Forgiveness doesn’t mean you still get to visit for Sunday dinner

They hurt you, they betrayed you, they changed your life for the worse. For some that person destroyed your life. You hate them for what they have done to you, done to your family. I get it, I’ve been there many times in my life.

When I first found Jesus the idea of forgiveness was the area I struggled with. This was because I was looking at the idea of forgiveness through the secular lens. The secular lens is forgive and forget… and that’s it! Forget the hurt and pain and let the person or people back into your life like nothing’s happened and no accountability from them. The Christian lens of forgiveness is very different to how and why non Christians think we forgive. However, some toxic people will deliberately try to make you think you are a bad Christian because you are not forgiving them in a secular way. To me this is spiritual gaslighting. 

Jesus said:

“For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you”. (Matthew 6:14)

The three most popular questions I get asked are in the areas of salvation (how to get to heaven), the Trinity and forgiveness.

I sometimes preach in church and one of the sermons I did last year had a section about forgiveness. I thought it may be useful to post this section of my talk in this post. I hope it helps someone who has questions about forgiveness, or feel they can never forgive or don’t understand why forgiveness is for you and not necessarily for the person who hurt or upset you. 

God’s Tree

In Ephesians, the writer Paul gives the reader instructions for Christian living. Paul starts by saying “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking” (Ephesians 4:17). The term gentile means a non-Jewish person.

Paul uses an analogy of a tree to explain how Christians are part of God’s people even though they are gentiles.

God the Father (who Jewish people call YHWH) is the root of the tree. Jewish people are God’s chosen people (Deuteronomy 7:6) and because of this they are on God’s tree. People who follow Jesus (Christians) are grafted onto the tree of God’s people purely by believing Jesus is Lord and He is their access to God the Father. Jesus is the glue holding a gentile who believes in Him onto the tree. If the gentile ever stops believing that Jesus is Son of God, their saviour and the only way they can get to God the Father, then they fall from the tree and lose access to God the Father (YHWH).

Anyone else who doesn’t believe Jesus is the Son of God, regardless of what religion they are, are the gentiles who Paul is talking about when he said “you must no longer live as the Gentiles do”.

“If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble.  For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either”. (Romans 11:17-21)

Who was Paul?

A bit of a back story of Paul, who wrote the instruction on forgiveness that we will look at. Well to start, he was born Saul. Saul was Jewish and persecuted the early disciples of Jesus. He hated anyone who said Jesus was the Jewish messiah and Son of God.

When Saul was on his way to arrest some Christians he was blinded by a bright light and heard Jesus speak to him. He was blind for 3 days and didn’t eat or drink during those days. He was healed by a man called Ananias. When he got his sight back he immediately told people that Jesus was the Jewish messiah and Jesus is the Son of God. He was then baptised and went by the name Paul. It was common back then for Jewish people to have two names, a Hebrew name (Saul) and a Latin or Greek name (Paul).

Prevent a separation from God

Paul's instructions are still relevant today, especially the instruction on forgiveness. By following these instructions you are letting go of your old self and letting God help you. Now these instructions won’t save you as we are saved by faith. You can follow all these rules to the tee but without the belief that Jesus is your Lord and saviour, you won’t get to heaven and spend eternity with God in the new renewed world. However these instructions will prevent the temptation of sinning. 

Continuous sinning, with no repentance, could eventually open a stronghold with the devil which could lead to a separation from God. Also by having faith you will naturally feel the pull to want to follow these instructions, as James 2:18 “Now someone may argue, 'Some people have faith; others have good deeds.' But I say, 'How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds”.

Instruction on forgiveness

The part of the instructions that’s relevant to this post’s topic of forgiveness are verses 31 and 32 of Ephesians chapter 6: 

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you”.

We can build up these emotions of bitterness, rage and anger; and actions of brawling, slander and malice in our lives through betrayals, trauma and loss. Some of these are normal reactions we can feel in the heat of the moment, which is fine, however as a Christian we can’t hold on to these negative emotions or actions as it can lead to sinful actions. Instead we must be kind, compassionate and forgiving.

Hate is a sin

Hating someone creates hate in your heart which is a sin. Sin separates us for God, which prevents us from getting to heaven. 

“Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him” (1 John 3:15).

Now forgiveness is an important concept for Christians to understand and also a concept that people struggle with. Forgiveness isn’t totally forgetting what the person did or said to you. Forgiveness can still come with boundaries and accountability.

You can forgive someone and reposition them in your lives, so they no longer have the same level of access they used to have to you. This is to prevent a similar thing happening again, especially if they are unrepentant, which means they aren’t sorry to God for what they have done. You can forgive someone and still remove all access that they have to you, if they are abusive, dangerous or their drama and manipulation will cause your mental health to be worse.

