A serious rupture in our family has caused me to think deeply about forgiveness. Sometimes it’s easy to dispense forgiveness and sometimes it seems impossible, especially when the person requiring forgiveness is a repeat offender.
Most of us put up with repeat offenders because we are afraid to do something about it. Johns Hopkins University put out an article claiming that we teach people how to treat us. What we put up with is what we will get. It takes a lot of courage to insist that people treat us right.
The behavior of repeat offenders does not let us off the forgiveness hook. Matthew 18:21-22 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
Peter offered to forgive an offender 7 times. The rabbis of his day taught that you only have to forgive somebody 3 times. Peter generously adds four more times to it. But Jesus says forgive ‘em 490 times. Surely Jesus didn’t mean for us to literally count each time we forgave somebody. I’d need more fingers and toes for that! What Jesus was saying was, to forgive an unlimited number of times.
Many Christians have been taught that forgiveness is a one-way street and it ain’t. Jesus never taught that forgiveness was unconditional. Luke 17:3-4 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” What’s the magic word? Repentance. If there is no repentance, forgiveness becomes a moot point.
Forgiving when the offending party is not repentant eliminates their personal accountability for their actions and diminishes any reason to change. A lot of Christian self-help literature recommends unconditional forgiveness, because of the emotional and psychological benefits to the forgiver. While contemporary ideas of forgiveness may, in fact, have positive psychological outcomes for those who have been wronged, these benefits are extra-Biblical.
The idea that forgiveness is done for our own psychological or emotional gain came to us visa vi the 18th century’s Enlightenment. The Enlightenment tied emotions to several theological tenants, among them, forgiveness. This is not seen anywhere within the pages of the Bible.
Attaching feelings to forgiveness has caused us to misunderstand forgiveness in a very fundamental way, which is, forgiveness is done not for you. It is done for the other person. Forgiveness is what you offer to someone else.
Before the Enlightenment, all God’s children knew what forgiveness was. It was a cancelation of a debt. In this church when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we say, Forgive us our trespasses. This is because we grew out of Methodism, which was formed by John Wesley. John Wesley was an Anglican and Anglicans like fancy words. Many other Christians pray it this way, Forgive us our debts. Even though I’m a fan, “trespasses,” if pressed, I admit, the word, “debt” is a more accurate rendition of the Greek manuscripts.
The phrase, Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, tells us what forgiveness is. It’s canceling a debt. It’s not forgetting, which is an impossibility, by the way. God is the only one in the entire universe who has the power to forget. It’s one of His superpowers. When God says He forgets our sins, He really does. We might say we Forgive and Forget, but only one of those things is humanly possible and it isn’t forgetting.
When we forgive someone, we cancel their debt against us. If you are overdrawn at the bank and the bank forgives the overdraft charge, your debt was canceled. You don’t owe the bank anything anymore. They’re not going to make collection calls or send you dunning letters. If you were getting them, they will stop. You are forgiven.
When we forgive others, we are telling them, You no longer owe me anything. We aren’t telling them, I forgot what you did. I now feel super good about you again. These things are not involved in Biblical forgiveness. These are separate issues and must be dealt with separately.
One of the things we have done to forgiveness is to tie to all sorts of other things that really don’t have much to do with canceling debts. We tie forgiveness to the absence of anger, the absence of bitterness, the presence of well-being, etc. We are still responsible to take care of our anger and bitterness, don’t get me wrong. But by forgiving someone, we tell them, You do not owe me for the wrong you have committed. You’ve canceled your right to another explanation, your desire to express your anger, your instinct to hold a grudge.
Many times we are trying to get the horse before the cart. We think if I can make my anger go away toward this person, that means I have forgiven them. We gauge whether or not we have forgiven someone based on a lack of anger. Anger is the cart. Forgiveness is the horse. Once we get the horse in front of the cart, forgiveness becomes the force that pulls all else in the right direction.