Prerequisites to
Forgiveness?
Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? Matthew 18:33
THERE ARE PREREQUISITES TO FORGIVENESS. What do I mean by prerequisites? I do not speak of them in the sense of some "hoops" we need to jump through, nor a kind of obstacle course we need to negotiate. I do not mean in any sense that the prerequisites are a means of earning forgiveness. They are not mechanical, not arbitrary, not "if we do our part, God will do His." Always, in the biblical portrayal, the initiative is God's. He is the one who has
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provided the basis for our salvation in Christ's death and resurrection.
John 3:16 states the matter simply and directly: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." The prerequisites I speak of are simply means of making clear our response to God's prior action. The two prerequisites I name are simply terms for what is essential in a good relationship, whether with God or with people. It is not at all necessary that the terms be used. What is essential is that the attitudes the terms represent be present.
Any kind of relationship has at least two parties. When the closeness of the relationship is broken, healing requires a particular attitude on each side.
For the person wronged there must be an openness to the wrongdoer, a real desire for the closeness to be restored. I am calling that attitude in the wronged person "a spirit of forgiveness." For the wrongdoer, the appropriate attitude is called "repentance," a genuine expression of sorrow for having hurt the other person.
A Spirit of Forgiveness
The first element necessary for forgiveness is the attitude of the wronged person, namely a "spirit of
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forgiveness." At the human level, if I am wronged by another person, I have a responsibility to be open to the person, to care for the person. I must leave aside resentment and bitterness. I must want God's best for the person. I must seek reconciliation. In a word, I must deal with the other as God deals with me (see Ephesians 4:32), not an easy thing to do!
We are not like calculators where the previous problem is cleared and we start anew. While recognizing the reality that pain takes time to dissipate, there are two important cautions. One is that we do not fall into the trap of self-pity because of the wrong we experienced. It is very easy to nurse the pain and pat ourselves on the back that we "forgave" the other. That attitude is destructive to a relationship.
The other caution is that we too easily gloss over our fault. For instance, where there is unfaithfulness in a marriage by either partner, the overt unfaithfulness of the "guilty" one gets the attention. What about the deep pain the "innocent" party may have caused the other by the absence of expression of love, by neglect, by thoughtlessness, etc. Very often the sharp hurt to one person in a relationship has its counterpart in the hurt experienced by the other. The important point is that forgiveness is not accomplished by one person.
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When we have experienced God's level of forgiveness, how can we, how dare we, refuse to manifest a spirit of forgiveness toward one who has wronged us? Jesus emphasized this reality very sharply in his story in Matthew 18:21-35. Peter came to Him with a question, "How often must I forgive one who has wronged me, as many as seven times?" (my rendering). I suspect Peter thought he was being very generous in suggesting seven times. As a matter of fact, he was. We do not often forgive a person who wrongs us significantly and in the same way as many as seven times.
Two of my brothers were partners in a construction business a few years ago. On one occasion when they needed a new accountant, one of their pastors encouraged them to hire a qualified person who was just being released from prison after serving a sentence for embezzlement. With some hesitation, they agreed to do so. Things went fine for a time. Then one weekend the accountant absconded with sixty thousand dollars of their money. It would be difficult to get them to hire another person under the same circumstances once more. Would they do so seven times?
Jesus told a startled Peter that seven times was hardly a start, there is no limit to the number of times we need to forgive another. He underscored that truth by a story. A king wanted to settle
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accounts with his servants. They were called in one by one. One servant owed his master an astronomical figure, ten thousand talents. The New Revised Standard Version has a footnote which says that one talent would be equal to more than fifteen years' wages of a laborer. At that rate, it would take more than a hundred and fifty thousand years to earn ten thousand talents! Since the servant could not pay, the king ordered him, his family and anything he had to be sold to apply against the debt. The servant pleaded for time (he did not ask for forgiveness of the debt) and said he would repay the debt. The master had compassion on him and even canceled that huge debt.
