Forgiving the Unforgivable

Hey Girls,

What do you think about forgiveness? It's a hard thing to do sometimes but we all know that we have to do it right? It's easy to forgive the people we love don't you think? We're close to them and can understand what their going through, reasons for their actions. It's hard to forgive what we don't understand. It's hard because we see their faults so clearly and we just can't understand or justify their actions in anyway. Yet it's important to understand that forgiving is not making excuses.

Think about that for a moment. How often have you 'forgiven' someone with the attitude of everyone has to make their own choice? Or we all make mistakes? Or it's their problem, not mine? This is trying to justify their actions. You're not really trying to forgive by doing this. You're trying to understand. Just because someone is mean to you and you justify it as everyone makes mistakes, doesn't mean that you've actually forgiven the person. Forgiveness implies that sin is gone, slate is clean, pure. Not that 5 years later, you bring up the issue again.

I think we need to be careful about making excuses and truly forgiving. After all, when someone really does wrong by us, deeply hurts us- no excuse in the book would justify the what they did. Right? Think of the most unforgivable person in your life or maybe of a situation where something horrible happened to someone, imagine yourself there. Do you think that when Jesus was dying on the cross, he looked over at the crowd of people and mused, everyone makes mistakes? Huh, ya right. I just don't see that happening. We know that it says in the Bible that Jesus prayed on their behalf, asking for the Father to forgive them. He didn't justify their actions; he didn't say what they did was okay; he just forgave them.  "Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing...'" Luke 23:34. He forgave their actions done in ignorance.

Luke 17:3-4 says "If another believer sins, rebuke that person; then if there is repentance, forgive.  Even if that person wrongs you seven times a day and each time turns again and asks forgiveness, you must forgive." But that's not all, Matthew 6:14 tells us, “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins." This makes it clear that we have no choice but to forgive. If we don't forgive, than we won't receive God's mercy and our sin will kill us. God extends forgiveness to everyone so when we submit to him and become a follower, we too, must extend forgiveness to everyone.


Thus, maybe there is someone in your life that God is working with you to forgive. It's a process after all. It doesn't necessarily happens instantly and sometimes we have to remind ourselves over and over that we forgave that person. It's an action, not a feeling or an emotion. It's a choice. We choose to say that we will not hold that person's actions against them. It doesn't mean that what they did is okay or that we understand if they feel the need to do it again. It just says that, like what God does with us, their slate is now clean before us. If someone lied to us, we forgive them- the lie is gone. We may remember that they lied to us once, or other consequences may arise from the lie but the person is forgiven and we don't hold the lie against them; there is no condemnation. We don't tell them years later 'you lied to me' and try to extract revenge or punish them. There is no punishment from us because we choose to forgive.


Forgiveness takes the focus off the wrong and puts it on the person. You're forgiving the person. Sometimes I think we make it difficult to forgive because we are so caught up on the action, on what happened to us. We hate the lie; we hate the mean words or the physical jabs. But we're not dealing with 'what' happened, we're dealing with 'who'. For example, you may have hated that your colleague at work called you a whale behind your back. It kills you inside because you've been struggling with your weight. Yet, you know you need to forgive her but every time you try, the word 'whale' keeps coming back to you and you get so angry. It's not the 'whale', the comment, that gets dismissed as okay. We forgive the person who made the comment; wipe the slate clean, gone, no more to condemned by. As for the actual comment, you'd need to deal with that privately since it has to do with a personal self-image reaction. You have to deal with your feelings of being undesirable and let God demonstrate how attractive you are. The person can't take back what's been done. That's impossible but in order to move on; forgiveness and healing have to take place.


Healing often goes hand in hand with forgiveness because we need to heal from the wrongs done to us. Playing the victim doesn't help you either. You have to take responsibility for yourself and for how you deal with the situation you're in. Maybe you're completely innocent, that's fine but don't become guilty by mishandling the issue of forgiveness by blaming the person who did you wrong. Then you're no victim anymore, you're just as bad because now you're sinning against them too by not reacting in love.


We've all done things wrong in our lives and we all know how wonderful it is to get forgiveness extended to us. We all know the incredible gift Jesus extends to us with forgiveness for our sins. We know how freeing it is and how wonderful it feels to know that he doesn't hold it against us anymore, that it's all gone. This is the wonderful experience we can give to others. We didn't deserve Jesus's actions for us but he forgave us anyway. So since perfect Jesus is willing to do that for us, we have to be willing to do that for imperfect people like ourselves who are just as undeserving as we are. God's love than restores us and makes us worthy in his sight.


As mentioned above, along with forgiveness, often comes healing. That's an important step in moving forward. We have to experience healing for what happened to us and what we did. Maybe it deals with trust, or self image, self worth, abandonment- whatever it is, it is our responsibility to go to God with it and say, 'hey God, I need some help in this area'. God will work in us and bring healing to us. Grudge holding, revenge planning- all that, will keep the wound open, make it bigger and never allow you to heal and move forth. And lastly, God will help us to forgive too. He wants us to forgive after all so he will make it possible as long as we're willing to take that step. You don't have to justify the action- just forgive the person.