Month: July 2019

I haven’t forgotten about my series on forgiveness. It is a big topic though so I didn’t want to rush it. If you want to catch up on previous posts, check out the Forgiveness Category on this blog.

I’ve heard from a number of you about this topic and received some great feedback. One of the things mentioned was that it would be important to study what Jesus said about forgiveness. I couldn’t agree more! It’s something I had originally had in mind when starting off this series.

So, I spun up some Bible software and did a simple search. Here is (as far as I can tell) the very first thing Jesus said about forgiveness (sequentially starting from Matthew that is… not necessarily chronologically). The context is the Lord’s Prayer. I’ll put the whole passage in here for reference. I’ve emphasized the parts that stand out.

Matthew 6:1-15 (ESV)

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

² “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.³ But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, ⁴ so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

⁵ “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. ⁶ But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

⁷ “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. ⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.⁹ Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
¹⁰ Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
    on earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread,
¹² and forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,
    but deliver us from evil.

¹⁴ For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, ¹⁵ but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Some Observations

1. Jesus’ main point is that we should not practice righteousness (do good) to impress others (horizontal). Instead we should practice righteousness to honor God and receive rewards from Him (vertical), not others.

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

Jesus approaches the subject of forgiveness as if he were using google maps. By that I mean, he starts with a big perspective of the whole world and then zooms down slowly. (If you’ve never done that on Google Maps… first of all how is that possible? Second of all, you should. It’s kinda fun.)

The big topic at hand is this whole idea of practicing righteousness. A lot of people say, “Oh yeah I’m a good person.” But Jesus points out that it isn’t enough to be good. You also have to think about the motivations behind that.

If we are good for the sake of looking good to others, Jesus says that is the wrong motivation. It is not recognized by God as being valid. But if our motivation is to please God, that is where the reward from God comes.

So, the motivation behind the forgiveness is important. Do we forgive others to be seen as loving, magnanimous, bighearted? It should cause us to take a second look at our motives for or against forgiveness.

2. One example he gives of practicing righteousness is praying.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.

This is pretty straight forward. He is zooming in on the topic of forgiveness.

3. It is in prayer to God exemplified that we see the first mention of forgiveness.

and forgive us our debts,
    as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Here we get to the point in Google Maps where we have arrived at the street intersections of our destination and we can see the top of the building or location we are searching for. But we may be surprised at where the building is in general.

You might expect the topic of forgiveness to be contained in a broader category of getting along with others. And in a way that is true.

Prayer is after all a conversation with someone. And that someone is God. And what is relationship without communication?

4. The first type of forgiveness that is mentioned is God’s forgiveness of us. We need it.

and forgive us our debts

This is the paradigm shift for me when it comes to forgiveness. Usually I struggle with forgiving others. Or, I struggle with wanting to be forgiven by others. However, Jesus takes that important step back to see the more important issue.

Before we heal our relationship with each other, we must heal our relationship with God. And in that relationship, we are the ones who need forgiveness.

5. The second type of forgiveness that is mentioned is our forgiveness of others.

    as we also have forgiven our debtors.

This is important because of how Jesus phrases the prayer. He uses our forgiveness of others as a way to prove to God that we are not being hypocritical (going back to that bird’s eye view point above). We aren’t just trying to get a free ride on some offense because God is love. No, we are genuine. We admit we need forgiveness and we prove that by forgiving others freely.

Here, he never mentions needing forgiveness from other people. He puts the responsibility of forgiveness on the one doing the forgiving.

To me this shows that all of our reasons for not forgiving someone, are actually somewhat bad. We are too hurt, they betrayed us too many times, we are better than they are, they don’t deserve forgiveness.

All of these come from an attitude that fails to realize our own desperate need for God to forgive us of our sin against Him. And looking at it from that angle, the difference between you and the person who hurt you is like two houses comparing their relative heights next to Mount Everest.

6. Jesus emphasizes and explains the need for non hypocritical forgiveness with both a promise and a warning.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,  but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

This is both reason to be overjoyed and terrified. It is wonderful because God promises forgiveness to those who can forgive others truly from the heart.

And it is terrible because how difficult that can actually be. How can some want good to come to someone who lied to you and ruined your life? How can you let that go? It seems impossible at times. And yet necessary if we really understand our need for God to forgive us.

Conclusion

Whenever I read the words of Jesus, it often leaves me a little… shaken. Our culture makes Him out to be so fluffy and sappy like He only talked about love and peace. Here is an example of how he is nothing at all like our culture pictures him to be.

He sets the bar high and requires obedience. And he offers glorious rewards and promises for doing so.

There is so much more that can be said about this. So many questions it raises. Is Jesus saying we can earn God’s forgiveness by forgiving others? Can we lose forgiveness if we don’t? What about free grace and love? Is this works based salvation?

These are all great questions. But I’ve covered what I meant to talk about in this specific post. Please share any thoughts or questions you may have in the comments. I’d love to start a dialogue about some of these issues.

We all know what it is like to be hurt by someone close to us. And we all know what it is like to be the one causing the hurt to someone else. The pain caused through this kind of relational hurt can be deeper, more intense, and longer lasting than some of the worst physical pain.

When a wife finds out a husband has been unfaithful or has been lying to her for years.

When a husband hears his wife tell him she is leaving.

When you learn that a close friend has been spreading your vulnerable secrets around behind your back.