The same servant, as he went out from that experience, met a fellowservant who owed him a hundred denarii. At a denarius per day (the usual pay for a worker), that would be the wages for three and a third months. The forgiven man seized him by the throat and demanded payment. That debtor also pleaded for time, but he was refused and was thrown into prison.
The other servants reported the matter to the king. He was furious and called in the man whose debt had been canceled. "How is this possible?" he asked in effect. "I forgave you that enormous debt. Should you not have had mercy on your colleague who owed you a pittance by comparison, three and
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a third months' wages versus a hundred and fifty thousand years' wages?" And the king had him thrown into prison. Then Jesus uttered the awesome punch line: "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your fellow human being from your heart" (my rendering). A failure to manifest the spirit of forgiveness is itself a very great wrong.
Had Jesus left the last three words off, the story would not have had the same force. We could have said, "Oh, yes, I forgave the person," without giving much attention to what forgiveness means. But the words "from your heart" involves a genuineness we cannot easily escape. "It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion; the latter is the heart's choice" (George MacDonald, An Anthology, edited by C.S. Lewis, p. 6).
That last sentence of Jesus' parable catches us unexpectedly. Compare what Jesus says in Matthew 6:15: "But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive you your sins" (my rendering). The whole incident is saying in different words what Paul said in Ephesians 4:32. Our forgiveness of others must follow the pattern of God's forgiveness of us. He always has a spirit of forgiveness, and when God forgives us, it is "from the heart."
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How does a spirit of forgiveness arise? My spirit of forgiveness grows out of experiencing God's forgiveness. If I as a Christian have experienced the greatness of His forgiveness, I cannot defend any unwillingness to forgive one who has wronged me — however severe the wrong may be. As I grow in my appreciation of what God has done for me in Christ, I become more open and caring for others. In a word, I become more Christ-like. This process entails spending time in the Scriptures and in prayer, that is, in a growing relationship with God, and in fellowship with other Christians.
God's love for me moves me to love others. "The commandment we have from [God] is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also" (1 John 4:21, NRS). Genuine love for others embodies a spirit of forgiveness. As love grows, a spirit of forgiveness grows.
One friend of mine raised this problem: "If God is our standard, what chance do I have?" My friend called such statements in Scripture as "from your heart" here or "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" in Matthew 6:12 (my rendering), "scary." Regarding the latter quotation, Yancey writes: "What makes the 'as' so terrifying? The fact that Jesus plainly links our forgiven-ness by the Father with our forgiving-ness of fellow human beings" (What's So Amazing About Grace? p.87). But are
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Jesus' statements set before us in a threatening fashion? No. God is not content with casual forgiveness and doesn't want us to be either. We must always be in a growing mode — relationships, understanding, attitudes, spirit of forgiveness, etc. To have a pattern is helpful, especially if the model is a good one. God says, "Follow My pattern."
While we can never follow God's pattern perfectly, we can keep improving, growing, maturing. C.S. Lewis makes a keen distinction between "pleased" and "satisfied" that is encouraging (Mere Christianity, Book IV, Chapter 9). God is never (fully) satisfied with where we are in this life, but He is pleased at every evidence of growth. When a baby begins to walk, the parents are not satisfied with a step or two and a fall, but they are pleased as can be at the evidence of growth. It is so with God. In that sense, there need be no fearfulness. God wants us to grow to maturity. If five years after a child begins to walk, he or she still takes a step or two and falls, there is no joy on the part of the parents. God, too, is not pleased unless we keep growing and developing.
Another friend asked me, "Doesn't that kind of forgiveness mean that you will be taken advantage of, that you will become a 'doormat,' that people will 'walk all over you'?" If we approach forgiveness from a position of scorekeeping of hurts done to us,
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the "doormat" danger becomes relevant. If we approach forgiveness from a relational standpoint or, to put it even more strongly, from a love standpoint, then it is more difficult to misuse Jesus' statements. Genuine forgiveness is always tied to love, to caring for a person, to relationship. How else could Jesus have answered Peter in Matthew 18:22?
