When forgiveness is difficult

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When forgiveness is difficult.

4 March 2007 See also Healing blog

Can you forgive someone who doesn’t think they did anything wrong? Or who won’t admit to it? Or who is not able to admit to it because they have already died?

Does not forgiveness require repentance? Usually it does. The desire of one person to be forgiven and the willingness of another to forgive is the normal means of restoring relationship. To understand this better it may be helpful to clarify what is involved in forgiving.

Forgiveness is what one person does in relation to another who has done them wrong. Different images are used in the bible to describe what is done, eg wiping away (deleting) the sin, removing the sin, covering it, not counting the sin against them and so on.

This last phrase (from Psalm 32 and Romans 4) is very helpful. It says that forgiveness involves not counting the sin against them. Not holding it against them any more. This is a decision that the forgiver is able to make. And it does not necessarily require repentance (study the passage in Romans 4 which is about God crediting righteousness to Abraham).

We can decide not to hold against another person their sin. They may or may not admit it as a sin, they may or may not stop doing it. But we are able to opt out from being their accuser. In a way their sin keeps us captive as long as we feel we cannot or do not want to forgive them. We are retained at their pleasure as their prosecutors.

But one reason we may not want to forgive them is because we still want to punish them (or see them punished). Or we may wish to assert power over them by getting them to ask for forgiveness.

The Bible is clear that punishment is God’s business (Rom 12.17ff). The desire to retaliate is natural but not godly. Having power over others, trying to be a controller is also not godly. But if we let them off, are we not agreeing with their sin, are we not contributing to more sin? Even God has that problem, because he lets so many people off. His solution is on the cross and in the final judgment.

We can leave God to be the prosecutor of sinners, as well as their judge and Saviour. We can retire from the accusing business by the simple device of deciding not to hold the sin against them any more. We can repent ourselves of wanting to pay back, or to stand over others. And we can seek healing for the hurt, and learn to set better boundaries against bad behaviour.

Dale

Comments

I find forgiveness difficult, particularly when there is the desire to forgive, as Jesus demands of us, not for the actual sin, but the devastation that sin has caused in my life. It is particularly difficult when you know that the sin was done with malicious intent. Is the answer to hand it all over to God and trust that the Holy Spirit will assist me to forgive and therefore take the pain away?

Posted by Patricia on Friday, March 9, 2007 at 19:27:48