Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Are you perfectly loving? Do you perfectly fulfill Christ's command to love God and others? As you read the principles of a loving Christian outlined in 1 Corinthians 13, you will have to agree with me that we all fall short of the perfect Law of love.  

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Corinthians 13:3-7, ESV).

Every time I go over those principles, I’m reminded again of yet another way that I have been unloving.  What do we do then?  That is what this lesson is about.  We will all do things that displease our spouse, friend, co-worker, or family member, so we must learn the art of forgiveness and reconciliation.  

The opposite of forgiveness in your heart is bitterness, and there are few deadlier influences in someone’s life than a bitter spirit.

The Lord commands:

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice”  (Ephesians 4:31).

If we allow a bitter spirit to fester, it will ruin the relationship.  It is like drinking battery acid.  You will not be able to stomach it very long, and it will end up eating you on the inside.  So let’s look below at the steps toward forgiveness and the motivation for forgiveness, both taught by Jesus.

"If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.  But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed” (Matthew 18:15-16).

Let’s follow the stages or steps of forgiveness as outlined in Jesus’ teaching in this passage.

Steps Toward Forgiveness

Step One – An Offense

Step number one is an offense.  This seems obvious, but let’s not pass over it.  Plenty of people are very good at  giving an offense, right?  But remember two primary principles of love: love does not take into account a wrong suffered, and love is patient.

Let’s do our best to stop the process at this point.  Perhaps you can give the person space to sin against you and not feel any bitterness or resentment toward them.  You know how much you have already been forgiven, and you know that you could easily be guilty of the same thing.  So instead of flying off the handle at them, you are patient and soon forget all about it.

The process ends there.  You don’t approach them unless you believe it would be best for them to hear how they might offend someone else.  As loving people, let’s let the offense stop here, with my not taking offense.  Peter said this about love:

“Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins” (I Peter 4:8). 

It may stop there.  You were inadvertently tripped, and instead of ripping the person’s head off for leaving their cane in the way, you forget about it.  And you truly do.  There is no bitterness there because you do not think about it again.  

But what if you do think about it again?  Then you must start to communicate the offense with the person who offended you. What must you do?  Well, you move on to the next step and that is to communicate.  Before we do move on to that stage, let’s make a couple clarifications.

What is an offense?

The word most often translated offense in Scripture is not the same as our word in English.  The English word offense can be used at any point for any reason.  If I wear deodorant I may offend someone who thinks this causes cancer, and if I don’t I can offend even more people, for … well for obvious reasons.  The Greek word is a little stronger.  

It has reference to causing someone to stumble and not usually physically but spiritually.  Your actions may cause someone to stumble into sin.  The word is used in the passage where Jesus teaches that if your eye causes you to stumble (causes offense), then pluck it out!  The idea is you are leading someone to sin.  However, it is also used when Jesus encouraged His disciples to pay the temple tax, which they really were not required to pay if they wanted to push their rights.  In order to not offend the temple officials, He encouraged them to pay the tax (by getting the money from the mouth of a fish).

This is an important clarification.  We need to be mature believers so that we are not put out of sorts or worse yet, bitter for a small thing like someone not speaking with us at church.  There is an endless list of small things that we should really not put into the category of offenses that our society may put in that category.  Let’s try to live in such an inoffensive way, and try to be so patient with others, that it is rare for us to truly offend another person.  When the confrontation comes, it will be more like what Jesus states in Matthew 17 – it is a definite sin that we must bring up for the help of our brother or sister.

What if I’m trying to forget?

But what about if you are not sure?  There is something, perhaps of a smaller nature that offends you, and you are committed to letting it pass, but you are not sure if you can.  What should you do?  In a previous lesson, we used the rule of thumb given in Ephesians 4.  

“Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26).

If someone offends you but you forget about it easily in just a few hours, it is in this category that we can allow love to cover.  However, if 24 hours have passed then you really better get to communication, or you are in danger of falling into bitterness, which will ruin the relationship as well as your fellowship with the Lord. 