Forgiveness is not easy, but the standard remains God's own. Is God a "doormat" because He chooses to forgive endlessly in response to our repentance? That we sometimes may be taken advantage of is probably true. Does that fact change our responsibility? Not at all. It simply makes the offending person still more offensive and harder to forgive!
Our common excuse that we can't forgive some wrongs, that they are just too great, is not really valid. The wrongs that we experience from others are, in comparison with our wrongs against God, always of the "three and a third months" variety. I do not mean the wrongs don't hurt. The pain I experienced because my father blamed me for my mother's death was very deep. I am trying to underscore the magnitude of our wrongs against an absolutely holy and just God.
When we consider the really severe hurts we sometimes receive, looking at them by themselves makes them stand out in all their starkness and
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pain. When we see them against the backdrop of how we hurt God, then we perceive them as the "three and a third months" type. We have great trouble even beginning to understand what sin means to infinite holiness. "When the Holy One of God has been crucified as a blasphemer by the pious leaders of a pious people, the fact is blazoned forth that our holiness is still blasphemy of God" (Koeberle, The Quest for Holiness, p. 57).
We get a glimpse of what sin means to infinite holiness at the cross, in the agonizing cry of our Lord, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). For the absolute love and holiness of Christ to take on our sin — now we are talking about the "hundred and fifty thousand years" variety! The real truth is not that we can't, but that we won't — we refuse, we choose not to — express a spirit of forgiveness. The implication of this is troubling: God can forgive the person who wronged us; are we saying that our standards are higher than God's, that the repentance that leads to God's forgiveness is not sufficient to lead to our forgiveness? That is not a good position to be in!
Repentance
Repentance is a frequently used biblical word. The Hebrew word for repentance in the Old Testament
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is shub. It means "to turn around or return," not to turn around in the sense of spinning, but to turn around in terms of the direction one is going. The Greek term in the New Testament is metanoia, which means "a change of mind." In the biblical sense, we human beings are naturally self-centered. Sometimes that is reflected in our doing "bad" things; other times we may be doing useful, helpful things, or even nothing at all, but the center is wrong. Repentance means becoming God-centered. We do many of the same things (the useful types of things) as before, but now there is a new center.
Repentance involves a real change. If a person truly repents, God will receive him or her. There is a Rabbinic saying: "To enter upon a course of repentance and not to leave off sinning is compared to the man who enters a bath with the purpose of cleansing himself of a Levitical impurity, but keeps in his hands the dead reptile which is the cause of all this impurity" (Schechter, Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, pp. 334-335). All too often we keep carrying "the dead reptile"!
Is repentance portrayed in the Bible as one of the "hoops" one must go through to receive forgiveness? Emphatically not! It is simply impossible to maintain a friendship with another person if I am continually offending the person without expressing
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genuine sorrow for doing so. It is equally impossible to maintain a healthy relationship with God if I am continually offending Him and express no sorrow, "and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness" (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p. 110).
Repentance is not something we generate in ourselves. Repentance is a response to the holiness of God. Isaiah's experience (see Isaiah 6) is a powerful example. He saw the glory of God and responded, "Woe is me." Now in the Christian era, in the shattering experience of catching something of the significance of Christ's death ["God made him ... sin for us" — 2 Corinthians 5:21], we cry out like the tax collector in Jesus' parable, "God be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13, KJV). We do not generate repentance; we simply can do nothing else against the backdrop of God's holiness. It is part of the work of the Holy Spirit to make us aware of our unholiness and thus quicken a sense of repentance. Earl Palmer expresses it well: "God doesn't compel us to repent but calls us to repent" (Revelation in "The Communicator's Commentary," p. 155).
