One of the Bible’s
greatest truths is that Christ died to take away all our sins not just part of
them: past, present and future. Believing in God’s forgiveness
of your sins isn’t always easy. If you have sincerely given your life to Jesus,
and are trusting Him alone for your salvation, then God has promised to forgive
you. The key is to depend not on your feelings, but on facts like Jesus’ death
and resurrection, your commitment to Him, and God’s promise to forgive you.
Feelings come and go, and they can deceive us.
The facts of God’s Word doesn’t change. You can depend on
it. Don’t focus on your feelings, but on Jesus Christ and what He has done
for you. Imagine for a moment that you had a very wealthy relative, and one day
you received a call from an attorney telling you that she died and left you a
million dollars. What would you do? You might say, “Oh well, it can’t be true,”
but would that be wise? Instead, you would probably accept by faith what he
told you, and then begin to act on it. In a far greater way, Jesus Christ
offered you the gift of salvation and you can accept it if you wish.
When you forgive others as Jesus forgave you,
it rarely seems to make sense. If we were honest with each other we’d readily
admit that at times we enjoy withholding forgiveness because it permits us to
keep our enemies (and even some of our friends) under control. It gives us the
opportunity to manipulate them into providing things we want from them. Below
are things we should all know about what it means to forgive others.
Forgiveness
is Not Forgetting-God does not forget,
notwithstanding what you think Jeremiah 31:34 is saying (“For I will
forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more”). This language
of the prophet is metaphor, a word picture, designed to emphasize God’s gracious
determination and resolve not to hold us liable for our sin. He has canceled
the debt and will never demand payment. If God could literally “forget” it
would undermine the truth of his omniscience. God always has and always will
know all things, but he has promised never to use our sin against us or to
treat us as if the reality of our
sin were present in his mind. As Jay Adams put it, God’s promise not to
remember means he will bury our sins.
"Forgive
and Forget" is Psychologically Impossible- “Forgive and
forget” is psychologically impossible. As soon as you make up your mind to
forget something you can be assured that, in most instances, it is the one
thing that will linger at the forefront of your conscious thinking. We all
forget things, but we do it unintentionally over the course of time. Life and
experience and old age work to erase certain things from our memory, but that
is rarely if ever the case with sins committed against us and the wounds we
have suffered. To think that forgiving demands forgetting can be emotionally
devastating. Let’s suppose that Jane succeeds for two months in forgetting
Sally’s betrayal of her.
She’s getting along well and hasn’t given a second
thought to Sally’s sin. Then Jane is told that Sally did the same thing to Mary
and she immediately remembers the offense she herself endured. She is suddenly
riddled with guilt for having failed to forget. What she thought she had
forever put out of her mind now comes rushing back involuntarily and she feels
like an utter failure for not having “truly” forgiven her friend. Worse still,
she now feels like a hypocrite for having promised to forget only to once again
feel anger and resentment toward Sally. Not only is Jane emotionally
devastated, she now realizes how impossible it is to literally forget something
so painful. This makes her extremely reluctant ever to forgive anyone again,
knowing in her heart that she is incapable of forgetting.
Forgiveness Doesn't
Mean You Cease Longing for Justice-To forgive someone who has sinned against you
doesn’t mean you cease longing for justice. Be certain of this: vengeance is
not a bad thing! If it were, God would himself be in a bit of trouble. To long
for justice is entirely legitimate, but to seek it for yourself is not. Let God
deal with the offender in his own way at the appropriate time. He’s much better
at it than your or I. The point is that forgiveness does not mean you are to
ignore that a wrong was done or that you deny that a sin was committed.
Forgiveness does not mean that you close your
eyes to moral evils and pretend that it didn’t hurt or that it really doesn’t
matter whether or not the offending person is called to account for his or her
offense. Neither are you being asked to diminish the gravity of the offense, or
to tell others, “Oh, think nothing of it; it really wasn’t that big of a deal
after all.” Forgiveness simply means that you determine in your heart to let
God be the avenger. He is the judge, not you.
Forgiveness
Doesn't Mean that Sin is Being Ignored-Often we refuse to forgive others because we
mistakenly think that to do so is to minimize their sin. “And that’s not fair!
He really hurt me. If I forgive, who’s going to care for me and take up my
cause and nurse my wounds?” God is. We must never buy into the lie that to
forgive means that sin is being unnoticed or that the perpetrator is not being
held accountable for his/her actions. It simply means we consciously choose to
let God be the one who determines the appropriate course of action in dealing
justly with the offending person.
Forgiveness
Doesn't Mean You Should Make It Easy for Them to Hurt You Again-Forgiveness does not
mean you are to make it easy for the offender to hurt you again. That is their
decision. But you must set boundaries on your relationship with them. The fact
that you establish rules to govern how and to what extent you interact with
this person in the future does not mean you have failed to sincerely and truly
forgive them. True love never aids and abets the sin of another. The offender
may himself be offended that you set parameters on your friendship to prevent
them from doing additional harm. They may even say, “How dare you? This just
proves that you didn’t mean it when you said you forgave me.” Don’t buy into
their manipulation. Forgiveness does not mean you become a helpless and passive
doormat for their continual sin.