Step Two – Communicate

Communication is essential at this point.  Both the offended and the offender must communicate.  The offended must communicate what has offended them.  The offender must apologize and ask for forgiveness.  Remember to follow the rules! 

The offended person must communicate.

"If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.”

The offended person is required to communicate the offense to the person who has offended them.  We should not leave them to guess, nor should we get bitter.  As we discovered in a previous lesson, often we are tempted when offended to either clam up or blow up; or worse yet, clam up until we blow up.

This is so unhealthy.  If you wait 24 hours and cannot forget, you must communicate your offense.  You cannot keep it inside you.  This is asking for a bitter spirit.  These are your options: communicate with the offender, forget in love, or become bitter toward them.

The root of bitterness affects you spiritually.  It is a sin.  However, it often spreads from you to others.  Your bitter spirit, thrown into the pot of a bunch of other Christians can make them bitter as well.

Even if you don’t believe the person will apologize and ask for forgiveness, that is not your responsibility.  You are to communicate the offense.  You must approach them and mention that their action toward you has offended you.

The offending person must communicate.

Once the offense has been communicated to the offender, then the offender must take seriously the accusation, apologize, and request forgiveness.  This should be verbalized, not implied.  “I’m so sorry that I offended you when I said that about you.  I assure you that I was merely joking, but I see how my joke was in bad taste.  Please forgive me for being offensive.”   

"Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering” (Matthew 5:23-24).

This passage connects offended relationships with worship.  If we have offended someone – you know they have something against you – you must get it right with them before you go to worship.  You are affected in your horizontal relationship to God if you are not right in your vertical relationships with others. 

Step Three – Release and Reconciliation

Once forgiveness is requested, it must be given.  How many times in one day should we forgive someone of the same offense?  Two times?  Three times?  Jesus said 499 times for the same offense, and we are still required to forgive (Matt. 18:22).  That is impossible without God’s enabling grace, and yet it is required.  Bitterness, lingering resentment is not an option for a Christian.

When you forgive someone you are releasing them from that offense.  You no longer hold it between you and them.  They are free.  That means that you do not bring it up again.  You can no longer catalog that offense.  

Will you forget the offense as soon as you forgive?  Well, no, you will not.  You cannot forget immediately.  But when you forgive, you are promising not to bring it up against them again.  The negative feelings may stay for a little while, but if you choose to release them and communicate your forgiveness, then the healing starts immediately.  Eventually your feelings will follow your choice to obey.  

Once forgiveness is granted, we pick up the relationship where it was before the offense.  This is restoration.  Bringing the offense up repeatedly at a later time is not an option.  That is tempting, but we must remember that true love is a horrible accountant.  It fails to take record of the offenses done.

A question regarding restoration often arises when someone has betrayed a trust.  If a person betrays a trust, should everything return to normal once all is forgiven?  That is not possible in many cases.  If a child takes the family car, rides recklessly, and totals the vehicle, all may be forgiven, but there will be a time of waiting before he is able to gain the trust back.  In love, the family will provide safeguards so that the same error does not occur.  The same is true in a case where a spouse has been unfaithful.  Although he or she may be forgiven, the loving spouse will provide safeguards to help keep the same sin from reoccurring.  This is not un-forgiveness but love that guards another from sin.

Motivation for Forgiveness

Jesus’ parable of the unjust servant truly gives us a proper motivation for forgiveness:

"For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.  When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him.  But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made.  So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, 'Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.'  And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.  But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, 'Pay back what you owe.'  So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, 'Have patience with me and I will repay you.'  But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed.  So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened.  Then summoning him, his lord said to him, 'You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.  'Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?'  And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.  My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart" (Matthew 18:23-35 NASB).  

