The Forgiveness Lesson

Forgiving must be one of the hardest things to do. To acknowledge that someone has hurt you deeply yet seeing beyond that and making a choice to love.. when all you want to do is hate.

Matt 5:43-47: "You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that."

I used to read that and think that when the time comes for me to love my enemy, I will be up for it. When it (my enemy) showed up however, all sorts of thoughts and feelings flooded my entire being and forgiveness certainly wasn't one of them. What I truly wanted was for it to suffer the wrath of God's justice. What I truly wanted was for it to be condemned to eternal guilt for the pain it caused me. There was one night when I just sat in bed and poured out all the sewage I had in my heart to God, and as I told a friend, I must have sounded a lot like David in Psalm 109. Bottomline, it wasn't pretty.

God is patient. He invested at least the last six months of His time trying to teach me true forgiveness. (although of course it's arguable that with eternity in His hands, a few months probably isn't that bad..) When I wanted to curse and whinge, He would listen patiently and as I imagined it, He would be nodding lovingly whilst covering both ears with His hands. It's just something I pictured that makes me laugh. When I was tempted to make bad choices about how to deal, He would send a friend to remind me of His Word. I am so thankful that I didn't execute some of the plans I had come up with. In hindsight, I would have regretted them deeply.

Forgiveness really isn't a feeling, as I learnt. When I look at someone who spewed lies about me and plotted against me, I certainly don't feel a lot of love for that person. Forgiveness is a choice. It's also a daily choice. I can squeeze my heart out trying my best to forgive someone in one session and truly believe that it's a done deal, yet spot this person from a distance in the next instance and forget I was supposed to have forgiven. Maybe this is why people constantly lament, "but I've already resolved to forgive! I really have. Why do I still hate that person?!" Sometimes I still struggle with the 'feeling' of forgiveness but I realise now that it's a choice.

As I've also learnt, forgiveness is an attitude. As with love (although I find the two aren't exactly two distinct entities), it is taking the initiative to encourage, to give of yourself, to do that which your mind tries to stop you from doing. We wouldn't normally approach a stranger with an infectious disease and give them hugs. We wouldn't normally give up a year's wages in order to bless someone else. It just doesn't sit in nicely with how our brain normally works. Remarkably, this is what we're told not to be. Normal. We are not to fit in with how the world normally works.

Romans 12:1-2: "So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."

Our culture says that when a person is 'unclean', it's best to leave him alone lest you catch the disease yourself. Our culture says that to give away a year's wages to bless someone else is insanity when the money can be used to upgrade our own standard of living.

Jesus defied His culture. He healed on the Sabbath, He ate with tax collectors, He didn't keep His distance from 'unclean' people - instead, He got close to them and healed them. The famous woman who anointed Jesus' feet with perfume defied her culture. It was said that her perfume was worth a year's wages, yet she poured it onto Jesus' feet in an extravagant act of worship.

The same goes for forgiveness. Our culture says that you don't forgive and love someone who hates you.. but Jesus says the exact opposite! Matt 5:38-42: "Here's another old saying that deserves a second look: 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.' Is that going to get us anywhere? Here's what I propose: 'Don't hit back at all.' If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously."

No more tit-for-tat stuff! No more. We are to live as God's children in His truth, no longer in the foolishness of our former ways which only lead to death. His ways lead to life. His ways lead to unity in the church and salvation in the world.

It's not easy to forgive, just as it's not easy to be different from the world. But we are a generation set apart for God and it has to start from within His church. We need to let go of our differences and pursue after our common goal for God to be glorified; those petty differences are simply too insignificant in light of the great commission He has placed upon us.

-scripture from The Message