What Is Forgiveness - Part 2

(reprinted with permission)

Hopefully you will see the important difference here. However, some of you may think that this is really just a minor difference. So let me give you a number of reasons why this distinction is so important. Here’s what therapeutic forgiveness does:

It makes the main focus of forgiveness me and my hurts, not the problem of sin

It diminishes the importance of Matthew 18, biblical confrontation, and true reconciliation

It makes me the ultimate definer of what is offensive and sinful

It downplays the real and just consequences of unconfessed and unrepentant sin

It can lead to people saying that they “need to forgive God.”

Hopefully you can see how the popular notion of unconditional forgiveness may sound like it is right and biblical, but it distorts and diminishes the reality and the power of what true forgiveness is.

Pastoral Reflections on Forgiveness

Let’s finally turn our attention toward what biblical forgiveness really is, and let me try and resolve some of the tension that you feel in your heart about this subject. How do we make this work? Let me give you a number of pastoral reflections:

1. Normally, cover minor offenses in love

Life is full of minor conflicts, pains, and offenses. The Bible calls us to cover those minor offenses in love – to overlook them. “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).

2. Always have a spirit of forgiveness

Although I believe that forgiveness is conditional, I would not want you to think that bitterness and resentment are justifiable – ever! Instead we are to have a spirit of forgiveness, a willingness to be reconciled, and a hatred for sin that causes us to take radical action. We must offer forgiveness, seek reconciliation while at the same time recognizing that sin creates a breakage in relationship. We must always have a ready-to-forgive heart.

3. Don’t let sin drive you apart – go and attempt reconciliation

Conditional forgiveness should drive you toward the person, not away. Matthew 5:23-25 tells us to go quickly. Unconditional forgiveness causes forgiveness from a distance, without discussion, without confrontation, and without clarification. This is why the passage on forgiveness is so closely connected to church discipline. It describes the process of determining what is really going on, and it balances an unwillingness to simply look the other way. Without conditional forgiveness, there is no basis for church discipline.

4. When you forgive, you are making a promise

Ken Sande, in his excellent book Peace Maker, makes this point very well by identifying that forgiveness is a covenant that the offended party makes to the offender. He says that when granting forgiveness to someone you make a four-fold promise:

I will not dwell on this

I will not bring this up to use against you

I will not talk to others about this

I will not let this stand between us

This is the promise that we make when we grant someone forgiveness.

5. Begin the process of appropriate reconciliation

Forgiveness means you enter on the path of reconciliation. It means you attempt to reestablish or to bring grace into the relationship. This will take time, wisdom, and discernment to know what this looks like. In some cases it means that you become very close friends. In other cases it means that there are still appropriate boundaries or consequences.

6. Pray for and be kind to the unrepentant

Nowhere in the Bible are we called to forgive persecutors and those who are unrepentant. Yet we are not allowed to be bitter either. Listen to the wise words of Luke 6:

"But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-29).

You see there is a powerful, biblical voice in humbling identifying the injustice of what is happening while at the same time being kind to those who don’t deserve it.

7. Be just like Jesus

For years I’ve been discussing this issue of the conditional nature of forgiveness. Often people use the example of Jesus on the cross, and they say, “Even Jesus forgave the people who were crucifying him.” But that is a misunderstanding of what really happened. In fact, Jesus said, “Father forgive them…”

What is he doing there? He is praying for them!

Then I usually ask those who advocate an unconditional position this question: “Did the Father forgive them?” And their answer betrays the inconsistency of unconditional forgiveness when they inevitably say, “Well, yes if they received Jesus.” Exactly. Forgiveness is always fundamentally conditional.

But let me be clear. That never justifies holding bitterness or resentment. We are called to be just like Jesus; to be just like Jesus.

Do you remember where we started this discussion? We began with Jesus saying that we are to forgive seventy times seven, and then he told a parable to help us understand the enormous debt that we’ve been forgiven. He wanted us to see that we are the man in the parable. He wanted us to see our sin and our debt so that the orientation of our lives would always be toward forgiveness.

He wants us to be just like him. He wants us to be just like him.

College Park Church