by Jacob Ninan
Compared to the number of times we hear teaching on receiving forgiveness from God, we hear less about our forgiving others who do wrong to us. Yet Jesus has taught that unless we too forgive others, our Father is not going to forgive us (Matt.6:14,15). So, it is very important for us to learn how to forgive others, and how to face the practical challenges we face when we try to do that.
First of all, let us make sure that we understand the foundational truths about how God forgives us, and then we can move forward from there to forgiving others.
"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace" (Eph.1:7). The first thing we see is that God brings us 'redemption' through the blood that Jesus shed on the cross. This is to pay the ransom for us to Satan to whom we belonged after our ancestors Adam and Eve left the lordship of God and handed over their lives to Satan. It is through this ransom that God was able to get us back to His kingdom, the kingdom of light, away from the kingdom of darkness (Acts.26:18). The second thing we see is that God brought out forgiveness of sins for us. The righteousness and justice of God demanded that sin should be punished. But He loved us and did not want to punish us. So Jesus took our punishment on Himself so that we did not need to be punished and our sins could be forgiven. It was His blood shed for us that bought us our forgiveness. The third thing is that we receive this salvation entirely as a free gift, because of the undeserved favour that God is showing to us, and we have nothing to boast of in ourselves (Eph.2:8,9).
Have we come to the place where we do not boast of anything in ourselves as we stand before God and receive this salvation? Some boast in their family line, their community, their accomplishments, qualifications, etc., and cannot come to accept the fact that their salvation is purely by grace given as a free gift from God. Are we better than anyone else? No. We are all the same when it comes to sin (Rom.3:9,10). All of us have sinned before God and His acceptance is only by His unmerited favour towards us (Rom.6:23).
When we receive our forgiveness as a free and undeserved gift from God, what we also admit is that we now have no right to judge anyone else. When the Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman caught in adultery and said that she ought to be stoned to death, they considered themselves to be qualified to cast those stones. But Jesus clarified that only those without sin had the right to cast stones (Jn.8:7). What we ought to understand from this is that if we feel qualified to judge others or to look down on others, the position that we are indirectly taking for ourselves is that we have no sin! But all of us know that we are not without sin. That takes away any right we think we may have to judge others. When we refuse to forgive someone else for their sins against us, we stand as judges over them and mistakenly assume that we are qualified to judge them.
One of the very important lessons we need to remember when we have to deal with others who have sinned against us is that, if we will not forgive them, we wil lose our own ability to receive forgivenesss from God. Jesus brought out this truth from the parable of a king with two servants. The first servant owed the king a huge amount of money which he had no means to pay back. The king forgave him that debt 'by grace'. But then, this servant could not forgive another servant who owed him a small amount. When the king heard about it, he withdrew the forgiveness he had already given the servant and put him in prison. Jesus now brought out the warning that the heavenly Father would deal with us in the same way if we refused to forgive another person, after receiving our forgiveness from God as an undeserved favour from Him (Matt.18:35).
Refusing to forgive someone is different from struggling to forgive someone who has done us great harm. One thought that might come into our mind may be that he does not deserve to be forgiven. In telling us to bear with and to forgive others, God helps us by reminding us to forgive them in the same way that God has forgiven us (Col.3:13). If we think they do not deserve forgiveness, if only we would remember how we ourselves have not deserved forgiveness, it will become easier to forgive them. Jesus gave us a practical example when He forgave those who had crucified Him (Lk.23:34). As a Man, He asked the Father to forgive them because they did not know what they were doing. Obviously they knew they had crucified Him. But what they did not realise was that He was their Messiah, the Son of God, and One who had done nothing wrong. They were ignorant about what they were asking for when they glibly said that His blood could be put on them and their children (Matt.27:25)! We can say like Jesus about the worst of our enemies if we look at it this way and realise they are not aware of the seriousness of what they have done.
A practical challenge that we face when we decide to forgive someone is that the moment we think of him, all kinds of feelings—anger, revenge, malice, betrayal, shock, etc.—rise up from our mind. Some people then imagine that until such feelings disappear, they are not in a position to forgive. But this is a mistaken assumption, because such feelings are the normal result of going through such a devastating experience from that person. The fact is that we have no ability to directly control these feelings. Some people, on the other hand, go on going over the past events and relish these kind of feelings, just as a cow chews the cud. Sometimes the devil takes pleasure in reminding us about this person or the events and watching us suffer! But the more we allow these feelings to dominate our mind, the more rooted they become in our memory. What we can do is to take a clear decision in our mind that we are going to forgive this man and do it. It is an act we do by choice. After that, whenever this memory comes up into our mind, we can remind ourselves that we have already forgiven him, it is settled and that we don't have any more time to waste over it. Then we switch our attention to something useful and healthy! When we do this process for a few days consistently, we find that those feelings lose their strength. Finally we come to the place where this event does not bother us any more, and we can even meet this person without any animosity!
Some well-meaning people tell us to forgive and forget. But we must remember that it will be a frustrating experience if we try to forget what has happened. The more we try to forget it, by thinking about it, the deeper the memory gets embedded. God who has said that He will not remember our sins any more (Heb.8:12) cannot forget anything Himself because He is omniscient. What He means is that He will not recall our sins from His memory and hold them against us.
Another thing that bothers some people is that they think it is unfair to let go of those who have harmed and watch them enjoy life while we are suffering the consequences of what they have done to us. It is unfair in that sense. But have we thought that strictly speaking God was being 'unfair' to place our sins on Jesus and let Him suffer while we enjoy our forgiveness? What we deserved was exposure, humiliation and eternal punishment.
One intellectual doubt some have is to think that by the process of letting go of the 'criminal', we are minimising the 'crime'. To them it appears that we are implying that their crime was trivial and that we are just overlooking it. God did not think our sins were trivial and just forgive us. They were so severe that He said they deserved death. That was why He had to pay such a great price to redeem us. What we are doing now is remembering how freely we have been forgiven, and then forgiving others in the same way.
Some people say that they are willing to forgive others, provided these others come and apologise to them. They say that many people who have hurt them are not even aware that they have hurt someone. But then they forget that when they received forgiveness from God on the basis of grace, they have forfeited their right to judge others. God is the Lawmaker, Lawgiver and Judge, and only He has the right to demand that people should repent from their sins before He forgives them. When Jesus was on the cross, He expressed His position as a Man when He forgave those who were crucifying Him, even when those people had not even admitted that they had done anything wrong (Lk.23:34)!
We must realise that when we forgive someone it does not mean that God has also forgiven them. What we are doing is only to clear our position with respect to God and the others. For God to forgive them, they will have to go to God personally and repent from their sins. So, we do not have to think that they are getting away without justice. We have no right to take vengeance and we are only passing them on into the hands of God with whom they will have to do (Rom.12:19).
Finally, we need to examine ourselves to see if we have been upset with God, blaming Him for evil that has come to us. We should have known that God does not do any evil but that all that He does is perfect and good. Perhaps we need to ask Him for forgiveness for our stupidity and sin of blaming Him.
We must know that by forgiving another person it is us we are doing good to. It takes away a burden from our heart and mind, along with the feelings of anger, bitterness, revenge, etc. Now we can sleep better and also have a healtheir body. Let us not allow the devil to spoil us with any unforgiving attitude.
One day, when we are with Jesus in eternity, there will be no more pain, tears, death or any evil (Rev.21:4). Let us wait for that time, while we exercise faith, patience and hope here on earth.