God has made forgiveness possible by the death and resurrection of His Son. He wants to forgive us, but He does not do so (at least usually) without our repentance. That is to say, because of His essential characteristic of holiness, it is simply not possible
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for Him to say, in effect, "Now, run along and be good children." To walk in our own self-centered way precludes walking in close fellowship with God or with another human being. We must choose to respond to God's provision. That choice is expressed in our repentance. Because "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son" (John 3:16) to solve the problem between us and Himself, and because His attitude as the wronged party is right (He has the spirit of forgiveness), doesn't mean that we are forgiven. It does mean that He has made forgiveness possible. For forgiveness to take place, that attitude or action of His must be met by our repentance, in other words, by some appropriate expression of sorrow. When we do this, we are forgiven!
Repentance is usually thought of with reference to the more obvious wrongdoer in the particular situation. We must also recognize, however, that a bent or broken relationship rarely involves fault on one side alone. One person is not often one hundred percent at fault and the other zero percent. It is fruitless to enter into some kind of attempt to ascertain how the blame should be divided, whether ninety-ten, sixty-forty or whatever. What is necessary is for the "wronged" person to acknowledge freely whatever part he or she also contributed to the problem.
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That does not mean saying, "If I hurt you, I'm sorry." Such a "repentance" comes across to the other as, "I wasn't at fault in any way, but if you think I was ..." That hardly qualifies as freely acknowledging my fault. Rather, I must say sincerely something like, "I, too, was at fault when I ..." or "I also offended you by ..." As Augsburger says, "People don't have problems alone and people do not find healing and forgiveness alone" (Caring Enough to Forgive/Caring Enough to Not Forgive, p. 26).
Augsburger emphasizes the necessity of repentance. At the end of each chapter he has three short segments that provide further material for meditation and study. At the end of chapter 4 of the Caring Enough to Forgive side of his book, he proposes discussion on "how sincere repentance is the only proper request for forgiveness" (p. 77). He then adds in parentheses a few very challenging lines:
I will not ask another for forgiveness. There are no biblical models for such in the New Testament. My part is confession and affirmation of repentance. If the other perceives this is genuine, forgiveness is given and received as a gift. If I ask for it, it is experienced as blackmail since to refuse, postpone, or to say "I'm not ready yet," is to appear to be "unforgiving."
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Augsburger is not saying we should not ask God for forgiveness; he is speaking of not asking another human being.
Often we hurt another in a context of anger and are too proud to repent. Or we blame the other for the problem — "He [or she] is the one who should repent!" Or we hurt another accidentally and assume, since it was not deliberate, no repentance is necessary. The other will simply forgive me knowing that the hurt was accidental. We don't ask ourselves how the other would know that the hurt was accidental! Or we hurt another without knowing it and unless the other person makes the hurt known to us (and we humans are usually reluctant to do so), repentance is not a relevant concept.
A caution is worth mentioning. We see sins on a scale from minor sins (not too hurtful) to major sins (very damaging). The damage is not necessarily only to our psyche. Infidelity in marriage, for instance, can result in serious physical problems (such as herpes or AIDS) in addition to the emotional devastation. We determine the level of hurt in a subjective manner. Hence our various lists are quite different. The difference is primarily in how the particular affront impacts us. For instance, in the abstract, I might not rate adultery as heinous a sin as another person would, but if my spouse was unfaithful to me, then my "rating" of the evil of the
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act would jump up sharply. On the basis of what we have in the Bible, we must recognize that no sin, however slight it may seem to us, can escape God's judgment, whether at the cross of Christ or ultimately upon the individual sinner directly.
Let me pause at this point to make an important distinction. There are two senses in which repentance is necessary for God's forgiveness. The first focuses on our initial turning to God.
