would rather live in a merciful universe than a fair one, for their sake as much as anyone elses." This is not easy, but ultimately it leads to freedom. If we choose not to forgive, then we are bound to our bitterness which eats at our souls and makes the world we live more mean than merciful. Ultimately though I would argue, and I believe Sittser would agree that forgiveness is only possible if God forgives us first.
Often times when we resist forgiveness it is because we desire for the wrongdoer to come to us and ask for it. We believe we don't owe them anything, so why should we? As I mentioned before we don't act on shoulds, but rather out of our regenerated nature. So besides the fact that that's not a good question to ask, forgiveness is a good idea, because it offers freedom for us from hate and bitterness. Also if forgiveness flows out of our nature because it flows out of God's nature then the let us consider the nature of God's forgiveness. God did not wait for us to come to him, in fact I would argue that such an action on our part was impossible. The model that God has set up is that the responsibility to reconcile lies not with the one who has committed the most fault, but with the one who has the greatest ability. Thus we ought to consider the nature of God which reached out to us and forgave, and reconciled us to himself. If then, we are new creations, we must reach out to those who have sinned against us also, even before they come and apologize or seek for the relationship to be restored. If we do this, then we prove ourselves to be children of our Father.
love.
will
