Part 11 | The Forgiven Learning to Forgive
Introduction
If I were to list all the things God has forgiven me of, not only would it be a long volume with many parts, but you would soon tire of reading of sin number umpteen coming up over and over again. You’d begin to wonder was I that slow of a learner, or why didn’t I learn and get my act together? And you’d be right. But at the end, wherever that might be, Jesus Christ would pen one simple sentence: “Father, put all this on My account.” It would all be marked “Forgiven!”
You would think that with such a record, there would not be a single offense of a single person who had offended me that I would even think twice about forgiving them. It should arise spontaneously. After all, look what I have done to God, and all of it has been forgiven by Him. But you and I both know this is not how human nature works. It is only grace that can operate at such a high level. And that is the level to which Jesus Christ calls each of us. “To forgive those who sin against us just as He has forgiven us for sinning against Him.” This is what the Lord’s Prayer is all about, is it not?
Forgiveness comes from within the heart of the offended. No matter what the offense is or what it may cost us, how we respond to it tells much about us and what lies within us. How we handle it tells what lies within. It also tells about our personal relationship to Him and to our True Selves. It reveals to us our own insides just as a truth mirror reveals the exterior. We are acting out of our true relationship with Him.
An Example
Forgiveness stories amaze us, not just because of their rarity but also because of their depth. For such an example, let me cite from Richard Stearns’ book, The Hole in Our Gospel, pages 159-160.
One human face of war, whom I will never forget, is that of a woman named Margaret, who was caught in the violence of Northern Uganda’s war against the rebel Lord’s Resistence Army. One day Margaret, six months pregnant, was working in her garden with several other woman when rebels – a group of child soldiers led by an adult LRA commander – emerged from the bush…literally hacking Margaret’s friends to death with machetes while she watched. But as they approached Margaret to do the same, the commander noticed that she was pregnant. Believing it would bring bad luck to murder a pregnant woman, he instructed the soldiers to not kill her. Instead, he gave the order to cut off her ears, nose, and lips and leave her to die; that way, he reasoned, her subsequent death would not be on their hands. So they carried out the unthinkable and left Margaret maimed and bleeding to death.
But Margaret was found and rushed to a hospital for treatment. Remarkably she survived, and three months later gave birth to a son, James. There is nothing in our frame of reference that allows us to understand such brutality.
What happened next can only be understood through the miracle of God’s love – as a demonstration of the incredible power of the Gospel to redeem even the darkest kinds of evil. One day, months after her son’s birth, Margaret saw the commander who had given the order to maim her, arriving at the same rehabilitation center. He had been captured and had also been sent for counseling and rehabilitation. In great distress, she frantically told one of her counselors that she had to leave immediately, that she could not be near him, and that she wanted to kill him. In response, the man was moved to a different center several kilometers away. But Margaret’s anxiety remained.
After weeks had passed, the man confessed to his involvement in Margaret’s attack, even as she worked through her own fears and anger. Finally, a meeting was arranged. The man asked Margaret to forgive him. And Margaret, reaching deeply into the source of all forgiveness – Jesus Christ – forgave. Here again was the power of the Gospel to redeem and restore, and to meet evil and turn it back.
On the wall of the Children of War Center are photographs of that day – Margaret and this man who had mutilated her. He is holding little James in his arms as she stands next to them – smiling without lips.
There is never an offense that does not bring with it loss. When we suffer loss, it tests all that is within us. But at the same time, we ourselves determine how that loss is to impact us.
With Margaret, the loss was indescribable and overwhelming. No one needed to hold up a mirror for her to see the results of the mutilation. It was reflected back to her in the eyes of everyone she met and encountered. Her nose and ears were gone. Her lips had been cut off. In any culture the world over, this branded you as a freak. Externally she was branded and ostracized. But internally, she was alive with the grandeur of God’s grace and love. Evil marred her but grace redeemed and beautified her.