We find ourselves becoming uneasy deep within ourselves. It may manifest itself in any number of ways. Perhaps it's a failure to live up to our own standards; perhaps we begin to see ourselves in relation to God, and the huge gap between where we are and His standard overwhelms us; perhaps it develops from the death of a person significant to us, and thinking about death arouses some sense of fear or deep loneliness; perhaps it is a feeling that one's life seems to be useless — powerfully pictured in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes; perhaps it is simply a vague feeling of restlessness. Augustine's often-quoted words are pertinent: "Thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee" (Confessions, Book I, chapter 1).
On one occasion a young man, both wealthy and good, came to Jesus. In the course of their conversation the young man expressed the emptiness that
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many feel, "What do I still lack?" (Matthew 19:20). The problem, as this young man perceived it, was not wrongdoing. He was, in fact, a good man in terms of our usual standards. The problem was with the center, with the central reality of his being. The motivating center of our lives, whatever the quality of our actions may be, is normally our own desire; it is independence from God rather than dependence on and fellowship with God.
James expresses the problem of our own desire very effectively when he says, "Each one is tempted when he is drawn away and lured by his own desire" (James 1:14, my rendering). Several translations (for example, the NIV) use the phrase "by his own evil desire." That is really not justified, and it twists the important point James is making. The Greek word is epithumia, a neutral word morally, though a strong word. It is like our word desire in the sense that a desire may be good or bad. The word itself does not indicate any moral quality.
Paul uses the same word in Philippians 1:23, where he says his desire is to depart and be with Christ, obviously a good desire. It is, of course, true that the context may sometimes make clear whether the desire is good or bad, but I don't think the context does that in James. Indeed, to use the phrase "evil desire" suggests that temptation carries with it the movement to do evil. That is not
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always true, at least in the moral sense. We can be tempted to do something that is good in itself, which moves us from doing what is best in the context.
For example, it may be good deed to give someone in need twenty-five dollars. It is still better to do something to help the person with his need for a job or for medical help for example. The desire to give twenty-five dollars is good, but it may keep us from doing that which is more necessary. The real problem that James points to is in the adjective idios, which means "one's own." The essential point is not that it is a desire, but that it is one's own desire without reference to God's desire. Whatever the content of the desire may be, it is independent of any God-reference, the temptation is pulling us in the wrong direction. In the context of this study, an overemphasis on our "own desire" is destructive to good relationships.
The strength of the uneasiness and / or emptiness which brought the young man to Jesus, and which we often feel, may be the catalyst that moves a person to respond to Christ's invitation, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). To come to Christ is the essential heart of repentance. The change that repentance calls for doesn't necessarily mean changing jobs or moving to a different place. It does
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mean a different center to one's life, a different core, a move from self-centeredness to God-centeredness, from my desire to God's desire. When we repent in that way, we experience God's forgiveness. All of the past failure, emptiness, wrongheadedness and wrongdoing stands forgiven.
What forgiveness essentially involves at this point is that the penalty for both the wrongbeing, the central problem, and the wrongdoing which flows from the wrongbeing is set aside, not ignored. God's holiness cannot permit that. If we accept Christ's identification with our sinfulness on the cross, everything is turned around for us — as Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone be in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is passed away, behold, the new has come."
To accept God's provision is repentance. We come to Christ, and the penalty for all of our sins is wiped out because of Christ's death and resurrection. So Paul cries out, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). The new direction in our lives may be slower to become apparent! "For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another" (Galatians 5:13, NRS). "To become slaves to one another"
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does not happen overnight. It is an ongoing process.
The second sense in which repentance is necessary for God's forgiveness has a parallel in the ordinary aspects of life. In any close human relationship (marriage, parent-child, friends, associates, etc.) we inevitably hurt one another. That spoils the closeness of the fellowship until repentance takes place and is met by a spirit of forgiveness, resulting in forgiveness. The same thing happens in our relationship with God. We offend God, and that spoils the closeness of our fellowship with Him — until we repent and experience His forgiveness. So repentance and forgiveness in this sense is an ongoing experience, something that happens over and over again. We are often rebellious or short-tempered or spiteful or impatient or whatever, but as often as we repent, that often He forgives. He always has the spirit of forgiveness. He does what He asks us to do with others, namely, to forgive without limit (see Luke 17:3-4). So in this sense, repentance and a spirit of forgiveness are a continuing need. As often as we offend God or a fellow human being, we need to express our repentance.