How can you and I pray for forgiveness if we are still holding back forgiveness from someone else?  In this parable, Jesus teaches that it is impossible.  The conclusion is that if you are holding back this release from others, you are not truly a disciple.  You are not a follower of Jesus, and as such you do not have forgiveness yourself.  A forgiven person forgives.  If you have been forgiven a lifetime of sin, then you definitely need to forgive others.

When we consider the deep pain that others cause in our lives, it is very difficult to forgive as Jesus did.  He was able to look at those who were torturing Him and forgive them.  The forgiveness that is ours is not something we make ourselves able to give; it is Christ in us.  It is the ability that only He can give.  If you struggle with forgiveness, ask the Lord to enable you to release that person who has harmed you.  Holding them under your bitterness does nothing but affect you, so release them and serve the Lord.

Ever since the deaths of Jesus and Stephen, the first Christian martyr, true believers have had to forgive people from some of the greatest hurts.  One such person is Jo Pollard.

Jo and her husband Michael were schoolteachers in New Zealand and gave their summers to taking trips to the Ukraine, Romania, and other closed communist countries to bring aid and Gospel literature.  They did this for 27 summers, and the stories that they tell of how the Lord used them are really touching.  In 1997 they crossed into Eastern Europe through Britain to Holland, eventually to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and then to Hungary.  

During their first night in Hungary, Jo heard a loud knock at the back door of their travel camper.  A man flashed an ID card and said he was with the police; however, she thought he was too young to be with the police.  He yelled back that they were in an illegal spot and needed to pay a fine.  She woke up Michael, and they moved the camper.  In an hour, it happened again.  This time Michael took the wheel and started preparing to drive away.  Before he had a chance to start the vehicle, someone broke through the driver side window and beat him in the head with a crowbar.  The burglar beat him repeatedly right in front of Jo.  She started screaming for help, and the man ran away.

She started trying to help resuscitate her husband to no avail.  Michael passed into eternity right in front of her.  She did not know what to do.  She decided to wait until morning to drive for help.  She took all of the valuables except 50 pounds and hid the rest just in case they came back.  She sat waiting with insect spray at hand beside her husband's dead body.  They did return that night and beat Jo unconscious, breaking her jaw and nose in two places.  She was left unconscious to die, and three men took valuables from their van.

The event that caught world news was what Jo said while she recovered in the hospital.  She was given an interview by a local station from her bedside – with her face swollen and her body still racked with pain.  A microphone was placed in front of her face, and she was asked to say a few words.  She replied:

"I have been told that my attackers have been caught.  Three of them, one aged 18 and two 22-year-olds.  I don't know what their sentence will be.  I don't feel any malice towards them because I'm a Christian, and as such I just hope they realize that what they have done is wrong and against God's will and in time that they will be born again – become Christians themselves."

This was not just speech during the blur of a near death experience.  Months later at the trial, she looked each of them in the eye and told them that she forgave them.  She reached out to their parents having a son the same age and has become friends with the one of the mothers.  When they each went to jail, the longest term being 11 years, she sent them presents in jail and Christian literature (Jo’s experience has been recorded in the book Journey to Murder: Road to Forgiveness - Amazon link here.)

That is forgiveness.  That is Christianity, the life of a disciple.  Again, it is not just difficult; this is impossible without a new nature, without being born again.  Once we trust that Christ died in our place to forgive us of our sins, then we are given a new nature.  This new nature is one that is spiritually alive and has the vitality to love as He loved, forgive as He forgave, and talk as He talked.  This is the key to all relationships – being right with our Creator through Jesus Christ.  

This post on forgiveness and reconciliation is from chapter 6 of the book "Loving - Biblical Principles for Developing and Maintaining Loving Relationships" - Amazon link here.

* * *

Lesson 6 Homework

1. What is the opposite of forgiveness?

2. What picture does the Bible use to describe bitterness?  What does this picture teach?

3.  Discussion Question – Consider the phrase, “Forgiving is forgetting.”  In what way is this true and in what way is it not true?

4. What is a primary motivation for forgiveness for a Christian?