Forgiveness
is Rarely a One-Time Event-Forgiveness is rarely
a one-time, climactic event. It is most often a life-long process. However,
forgiveness has to begin somewhere at some point in time. There will
undoubtedly be a moment, an act, when you decisively choose to forgive. It may
well be highly emotional and spiritually intense and bring immediate relief; a
sense of release and freedom. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll never
need to do it again. You may need every day to reaffirm to yourself your
forgiveness of another. Each time you see the person, you may need to say,
“Self, remember that you forgave _______.”
We Are To
Forgive "As" Christ Forgave Us-The apostle Paul said in Ephesians
4:32 that we are to forgive “as” God in Christ forgave us. The word “as”
points to two things. We are to forgive because God forgave
us. But we are also to forgive as or like or in the same
manner that he forgave us. So, how did God in Christ forgive us? God in Christ
forgave us by absorbing in Himself the destructive and painful consequences of
our sin against him. God forgave us in Christ by canceling the debt we owed
him. That is to say, we are no longer held liable for our sins or in any way
made to pay for them.
The way we cancel the debt of one who has
sinned against us is by promising not to bring it up to the offender, to
others, or to ourselves. We joyfully resolve never to throw the sin back into
the face of the one who committed it. We promise never to hold it over their
head using it to manipulate and shame them. And we promise never to bring it up
to others in an attempt to justify ourselves or to undermine their reputation.
And lastly, we promise never to bring it up to ourselves as grounds for
self-pity or to justify our resentment of the person who hurt us.
Forgiveness
Means We Resolve to Revoke Revenge-Forgiving others as God has forgiven us means
we resolve to revoke revenge. As noted earlier, this doesn’t mean you cease
desiring that justice be served. It does mean you refuse, by God’s grace, to
let the anger and pain energize an agenda to exact payment from that person
whether that payment be emotional, relational, physical, or financial. It also
means you refuse to use your past suffering to justify present sin.
Forgiveness
Means that We Determine to Do Good-Forgiving others as God has forgiven us means
that we determine to do good to them rather than evil. This may entail doing
simple acts of kindness, like greeting them warmly, from the heart, or
providing a meal when they are sick, or other routine acts of compassion or
mercy. What will it accomplish? It will both surprise and shame them. Usually a
person deliberately sins against you with the expectation that you will respond
in like fashion. If you do, it justifies in their mind their initial sin
against you. The last thing they expect is sustained kindness and strength.
Thus when evil is met with goodness it
disarms them; they are stunned with incredulity and often left breathless. When
you return good for evil it serves to render the offender powerless. Hopefully,
this will open a door in your relationship that will lead to a genuine life
change. Responding this way also shames him. I’m not talking about a bad sense
of shame, as if you are seeking to humiliate him.
Rather, your hope is to expose his heart’s
condition, to lay bare his motivation, and to enable him to see the wickedness
of his deed. Responding to evil with good compels the offender to look at him
rather than at you. When the light of your kindness shines back in the face of
his darkness, the latter is exposed for being what it really is. The shame he
feels on being “found out” will either harden or soften his heart.
True
Forgiveness Pursues Relationship and Restoration-
God forgave us in Christ by reconciling us to
him by restoring the relationship that our sin had shattered. Often we avoid
forgiveness because we want to avoid conflict. Going to the offender and
saying, “I forgive you,” carries the potential for an explosion. They may even
deny having sinned against us. But true forgiveness pursues relationship and
restoration. True forgiveness is not satisfied with simply canceling the debt.
It longs to love again. It’s important to remember two things here. First, the
offending person may refuse your overtures of kindness and resist any efforts
on your part to reconcile.
But that’s ultimately out of your control. If
they refuse to be at peace with you, the fault is theirs. You will at least
have fulfilled your responsibility before God. Second, often times when the
reconciliation or restoration is successful, the relationship never fully
returns to what it was before the offense was committed. Trust and confidence
and delight in another person take a long time to fully recover from a serious
sin, and sometimes never fully recover at all. But even if it doesn’t, that
doesn’t mean you haven’t fully forgiven them.
Of course, none of this will make sense to
someone who has not experienced and received and tasted the joy of the
forgiveness of God in Christ Jesus
“In
the last resort forgiveness is always due to God’s being what He is, and not to
anything that man may do. Because God is God, He must react in the strongest
manner to man’s sin, and thus we reach the concept of the divine wrath. But
because God is God, wrath cannot be the last word.” (Leon Morris) [i]
[i] Sources used:
·
“10 Things You Should
Know About Forgiving Others” by Sam Storms
·
“9 Things You Need to Know
about Forgiveness” by Jolene Underwood
·
“God’s forgiveness” by Going Farther
No comments:
Post a Comment