Repentance, then, is a concept that involves honest acknowledgment of our failure to honor God or people. Genuine repentance always involves the
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resolve that the wrongdoing will not be repeated. That is, there is a concrete turning from the old way. We don't always live up to the resolution, but the resolution is really there. One can hardly speak of repentance if that resolve is missing. Whenever I fail, repentance with its resolve to change is again called for.
One can also speak of repentance quite apart from any Christian understanding. Whenever we recognize that we have hurt another person, we acknowledge our fault, that is, we repent. Ordinary courtesy and justice require us to do so, though often enough we do not. If the other person meets our repentance with a spirit of forgiveness, the relationship is healed; in other words, forgiveness takes place.
When a relationship has been broken, there must be, to use Carnell's words, "a cordial spiritual willingness to accept the consequences of transgression" (Christian Commitment, p. 168). Or again, "Repentance cheerfully recognizes that it deserves condemnation, not forgiveness. It only inquires whether the offended party can forgive the very one who, on his own spiritual admission, is altogether unworthy of forgiveness" (p. 169). Or once again, "Whether in God or man, a person is powerless to extend forgiveness until the offending party meets the right moral conditions" (p. 254).
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There must be not only a willingness but a desire for renewal on the part of the wronged person as well.
Phillip Yancey has some hesitation regarding repentance as a requirement for forgiveness. He cites (What's So Amazing About Grace? pp. 103-104) the examples of the forgiveness of Jean Valjean by the bishop in Victor Hugo's great novel Les Misérables, where no repentance is evident in Valjean, and the forgiveness by Reginald Denny, a truck driver, of the two men who assaulted him during the turbulence in Los Angeles a few years ago. Again, there was no evidence of repentance on the part of the two men.
I find the resolution of this problem in using three terms instead of two. If we use forgiveness to represent both a spirit of forgiveness and the full restoration of the relationship, we often have confusion. If forgiveness is used for the outcome of repentance and a spirit of forgiveness, we can avoid the problem Yancey expresses so well. The bishop and Reginald Denny both expressed a spirit of forgiveness without regard to what the other did. Repentance would be necessary for the full restoration of fellowship.
Forgiveness does not undo the past. The actions, the hurts of the past cannot be changed — they really happened. We need to mitigate them to
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whatever extent is possible. One of the two thieves crucified with Jesus cried out to Him, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:42-43). The forgiveness the thief experienced then did not undo all of his crimes — they had actually happened, and his victims really suffered. His "death bed" conversion did not rewrite his history. It did change his relationship with God.
A common, but inadequate, expression is, "We simply have to forgive and forget." The expression's strength is that we are not to carry resentment and bitterness. However, the things that have happened to us are a part of our history. The weighty experiences of life we do not forget. Genuine forgiveness does enable us (most often gradually) to remember them without the searing hurt we experienced at the time the wrong took place, and to remember them without a deep feeling of resentment and bitterness. The sadness of the event may remain for a long time or even, in some cases, for the rest of one's life. If resentment and bitterness do not accompany that sadness, there is no critical problem. The physical damages that occurred may be permanent. For example, repentance does not restore the life of a child killed by a driver "under the influence" while the child was waiting for a school bus.
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To say that forgiveness should lead to forgetting the experience is too strong. Forgiveness does lead to a softening of the memory of the wrong. If the hurt was not too severe, the experience may slip out of our conscious memory over a period of time. In Christian forgiveness, the softening is enhanced by the Holy Spirit's working within us to bring healing and wholeness of spirit.
