Forgiveness
September 07, 2007 • 9:42 am
People often hear words like “grace” and “mercy” and associate them with weakness. In fact, grace and mercy are not ‘less’ than justice in any way; they are more. It is bigger to forgive than it is to seek justice. There is nothing weak, unmanly or feeble about forgiveness. Forgiveness is definately not the soft touch.
Forgiving someone takes strength, determination and guts, and it hurts. Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers and wasted most of his youth in a jail cell as a result. The best years of his life, he spent in a dungeon, but he knew that he had to forgive. The Bible says that when he met his brothers again, years later, he was so anguished that he wept loud enough for Pharoah’s household heard him. Joseph was second in command of Egypt after the Pharoah: this is like Gordon Brown breaking down at the Dispatch Box in the Houses of Parliament, or at a press conference. Joseph’s pain went deep.
Jesus forgave, and he ended up battered, broken and bloody, finally dying on a cross.
Forgiveness isn’t cheap, nor is it easy. Forgiveness is seen as a way of letting people walk all over you and in a way this is true: forgiveness isn’t justice, forgiveness isn’t fair. Forgiveness isn’t just ‘letting something go’ — that’s a nonsensical idea. Forgiveness is a fight not to let yourself be dominated by hate and spite. Forgiveness is man’s work (unless you’re a woman, in which case it’s woman’s work), and it takes courage.
But forgiveness always brings healing, and not just to the forgiver, in the end. Seeking justice so often becomes seeking revenge. The Bible says “an eye for an eye” and many people see this as promoting vengeance, but in actual fact it was probably to limit vengeance. “You can pay that person back, but only for what they did, and then you must stop.” The Bible doesn’t condone vengeance, and clearly places mercy above justice.
Forgiveness breaks the vengeance cycle and brings wholeness. Genesis 45:14-15 reads: “Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept, and Benjamin embraced him, weeping. And he kissed all his brothers and wept over them. Afterward his brothers talked with him.” Who knows what was said after all those years? But it brought restoration to his family. Later on it says that Joseph’s father’s spirit is revived: after all he’s been mourning a son for decades. As if that’s not enough, the whole family — and it’s a huge family — moves to Egypt to live in abundance instead of poverty.
Forgiveness is hard, but it’s worth it.
One Comment
Don wrote:
Forgiveness is hard! Sometimes it doesn’t even seem natural! But unforgiveness is even worse! Unforgiveness is a tyrant that can haunt you your entire life.
The apostle Peter once asked Jesus, “Lord how many times shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Seven times?
Jesus replied, “I don’t say that you should forgive him seven times; rather seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18:21)
It seems here that Jesus is telling Peter that he should be his brother’s doormat. Seventy times seven = 490 times. I’m not big on numerology, but the number seven seems to have a meaning in scripture in most passages. It is the number of completeness. By using these multiples of seven Jesus is emphasizing complete forgiveness as many times as your brother sins against you. Most of my life I thought that this was impossible. How can I just continue to let people walk all over me like that?
But Jesus said, “If you do not forgive others for their sins, your father in heaven will forgive you. But if you don’t forgive others for their sins, your heavenly father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15)
For a long time I saw a conflict between Jesus’ words above and his words below:
“If your brother sins against you, go to him and show him his fault. But do it privately, just between yourselves. If he listens to you, you have won your brother back. But if he will not listen to you, take one or two other persons with you, so that ‘every accusation may be upheld by the testimony of two or more witnesses,’ as the scripture says. And if he will not listen to them, take the matter to the church. Finally, if he will not listen to the church, treat him as though he were a pagan or a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15-17)
The question arises, how should you treat a pagan or a tax collector? A Jewish person, at least in Jesus’ time, did not normally treat pagans or tax collectors with contempt when they met them on the street. They often did business with them, but they would never invite them for dinner. Dining with someone meant being intimate with them. In ancient Jewish culture you were taught to treat everyone with respect, but that didn’t mean you hung out with just anyone.
God is more merciful and forgiving then any human being, but he doesn’t really become a close friend until we decide to change (repent). He continues to bear with us as long as we are trying to change, but if we have no desire to change, he lets us reap what we have sown. We become distant from God. We lose that intamacy we once had. Seventy times seven he forgives us, but when we sin he will never say that what we did was right or support our wrong behavior in any way. God never forgets that we have sinned, he just chooses not to remember.
This leads me to believe that though we must continually forgive our brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to be intimate with them if they are unrepentant. If they are repentant; if they are trying to mend their ways then we need to try to be like God, not forgetting that they have sinned, but choosing not to remember them.
While forgiveness to me means “not counting people’s sins against them” and not being vengeful, it doesn’t mean being close to someone who knowingly and purposely continues to do me harm.
I say all of this because I have known so many people who have kept themselves in harms way needlesly.
Is it really being merciful not to confront someone who is destroying their self and bringing you down with them?
February 25, 2008 • 10:26 am
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