Forgiveness can be so hard. There’s a reason Christ emphasized it so differently from normal human traditions. Human thinking is, “I can’t forgive them that many times.” God’s response is, “how many times have I forgiven you?”
That point is brought home in Matthew chapter 18. In verses 21-23, Peter asks that question we’re all tempted to ask. How many times must I forgive? Seven? Surely seven is good. It’s 4 more times than the Hebrew law dictated at the time. Christ’s famous response,
“I say not unto thee, until seven times; but, until seventy times seven.”
Christ expounded upon this with the parable of the servant who owed a king a large sum. When brought forward to pay the sizeable debt, the servant fell down before the king and begged for patience. In great mercy, the king waived the debt.
That same servant then went out and grabbed another servant, demanding that a tiny amount be paid back. The second servant asked for patience and the same servant who had just been shown so much mercy had the second servant thrown into prison.
When the king heard this he “was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due to him” (Matthew 18:34).
It seems so easy here on earth not to forgive others. What does it hurt us to not forgive? How does that person who wronged me deserve my forgiveness?There is a story from the book Return from Tomorrow. A holocaust survivor is found in a concentration camp. When he is liberated by the soldiers, he is put to work helping with the sick and dying around him. He is energetic and relatively healthy. The soldiers finally say to him, “you must have been lucky. You haven’t been here long, huh?” The man tells them how many years he’d been at the concentration camp; a long time. They marvel at his health. How can it be?
The man tells them that early in the war, his wife and children were murdered before his eyes. He desperately wanted to hate these men, hate this war, hate this world, hate God. He had every reason to. But, the survivor made a decision. He decided he would not carry that hate with him. He decided he wouldn’t poison himself with hate. Forgiveness saved his life.
Elder David E. Sorensen said, “When someone has hurt us or those we care about, that pain can almost be overwhelming. It can feel as if the pain or the injustice is the most important thing in the world and that we have no choice but to seek vengeance. But Christ, the Prince of Peace, teaches us a better way. It can be very difficult to forgive someone the harm they’ve done us, but when we do, we open ourselves up to a better future. No longer does someone else’s wrongdoing control our course. When we forgive others, it frees us to choose how we will live our own lives. Forgiveness means that problems of the past no longer dictate our destinies, and we can focus on the future with God’s love in our hearts.”
We may think not forgiving others is harmless, but hate is poison. Holding onto grievances and refusing to forgive only poisons ourselves.
In the book, Surprised by Hope, N. T. Wright said: “If you lock up the piano because you don’t want to play to somebody else, how can God play to you?“
Reading back on the story of the king and the foolish servant who would be forgiven his great debt then demand payment from another. We read that and scoff at the hypocrisy. Yet we all have this same hypocrisy in us. And God is our king, having forgiven us all, and wroth when we can’t extend the same favor to our fellow brothers and sisters.
Verse 35 concludes that story:
Going along with what Elder Sorensen said, from this link: “I think it is helpful to recognize that offences and injuries are always bottled in our past. So, forgiveness requires us to deal with our past – not our present or future. We have to let go of our past in order to fill up the present and bless the future. When we fail to deal properly with our past, we are like someone whose elastic belt is caught on a barbed wire fence; we can make very little forward progress until we unhook ourselves from our pain and injustice in our past.”
That quote is perfect in explaining how that man from the concentration camp survived. That man, if he hated, would have been stuck in the past, attached to a barbed wire. Never being able to progress to his future. Instead, he chose to forgive, free himself, and save himself. That is the true power of forgiveness.
We have all been wronged. We have all wronged others. Some of us have been wronged worse than others. But life isn’t a ledger book. Life isn’t a tally of who has been wronged the most. There is always someone that has been wronged worse than you have. The book The Shack talks about this eternal idea of “being wronged.” If you refuse to forgive someone, and that someone refuses to forgive their father who made them that way, and their father refuses to forgive his father who made him that way: on and on for eternity. Grievances go back to the beginning of time. Forgiveness ends the vicious cycle of hate.
Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
There was a point in my life when I realized I’d been carrying around poison for far too long. There was a day I realized I had to forgive some people from my past so that I could move forward. I reached out to some people I hadn’t spoken to for so long. It helped me. I felt that feeling, of getting a weight off your shoulders. For me, it was more a feeling of getting poison out of my system. I thought I’d forgiven. It wasn’t until I actually said it, to the person that needed to hear it, and apologized for my part in pain that was caused, that I realized the burden I’d been carrying for so long.
We all must forgive.
Again, I know that sometimes such heinous wrongs are committed that some people feel they have the right to shout, “But I’ve never hurt someone like they hurt me!”
In those moments think about the person from the concentration camp who refused to hate. He chose to forgive. It saved his life. He had more reason to hate than just about anyone ever has. He chose not to. There’s always someone that deserves to hate more. Choose to love instead.
Let go of the hate you harbor and forgive. Do you want to come before God and Him to ask, “how can I forgive you, when you never forgave?”
We all do wrong, and we all get wronged. Remove yourself from the past and progress.
A forgiveness post would be lacking if it didn’t mention where all forgiveness originates. Always remember, there is only one person who can truly break the vicious cycle of pain and hate. Jesus Christ is the ultimate giver of grace and mercy. If you feel you truly can’t forgive, lean on Him. He felt the pain, He felt all of it, and He has forgiven us. He’s forgiven all of us. He died so that we can experience the true feeling of freedom that He allows. His blood paid our debt, all of it. As we rely on Him, we will find the forgiveness our hearts desperately need.