It is also true that forgiveness may transform the results of sin into positive blessings. Sometimes the positive side is simply: "I know how bad that hurt made me feel. I'll endeavor not to do that sort of thing to another." Sometimes the positive blessing is new growth in my own person so that I'm a better example of a growing Christian. Sometimes the blessing may be the end of a relationship that was really inimical to me as a person.
There are times when we extend a "grudging forgiveness." To put those two words together has a raspy sound and feel! Like a baby beginning to walk, such forgiveness is wobbly, but at least it is a start. Even if the forgiveness is not grudging, often it is only partial at the outset, due to our lack of understanding of ourselves. Not infrequently forgiveness is a process, sometimes a lengthy process, especially when there has been deep hurt. The new insight I had regarding my relationship with my father when I read Smedes' Forgive and Forget is
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an example (see p.27); it is also a reminder that the process of forgiveness sometimes takes some years.
In this world, we humans must work with one another, interact with one another in a host of situations. We cannot have close fellowship if perceived wrong is present in the relationship. We often settle for whatever degree of closeness may be possible in the situation, but the "bentness" of the relationship keeps intruding to mar the wholeness that would otherwise be possible.
As I mentioned earlier, repentance on the offender's part involves implicitly, if not explicitly, the resolve not to offend again. Human experience in general, our own experience (each of us) in particular, clearly demonstrates that we fail in our resolution all too often! In other words, the risk of being hurt again is very high. Why should we run it? There are two good reasons.
The first is simply the incomparable beauty, wonder, joy, richness of a growing relationship between two persons. Sometimes the nature of the relationship does not hold much promise for that quality of closeness — for example, an alcoholic husband or wife in a marriage relationship, or an abusive parent with a young child. Such relationships are certainly destructive of trust. It seems like very hollow encouragement to say that some of these do get turned around, so hang on!
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That happens to be true, but it is just as true that many such situations do not get healed. So there is also the necessity for the realism to recognize that some human relationships are truly barren of any reasonable hope. We do live in a world that is far short of the beauty of Heaven! Of course we do not know in advance whether the relationship can be healed or not. Still, if a broken relationship can be healed, the result is eminently fine and satisfying. We need to do as much as we can in the given situation to bring about wholeness. We also need to recognize that miracles do sometimes happen in relationships.
The second reason for running the risk of being hurt repeatedly is our Model. How often does God run that risk with us? If the pattern for all of the factors involved in forgiveness is what God does, we must work at doing better than we commonly do in risking further hurt. Even though we cannot reach the level of God's "risking," we can let Him help us improve our problem relationships. God values our friendship, the closeness of our relationship with Him.
In Christ's great prayer in John 17, He prays at one point, "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory" (verse 24). What a marvelous expression of our Lord's desire for closeness with us! It is incredible that a
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growing closeness with Him does not move us more powerfully to a life walked in fellowship with His people as well. And who knows how far a wholesome example in our lives might go in helping another?
We must recognize that a static life is simply not what God wants. Indeed, are not the words static and life mutually contradictory? How can life be static? The very concept of life involves some degree of growth and change.
Does the value of the richness of a whole relationship need to be argued? Not really. It is common enough human experience that when a spirit of forgiveness and repentance bring healing to a problem relationship, the sense of joy and freedom and goodwill that follows on both sides is overwhelmingly satisfying and refreshing. That sense of "at-one-ness" becomes its own best argument.
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Questions for Discussion
1. Do you find the categories of "spirit of forgiveness" and "repentance" convincing? Do they help to clarify some of the problems of forgiveness?
2. Have you had a particularly troubling relationship in which the "spirit of forgiveness" and "repentance" (had you been aware of them) might have helped to bring healing to the relationship? Are you willing to share your feelings in going through that experience?
3. As you think about problem relationships you have experienced, which seems more difficult to you, the "spirit of forgiveness" or "repentance"? Can you think of any reasons for your answer?