A Work of Grace
At the heart of the Forgiveness Process lies the very heart of God. Depending on the depth of the process of learning to reach forgiveness, one encounters and experiences God. This is what Margaret found in working through to the point of forgiveness. The human desire for revenge could have been her sole goal. She could have given herself to it totally and eternally, but in grace chose to do otherwise. What brought her from that sense of loss to what can be truly gained through it is all of God’s grace at work in our lives. But with this comes the realization of what further losses she might sustain if she did not work at accepting His grace for her life. This is the deeper lesson to be learned. We all must learn this. This can save us from offending ourselves. If we cling to our human desires we lose God in the process. If we lose God in the process then where are we? Forgiveness is always an option, but look at the cost when we choose not to forgive.
Jesus taught us that His grace is all-sufficient for every need. This means there is nothing that cannot be forgiven when we appropriate that grace and allow Him to do His work in us. Our withholding of forgiveness does not mean He withholds His from the offender. It means we lost out on the joy and peace of being in step with Him. Since the love and grace of God are available to us in full measure, our refusal to forgive means we have frustrated that love and forgiveness within our own lives. This is what Margaret came to understand. The offense committed against her was bad enough, but she in turn could not offend God by refusing to allow Him to work in her life. We need to learn the same lesson.
How could a woman who had so very little to begin with and yet lost so much in a vicious mutilation of her body come to the point of forgiving her offender? There is but one Answer – God! She allowed Him to be Lord of her hurts and pain and loss. He shared with her His resurrection life.
Learning to Forgive
Forgiveness is not a natural instinct. Revenge is a natural instinct. That’s why in today’s world there are over forty nations in mortal combat with one another. There is only one place where forgiveness is the coin of the realm: it is in the Kingdom of God. But at the same time that Kingdom is not realized within all who claim to be part of God’s Kingdom. The old can still be present with us, and strongly so. We need to learn how to forgive and the Spirit of God is our Teacher and Guide. In the final analysis, He is also our Enablement. We do not achieve it apart from Him and His intervention in our lives.
For many of us learning to forgive means unlearning lessons learned earlier in our lives. If you grew up in a family where offenses were confessed and forgiveness was shared, you were blessed, indeed. But if you were brought up in a family in which kids were forced to apologize and forgiveness was not an option, plus you never saw your parents apologize and forgive one another, then you have lessons to unlearn and real ones to put in their place. Saying “I’m sorry”
and “Please forgive me” are as important as “I love you” and, in essence, are all a part of loving and being loved. This unlearning is a hard lesson to learn and may of us need to reparent ourselves so the little Child of the Past inside us learns the needed lessons for building and maintaining loving forms of relating. Many of us were taught that such sharing of emotions are to be seen as weakness, when in reality they express true strength and caring.
First comes our realization that it is achievable only in Him. Just like love is of God, so is forgiveness. The offense hits us at the human level but grace takes us to the divine and superhuman level where true forgiveness can take place. We need help – God’s help – if true forgiveness is to happen. We know that to be true for we know ourselves and our internal struggles with it. “God, I need You to work in my heart to make this happen as it needs to be and for it to be to Your glory.” I don’t want to have to forgive it a dozen times a day because I cannot give it over to You. I want it to be done with and for that to happen, it needs to be of You and not just me. This confession now signals God to take over and to work His grace in me.
Second, it is a part of our personal discipleship. I have a part to play in all this, and my role is in terms of my personal relationship with Him as His own. If I am to learn how to forgive I have to put myself in the place where He can do His work in me as well as in the offender. If I were in the right place to begin with, He would have been in His rightful place to walk me through the Forgiveness Process. Now I want to acknowledge this and seek for Him to be in that special place in my walk with Him. I cannot afford to be broadsided ever again. My daily walk needs to be as He intends it to be so that each and every step I take is in Him and in Him alone.
