One thing that’s always sat with me around forgiveness is some coaching I received from the national director I reported to in the peacemaking ministry I worked in a few years ago.
He simply said that forgiveness from the gospel viewpoint is never simply about the peace we receive, in that we aren’t to forgive just for our own benefit, but it’s because of the cross and all that that represents, that’s the Christian theology of forgiveness.
The point of forgiveness is missed if we simply do it for our own peace. As a result, that peace we seek for ourselves actually eludes us.
I’ve thought about that advice for so long, and it’s informed how I think about forgiveness, how it’s got to be a quest for the right motivation and reason. I thought about this so much because, to be honest, I found it incredibly challenging. It seemed to complicate what could otherwise be rationalised as a purely secular concept.
But forgiveness is nothing like a secular concept.
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Forgiveness is always principally a gift that is given—freely.
It’s not centrally about what peace we receive as the giver.
Only when forgiveness is extended with an
authentic heart, and is then received,
does the giver of the forgiveness receive their peace.
But their peace is also present in seeing their own authentic heart;
their forgiving rightly motivated.
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When I read this morning that World Forgiveness Day is on 7 July, I looked immediately at the sevens, and concluded what the number seven represents in the old language.
The number seven represents shalom, completeness, perfection in the heavenly realms, and that is what forgiveness is. It’s perfect peace; a peace that Paul says transcends our understanding.
We know it even as we live this life in an eternal way, which is the abundant life that Jesus came to give us access to. This eternal way of the abundant life is the opposite way of living to that we settle upon to live. The material life and the spiritual life are opposites. The more we give away of the material life, the more of the spiritual life we obtain.
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What we most need and desire is connected to a peace we can only achieve through forgiveness, which is to be understood as how we’re best to connect to life.
This speaks to the truth that we are always looking to reconcile with justice. Forgiveness and justice are intimately entwined. This is often why forgiveness is so wretchedly hard. Forgiveness is needed amid injustice. Without injustice, forgiveness is unnecessary.
Forgiveness feels hardest at the very time we need to execute it. How ironic in the realms of absurdity!
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Peace affirms that we’re on the right track, just as being on the right track affirms our experience of peace.
Anxiety is itself a confirmation that we’re still on the journey of reconciling ourselves to the concept of peace. And the golden paradox is, anxiety itself will lead us in the direction of peace as we learn to mediate stress discovering its causes and effects. See how what we don’t want can lead us to what we do want?
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As soon as we learn that forgiveness hinges on giving another person a grace they don’t deserve, we understand how we have received such forgiveness that we can never deserve.
Of course, the opposite applies: as soon as we reconcile how undeserving of God’s grace we are, it makes us think that it’s OKAY, even perfectly appropriate, if the person we are forgiving is undeserving of our forgiveness. If they were deserving of our forgiveness, we would not need to forgive them.
As soon as our motive for forgiving someone who has hurt us aligns with the truth that none of us are worthy of God’s forgiveness, we begin to understand forgiveness from God’s aspect. It makes forgiveness an easier task.
I hope you can see two connected ideas:
The first idea is that humanity is designed to forgive, and the proof of this is unforgiveness always leads us to poor health outcomes. The need to forgive is interwoven into our DNA.
The second idea is there’s only one way to forgive the right way, and that is to follow the gospel way. The gospel way is forgiving especially when it’s undeserved. It is completely illogical, and that’s why it’s a spiritual concept. What makes absolutely no sense from a secular worldview, makes absolute sense in the execution of it. Again, this is a spiritual concept that must be lived to be believed, and yet it requires the ultimate sacrifice of faith.
None of us can escape this truth, and we can try and do it our own way, but it will always end up being futile.
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