When you remember things your parents did or said that still hurt even today.

How many more scenarios there are. These are the types of things that devastate us for years and leave us broken in the best cases, and hollow shells of our former selves – devoid of hope – in the worst.

What is one supposed to do in these situations? How should they respond when trust has been dashed to pieces so thoroughly?

Speaking as one who has both done the hurting and been hurt, here are a few different responses I can think of (because I’ve used them all).

Deny the pain. This involves pretending like everything in the relationship is still the same. Trying not to think about what happened. Trying to push it away. This is like hiding the garbage under your mattress. Even though you can’t see it, the smell escapes and permeates everything. Everything you do is now tainted by the smell of the denied hurt. You look at him or her and you plaster on a smile. But deep down something just isn’t right. It isn’t the same. And the thought terrifies you. So you try to hide it more. You throw even more trash under your now bulging mattress. Then, it starts to leak out. It leaks out in your words and in your glances. In your actions and in your thoughts. Deny it as much as you like, you cannot push pain like that away. You can only push it down into yourself. And there is only so much room down there.

Weaponize the pain. Sometimes we don’t deny what happened or pretend like everything is fine. Sometimes we do the exact opposite and turn the betrayal of the other person into a weapon we can wield against them. We see the shame in their face whenever they look at us and part of us is happy at the misery they are feeling. After all, they deserve it. We get some measure of pleasure from their suffering. So, like blacksmiths, we pound away at our own grief and hurt and fashion it into a sword. Clutching this sword tightly in our hands, we proceed to use it every chance we get. When they try to do something nice, we remind them (through a subtle eye roll or an abrasive verbal back slap) about how they can’t make up for what they did. We watch them wilt and we feel that sense of power. This can feel great for a time. But it doesn’t last long. The continual stabbing and slashing soon drives the other person away. They won’t be able to take it forever. We are left alone to realize that, while we may have driven away the person who caused the pain, we never dealt with the pain itself. We are still holding onto that lethal, sharp sword containing all of our hurt and grief. Only now, there is no one there to help us move on.

Forgiveness. When we forgive, we do not deny the pain or act like everything is fine. Nor do we hold onto the betrayal and use it against the other person. Instead, we allow our focus to shift away from ourselves and onto the real issue. That is, our anger, sadness, and hurt, was caused by another person. Because of that, they are now in debt to us. This means that they are not whole. The more we hold onto, or deny, the hurt and pain we carry, the longer the person we love who caused the hurt has to suffer by being in debt to us. Forgiveness is having mercy on them and letting go of the hurt they brought to you, so that they can be whole and at peace again. It means truly wanting good to come to them and letting them know that you want them to experience blessing. And once you do, you can also realize that it wasn’t just them you were freeing, but it was also yourself. By letting go of the weight of your pain, you can breath again and find peace.

Refusing to forgive, either by denying the problem in the relationship or actively using it as a weapon, only causes more damage. It hurts both you and the other person. But, by choosing to have mercy on the one who caused the initial damage, we allow the healing process to begin both in them and in us.

I’d like to start exploring the topic of forgiveness. It’s such a huge topic that I won’t be able to fit it all in one post. So, this is the first in a series of posts that I will write on it.

What follows will just be my initial thoughts and reflections on forgiveness as a starting point for the series.

When I think of forgiveness, I think about the things that happened leading up to the need for forgiveness in the first place: Betrayal, lies, angry outbursts, hurtful words, cold gestures, foolish behavior.

The solution offered up for these sorts of things is usually forgiveness. If a husband and wife argue and the man shouts in anger, if he is aware of himself enough and humble, he will ask for forgiveness for doing so.

But what exactly does forgiveness solve and how does it solve the problem?

Perhaps is it right then, to define the problem itself first and then look at the solution of forgiveness.

Problem: At least one person in a relationship causes (in some way) damage to the relationship that results in disunity in the relationship.

As we know, this damage to a relationship can happen in a variety of ways. Disunity can also manifest itself in various ways; both obvious and glaring and more subtle. The key point seems to be that when there is disunity in a relationship and at least one of the people involved is the primary cause, then you have the problem that forgiveness is supposed to solve. The main problem then is disunity in a relationship not necessarily the damage that caused it.

This does not consider other cases where disunity could be caused by other factors such as circumstances not allowing people to continue the same level of unity in their relationship (distance between them, illness etc.)

This is where things seem to get tricky to understand. How does forgiveness solve the problem of relational disunity?

Is the damage repaired somehow? That is usually what we do when something is damaged. We repair it. If a car breaks down, we take it to the shop. So is forgiveness somehow repairing or undoing the damage caused?

Based on personal experience I would have to say the answer to that is definitely no!

Forgiving someone does not undo the damage they did to you. It does not erase what was said or done to cause the hurt to arise. But it seems to me that forgiveness does allow there to be unity again where there was disunity before.

This seems to mean that disunity in a relationship is solved (through forgiveness) mainly when the people in the relationship decide to be unified in spite of the damage done and all the reasons they may personally have to let disunity continue. Forgiveness is a decision, not a feeling.

So, I will conclude this rambling by saying that to me, it seems that forgiveness is only possible when you value your relationship with the other person so much that you can put unity with them above your own need to feel whole.

Thanks for reading! I hope you will join me in the future posts where I hope to explore this topic more in depth, looking at various other sources (such as the Bible, and other authors).