Third, it is a process of growing up into Him that brings us to its realization. This experience tells me how much I need to be growing up into Him on a daily basis, not just when some circumstance points this need out to me. I saw the offense as I did and reacted to it as I did because of my personal walk with Him. Then when it came to needing to forgive, I found that that walk was not all I needed it to be. If it is not all I needed it to be, then, obviously, it was not what He desired for me either. Am I to await each time of need before I get serious about growing up into Him? Or, am I to grow daily and when circumstances demand an extra level of His grace, I am already trusting Him for it?
Fourth, we are being encountered by Him in the experiencing of it. God is in it. I should be in a place of recognizing and understanding His presence within it. Is my prayer one of, “God, be with me” as if He were absent and I am having to summon Him? Or, is it “God be with me” as You have promised to be and I am acknowledging Your presence in this, whether I feel that presence or not? If He is with me in all of life, then He is certainly present now. By my surrendering to Him and His Spirit, I know I am experiencing Him within this need. “Lord, what is it I need to learn about You while going through this needy time?” Give me the discernment to see You at work in all of it..
Fifth, we owe Him our all as a result of this process. If forgiveness is of God, then God is at work in our lives in our learning how to forgive. The penalty of our offenses against Him is spiritual death but Christ intervened and died that death on our behalf. He took the full penalty into Himself so we would not have to die it. Now we are His and that is because He has forgiven and redeemed us. This means we are no longer our own; we are His. He did this so we could be rescued from spiritual death and become spiritually alive in Him. So we owe Him our all. This means in following His example forgiveness is never an option. We owe it to Him to follow His example. We owe it to Him to be forgiving.
Sixth, as He makes all things new we are forever changed. The person we were when the offense was experienced is not the person we are now that the Forgiveness Process has worked in grace. We are not sure where we might be at this time if it had not occurred; however, we are certain where we might have ended up if we had not allowed God to intervene. His intervention is so complete for He alone understands our true need of Him. We know He has changed us because He has made us forgiving.
Seventh, we can never fall back into what He has delivered us from. The deep sense of joy and the resultant growth in our walk with Him leaves us in a place that is far removed from anything we had ever experienced in Him before. We have grow up into Him that much more. There will be no going back to any earlier level. Going back will never do. Not with what we have experienced of Him in this encounter. To go back would be to betray Him and His working within us. The lessons learned will serve us for a life time. No debt we forgive can ever equal the debt we owe to Him.
In Conclusion
This is what it means to grow up into Him. To become like Him is to walk the Jesus Way, and the Jesus Way is a life of forgiveness. It is a to be empowered by Him to be able to pray as He did, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” This is a prayer Jesus learned to pray every day of His earthly journey. This is why it is included in the Lord’s Prayer He taught us as His disciples.
This is what Christlikeness is all about. To allow Jesus Christ to take over within our lives and to live His life out from within us. To forgive as He does and would. To relate to the offender as He related and relates to His own. He has died to forgive the sins of the entire human race, and it is efficacious for all who name His Name. If He loves and died for the world to forgive all sin, then we must forgive what enters our little world as well.
This is the Kingdom Life into which we have been reborn. When we, as His followers, live out Kingdom Life, then the Kingdom of God is truly present from within us. Look, here it is. See it in action. This is Kingdom Living at its best. Living out that Kingdom Life is our deeper joy and peace.
Now Christ is alive within us. There is no other way of explaining it. It is not of us. It is not of human nature. It is all of Him and we are blessed to participate within it. He is so alive in us that His will is being done. Every morning as we begin a new day, we see Him in our mirror.
To God be the glory. It is all to His glory. If it were not for Him and His grace working within and though us, we know what human nature would be like. Forgiveness would not be on the horizon. How easily we might self-destruct. But, because of Him, we are learning to experience His forgiveness as we walk the Jesus Way. That is the forgiveness we share with all others.
It is one thing to pray the Lord’s Prayer regarding forgiveness. It is another things to live it! But to live it, is to know God.
Dr. Emil J. Authelet
eauthelet@cox.net
Next Month: Part 12:
LETTING GO AND MOVING BEYOND
Ministering to God's Forever Family 
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