Why is forgiveness so difficult? | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

What’s so hard about forgiveness? Partly, that it is an offence against justice. Someone has wronged us, someone owes us, and we simply have to let it go.

Not a good business practice. And on the face of it, a risky relational practice.

Not let it go once, but seventy times seven. Seventy times seven.

Sheer madness.

Like, like, um… um…

Giving money generously when you still have a mortgage to pay, children to educate, an old age without adequate stock and shares to see you through? That dream holiday which may never become a reality.

And more, you give it to faceless people you will never see, this side of eternity.

Why?

Compassion. And….

When I force myself to be generous to those in greater need, with money I should rationally keep for myself, I remind myself that someone sees. An mighty, magnificent audience. Of One.

Who sees what I have done in secret.

And in my time of need will give me what I need, full measure, pressed down, flowing over.

How do I know this?

Two ways. Because Jesus says so, and I believe what Jesus says by faith. Everything he says which I have tested empirically has been true, so I also believe what I haven’t had empirical evidence of. (Like, um… hell!)

The other way is I know it’s true is that in my own experience, I have received what I have given many times over. Not necessarily from those I have given to, in fact, generally not. Someone was watching; someone was keeping track, that someone gave me what I needed when I needed it, many times over, that Someone is good and I trust him.

* * *

One of the hardest things about forgiveness sometimes is our sense that if we are silent, no one will ever know how we were wronged.

And if the injury or abuse happens in a church context, that the perpetrators will continue to sport burnished haloes in front of the church, while we, well, we know that inside they are “full of dead men’s bones and wickedness.”

It hurts when people have got away with sinning against us. When everyone thinks they are very fine people indeed, while we, we know otherwise.

That’s where faith comes in, and the connection between giving and forgiving. Just as we are content to give knowing that no one will ever know but Christ alone, so too we forgive knowing that God saw everything, he observed it, and it is in his hands. And he will see justice done.

So we are releasing the debt owed us, the sins against us into the hands of a powerful God. He will deal with them with the same combination of justice and mercy as he deals with us.

We can forgive, partly because we are transferring our case to a higher court. And the verdict is up to it.

The Father saw, the Father knows, the Father will deal with it as he thinks best. And that is enough.

This is Stage 1 of forgiveness. Stage 2 is to love your enemies. I haven’t reached there. And the parable which I am considering in my Blog Through the Bible Project merely considers Stage 1.

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant

Matthew 18
²¹ Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Yeah, he’s showing off. Showing off his magnanimity. Hasn’t got it. ESV note: Within Judaism, 3 times was enough to show a forgiving spirit.

²² Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Don’t keep track. Keeping track reveals that you might not have really got the heart of forgiveness, which is letting go of wrongs in mercy, as God lets go of your offences

Love means losing track. Love means a lifestyle of forgiving. Letting offences go almost as soon as they occur. Which is the royal road to happiness.

²³ “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴ As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. ²⁵ Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

A talent was worth about 20 years of a day laborer’s wages.

²⁶ “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ ²⁷ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

I grow more aware of cancelled debts as I grow older. I am amazed at the things God hasn’t punished me for, which he overlooked, which I appear to have got away with it. At his loving kindness, mercy and forgiveness of me, despite the many wrong things I have done.

²⁸ “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.^[

A denarius was the usual daily wage of a day laborer

He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

²⁹ “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

³⁰ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. ³¹ When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

³² “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³ Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’

That is the motivation for forgiveness which Christ offers us. That God has had mercy on us. That we haven’t had to pay up for all our sins and offences. So we just have to let some things go, into oblivion, or into God’s hands.

³⁴ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

³⁵ “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
v.34 is almost literally true. We do live in a kind of torture, until we have forgiven those who have sinned against us.
Wherever we go, if the offence comes to memory, it brings pain with it, and we re-injure ourselves.
As long as the memory of something makes you really angry, you have not totally forgiven–and are therefore liable to re-injury from the memory of the old offence.

Forgiveness is ultimately a miracle. We can only do it if God gives us the grace to be able to. If God changes our hearts.

Change my heart, oh Lord. Give me some of your grace and graciousness.