One of my favorite authors through the years has been Philip Yancey. Two of his books, What’s So Amazing About Grace and The Jesus I Never Knew, are books that I return to and reread from time to time. I was teaching a class this morning when the essential subject of forgiveness came up. It is an essential subject because if we fail to forgive those who have wronged us, we open the door to the enemy and give him a perfect right to camp out in our living room (metaphorically speaking). I like what Yancey has to say about the act of forgiving or our refusal to forgive.
As the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt said, the only remedy for the inevitability of history is forgiveness; otherwise we remain trapped in the “predicament of irreversibility.” … Not to forgive imprisons me in the past and locks out all potential for change. I, thus, yield control to another, my enemy, and doom myself to suffer the consequences of the wrong. I once heard an immigrant rabbi make an astonishing statement, “Before coming to America, I had to forgive Adolph Hitler,” he said. “I did not want to bring Hitler inside of me to my new country.” (Yancey, Philip. What’s So Amazing About Grace? Zondervan, 1997, p.99)
Those who have been wounded bristle at the thought of forgiving the one who has hurt them – especially when that person has hurt them over and over again. We bristle because we think they are getting a free pass for their “crimes” against us. It’s like Jesus has commanded us to hand over a “Get Out of Jail Free” card to our worst enemy so they can go on hurting us as well as others. Our sense of justice cries out. Our anxiety level spikes because we think that these people must be stopped and it is the force of our unforgiveness that will stop them.
But here is the secret about forgiveness. Forgiveness is a gift of God for the one who has been wronged, not for the one who has committed the wrong. If we can understand that, we can summon the heart to forgive. The rabbi quoted by Yancey had it right. Unforgiveness keeps the hurt and the hurter alive in our hearts. God has actually made us to forgive so that time and distance will do a work of healing – unless we keep the hurt alive by constantly ripping the scab off our wound as we rehearse the wrongs and keep them fresh so that our “enemy” will not escape our wrath.
But we are the ones who will not escape without forgiving. Without forgiving we carry our “enemy” with us wherever we go. We don’t allow God’s grace to do its work. Forgiveness is not the act of minimizing your pain or excusing what has been done to you. It is the act of releasing judgment of the matter to God who judges perfectly.
What could you do with all the energy you have burned up thinking about the one who wounded you and wondering how justice will be served? Think of the sleepless nights and the pain you have endured reliving the memories of things done and said to you. God offers that back as a gift to you if you will simply release the matter to him. You no longer have to forfeit your time, energy, and sleep to the matter. Release it to him. You don’t have to spend one more second considering how you will make the other person pay for what they did to you. Release it to him. Forgiveness is like selling a mortgage to another company. It will be their job to collect the debt, keep up with the legal work, and keep the records. You won’t have to give it another thought.
“But what do I get,” you ask? You get peace. You get a heart drained of poison and bitterness. You get some relationships healed and restored and others just set aside. You get a future untethered to your past. You get the full forgiveness of God. You get space back in your heart so that love can fill the space that resentment once occupied.
Again, forgiveness is God’s gift for the wounded. It is the pristine environment where healing can occur. Will God forgive those terrible people who wronged and wounded you? Will he forgive those who took your life away by their brutal acts? If they repent; if they change; if they truly come to Christ he will. But if they do, the individuals that hurt you will no longer exist. That will be a blessing as well. If they don’t repent God won’t forgive. But if you want to be fully healed pray that they will repent and be saved. Ask God to bless them. Forgive as you were forgiven. Choose to overcome evil with good and you give your violators no more power over you. Then you will be free indeed.
