No skipping steps in asking forgiveness

A young man in his eighth year of incarceration was pleased to tell me that the young woman he had treated shabbily before he was locked up was no longer angry with him, as evidenced by increasingly amicable phone conversations between them. He told me she could see he was no longer the man he once was, that chastisement had transformed him. He said they had moved beyond the past.

I wasn’t so sure. As it happened, I had spoken to the young woman the night before and heard, with fresh pain, an account of his betrayals. The past lived on.

Forgiveness is a misunderstood matter in the world. People fling the word around willy-nilly “without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions” (1 Timothy 1:7, ESV). Forgiveness is thought to be (if any thought is given to it at all) a warm bath of emotion or a generous momentary gesture.

But true forgiveness—biblical forgiveness—is a kind of forensic transaction between parties, in which the victim of the wrong agrees to absorb the debt of the other and not to hold it to his account, nor bring it up at a later date. The offense, in other words, is thrown into the sea of forgetfulness, but at a price: It calls for dying on the part of the one conferring the forgiveness, and it gives life to the one receiving it. Life for death. In other words, what our God did for us in Jesus Christ.

I asked the inmate if he had ever sought forgiveness of the young woman in a specific and itemized way. His rambling answer made me realize that he had not done so, nor had it occurred to him. What he had done instead, he pleaded, was try his best to prove his changed character, thinking that was enough. Though character change is good, I explained to him that he had skipped a step. I shared the biblical principle of securing the forgiveness of those we offend:

“So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24, ESV)

I explained to the inmate that if one tries to omit this part of God’s protocol, then, though the relationship may be superficially mended, there is a lurking stowaway in the relationship that will pounce and destroy at any moment.

The inmate then wondered whether asking for forgiveness would put too much pressure on her, asking, wouldn’t it just be better to tell her I’m sorry? No, I said. Asking forgiveness puts the ball in her court and empowers her. In the past you robbed her, but now you grant her dignity and power to say nay or yea.

To my delight, the inmate was both amazed and happy to learn this principle of behavior, so I was emboldened to continue. I told him about King David and his chief military commander Joab. There was a poster pair for the dangers of skipping a step if I ever saw one. Read the many chapters of their associations (2 Samuel 2-20; 1 Chronicles 11-27) and you would think they recovered from Joab’s early murder of Abner against David’s wishes, and his later insubordinate killing of Amasa. After all, they continued their working relationship after these sticky patches and had many heroic adventures together.

But the relationship wounds had been merely papered over. There is no evidence in the text that Joab and David ever dealt with their personal issues and bitterness at any depth, nor utilized the biblical steps of asking and receiving forgiveness. On his deathbed, David remembered every offense and ordered his son Solomon to have Joab killed (1 Kings 2:29-34).

I suggested that the inmate sit down and write a letter to the young woman asking her forgiveness, being as specific as he could, the very thing that he was glad to do.

Did the young woman in question sin against the inmate too? I doubt it not. But that is not the young man’s business. He will have to suck up debt as well.