But they haven’t said sorry to me!

We can also forgive someone who isn’t sorry for what they did or said. This is because when we forgive we are saying and showing that we are no longer going to hold on to the hurt, as over time it will harm us, as it will turn into bitterness, rage or anger, which is not what God wants as it can give the devil influence over us. 

But how do I forgive?

“Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

When you forgive a person you do it through prayer, hand the hurt and pain over to God, as God says in Peter 5:7 “Cast all your cares on Him. For He cares for you.”. In your prayer you tell God that you have forgiven the person because they are God’s creation but they have been led away from God and into the devil’s influence. As a result they have sinful behaviour. Tell God that what they did is still painful to you in your heart so now you have to give pain you feel to God because he can handle it.

We also pray that God delivers the person, which means God makes them see the error of their ways and they ask God for forgiveness for what they did to you, while there is still time. This is because God’s wrath when they die is worse than anything we could do with our unforgiveness. As God says vengeance is His not ours (Romans 12-19). Only God wipes the slate clean when the person repents to God for the thing they need to be forgiven for and tells God they turn away from that behaviour. God doesn’t wipe the slate clean when the person only apologises to us and not to God. 

“Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us”. Luke 11:4

Activity 

So I’m going to do a short activity with you:

1. I want you to think of a person who has let you down, hurt you, angered or annoyed you and you have struggled to forgive them. Think about this person and the situation that led to your struggle of forgiveness. 

2. I would then like you to close your eyes for about a minute and continue to think about them

3. Open your eyes and keep thinking about this person as you read the description below.

“Jesus began Good Friday having spent the night in prison and being mistreated by guards: He was tied to a pillar and flogged with sticks and a special whip.  The Romans’ scourging whip “had iron balls tied a few inches from the end of each leather thong on the whip. Sometimes, sharp sheep bones would be tied near the ends.” The metal weights served to cause serious bruising, or contusions, and the leather of the thongs cut into the skin.  The sheep bones were also made to deepen the lacerations into the skin. After only a few lashes, the depths of the cuts would reach into muscle tissue.

The physical effects of the beating went far beyond the considerable pain it inflicted—with His flesh torn into on either side, He must have lost a lot of blood before even getting near the cross. 

After the scourging, Jesus’ body was covered in open wounds. He was in the most acute pain.  His energy drained as a result of the pain and loss of blood, it must’ve taken great effort to put one foot in front of the other. 

The condemned would be forced to carry the crossbeam from the prison inside the city to a location outside the city; the crossbeam weighed about 7 stones. Jesus picked up His cross having spent a wretched night in prison, with little to no sleep, watching His own people condemn Him, and being brutally scourged.  During the stations of the cross, Jesus falls three times. With his arms bound to the cross beam, he could do nothing to break his fall. Having to get up under the weight of that cross each time... having a 7 stone log crash down upon Him each time He fell. The condemned were stripped naked in order to die with as little dignity as possible.  

Next were the nails.  Iron spikes that averaged 5-7 in. in length were used to nail the arms of the condemned to the crossbeam, in the wrists. The victim was nailed to the crossbeam, it was raised up and attached to the vertical beam.  The victim’s feet were nailed into the vertical beam; death awaited.  

After, death would surely come, most often by a combination of blood loss and asphyxiation. The victim would only be able to take shallow breaths, until his arms weakened.  At that point, he would have to push his body up with his feet to breathe.  This would be terribly painful on multiple levels: putting pressure on the nail wounds in the feet and the hands, and rubbing the open wounds on his back up against a large beam of wood. Jesus had seven last words from the cross, all of which were probably laboured and difficult. The executioners had two methods to ensure death: breaking the victim’s legs with a massive mallet and thrusting a spear through their torso. Jesus was spared the first but not the second, even though He was already dead”.

That description was from author and theologian John Kubasak. If Jesus went through all that horrendous pain and suffering to save us all and take away our sins, when He never did anything wrong and never sinned, then we can grab hold of Jesus and let go of our unforgiveness and embrace Christian values and behaviours.

If Jesus went through all that torture because He loves us that much, then we can be kind, compassionate to others and forgive those who have wronged us, just like Christ God has forgiven us all of our sins, including when we have treated someone badly or hurt their feelings. God the Father forgave us of our sins through Jesus going through all that pain and suffering on the cross for each of us, even when it can feel like we didn’t deserve it. 

So even if we don’t forget the person’s sinful action, we have to forgive the person, who is also a creation of God (whether we like to admit it or not!) because God forgave us of our sins. 

Remember after Jesus told the story of the unforgiving servant, He said:

“This king did the same as my heavenly Father will do to you. You must forgive your brother or sister with all your heart, or my heavenly Father will not forgive you.” Matthew 18:35.