No halfway forgiveness

I will never forget the time I sinned against Mr. R.S. He will never forget it either, it seems. When I was confronted with my offense at a church function years ago, I asked his forgiveness. A year or two later, at a multi-church retreat (the man is not in my church, but Christians are a small circle), I noticed that the tension was still thick, so I asked his forgiveness again. He graciously forgave—at that moment, at least. Last weekend I ran into him once more at a reception at the home of a mutual Christian friend, and it was evident that my sin had not been thrown into the sea of forgetfulness.

God casts our sins behind His back “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12, ESV). That’s pretty far. Isn’t it amazing that God, so infinite and sovereign, can yet choose to forget something! Moreover, we’re told to be imitators of Him (Ephesians 5:1).

There is a woman I need to ask forgiveness of—it is long overdue. As I was contemplating just how I would go about that, it dawned on me why it is so hard for people to forgive, and perhaps why divine amnesia-type forgiveness is rare. I realized that forgiveness is not primarily a feeling but a transaction. When you are asking for forgiveness, you are actually asking the person you have hurt to take on more hurt by absolving your debt. The pain has to go somewhere. The debt doesn’t just disappear into thin air. The fact of the debt is as real as the fact of gravity and cannot be wished away. In a forgiveness transaction, the person doing the forgiving agrees to accept, or absorb, the debt onto his own person. There is a transfer, in which the wrongdoer is relieved to be forgiven, and the injured party takes on more pain. The monkey is off the offender’s back and on the offended’s.

This is why forgiving is so remarkably noble an act for the person who does it. Consider: First, she has no reason to do it, and nothing to gain by it except more hurt and more struggle (and the blessing of God). Secondly, the indebted party has absolutely nothing to offer, nothing enticing to bring to the table. In fact, he is virtually saying to the other person, “I caused you suffering. Now I am asking you to agree to take on more suffering by canceling my debt and sucking it up yourself—and furthermore, by promising never to bring it up again, even if I wrong you again in the future. And if the matter does come up again, even just in your mind, I am asking you to promise to wrestle it down till you forget it again.”

How can forgiveness be anything but the road less traveled, the “narrow road” Jesus talked about (Matthew 7:13-14)? And yet it is not only doable but also stipulated as a condition for our own forgiveness:

“… forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25, ESV).

As difficult as it is, forgiveness that meets God’s approval must not be halfway but “from your heart” (Matthew 18:35). But wherever this little death is accepted by a person of noble heart, forgiveness is the currency of the Christian life, the unction that greases relationships, the act of self-denial that restores a sister so completely that one could walk up to her at a swinging Christian party and shake her hand and smile.