Forgiving others
Some of the “hardest sayings” of all scriptures are the ones where God makes his forgiveness of us conditional on our forgiveness of others. Jesus makes it all too clear that the stubborn, ongoing refusal to forgive others is the sign of a heart that has not submitted to God. A person with a habitual unforgiving attitude may believe that God exists, but they do not trust God to handle their hearts.
But what about the person who is generally forgiving of others, but just has a hard time letting go of one hurt? They try, and they succeed for a while, but every so often the old wound gets re-opened. That person is in bondage to the one who sinned against him and has lost the joy of walking with God.
Christians are forgiven of all of our sins – past, present, and future – at the time that we accept Christ as our savior. However, we can be cut off from a close walk with God when we choose not to forgive others. When King David had a man murdered so that he could have the man’s wife, he lived life as usual for a while because his conscience was seared. Then, when he was confronted by the monstrous thing he had done, he was inconsolable. He didn’t pray to God to restore his salvation, but rather for God to restore the joy of his salvation. He hadn’t lost his salvation but he had lost the joy of walking closely with God – the joy of being forgiven.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Forgiveness is a difficult thing, at least for me. I’m rarely truly wronged, but if I am and I make an effort to forgive the other person, I’ll find out a week later that I’m still nursing a grudge and I have to re-forgive them. Once that happens several times though, I usually find that I’ve fully forgiven them. It’s kind of a process, like digging a bad spot out of an apple. Sometimes what looks like a little spot on the surface is really just a cover for a lot of rotten stuff underneath. We have to keep digging to get out all the rottenness, both in the apple and in our own lives. If I expect God to forgive me for everything that I’ve done to Him and to other people, then I need to be willing to forgive others for the small things that they occasionally do to me.
The worst thing about not forgiving others is that it chains us to them spiritually and emotionally. If you accidentally hit me in the nose and I get mad at you, then I lose the joy of walking closely with God and the joy of being your friend. It doesn’t do me any good to lie awake at night thinking how bad you are – I’m hurting myself. I’m not in charge of my emotions but my emotions are in charge of me. When we forgive others, however, we’re freed from that bondage and are free to experience the joy and peace of the Christian life. God doesn’t want us to forgive others in order to give us a rule; rather, He wants us to forgive others so that we can be released from the emotional prisons of unforgiveness that we build for ourselves.
Comments
Your blog on forgiveness has excellent content, is thought provoking, and is also well-written. What helps me to forgive is to continually look for God in every event, because He is always there beckoning to us. Sometimes, we have to look harder than others. Sometimes, we have to wait to hear his voice because we are in shock or suffering. But He is always there; we just have to turn in His direction. Turning to God is a decision based on Faith, not logic.
Posted by: Elsie | July 11, 2005 02:20 PM
Response to Stingray’s Blog –––
Michael —- Your posting of June 30, 2005 was forwarded to me for a response, because I usually don’t get involved in these types of interchanges because I feel face to face exchanges are far more effecting in communicating God’s grace in conversation. My comments will most likely be taken, as critical and judgmental, but believe me they are neither. I am writing out of love and compassion with the hope that a fellow traveler would think, pray and question my comments and even respond to them by e-mail or face to face if you are so inclined
First off (but this is not my primary point) I find your site title of Stingray extremely interesting. Why one would choose such a deceptive, aggressive, and pain inflecting beast to title a blog representing our Lord. I really don’t understand why one would use such an image as “Stingray: Christianity” – more about that at a different time and place.
My primary purpose in responding to your posting is to challenge you on your position about forgiveness. I would take exception at your opening sentence where you state that God makes His forgiveness conditional upon our forgiveness of others. I am assuming that the reference for your statement is the Lord’s Prayer, and if so you are misreading the prayer. If I’m not mistaken the line your are making reference to is “ and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” If I am correct in my assumption that this is the passage to which you are making referring then you have failed to notice that the request upon which the request for forgiveness is based. It is not based upon God’s unwillingness to forgive us, but upon our willingness to forgive others – it is focused on our hearts not the other person’s behavior. In the prayer, if you will notice, we ask God to forgive us in the same proportion that we are willing to forgive others. The forgiveness come based upon our willingness to forgive. It is – as so often seem in God’s request for our love – that the focus of His love is on our hearts not the behavior or the hearts of others. The pain of the need for forgiveness is in our hearts and that is where we must look if we are ever to find peace and forgiveness. Therefore a person is in bondage to the sin in his own heart and NOT to the actions of another person. That person has gone on his merry way unaware or uncaring about the hurt he has inflected upon another. The solution to the relieving of the pain in the heart of the injured is not with the one who inflicted the pain, because that is a completely different issue.
The injured party must deal with his own pain until he is able to completely forgive the one who injured him and the when he brings that request to God for forgiveness he will feel it and his guilt will be absolved and the separation eliminated. Remember that forgiveness is already given to us by grace. But when we hold pain, anger and revenge in our hearts when we ask God to forgive us – it is not God who will not forgive us – it is our unwillingness to give up our anger, (our guilt) which makes us unable to accept God’s forgiveness given in Grace. So don’t look to God or the other guy for forgiveness look into your own heart for the solution. David understood and in the same manner we should. Comment ?
Posted by: Bill | July 14, 2005 08:27 AM