Austin's Blog

Because Gabriel’s passing was caused by gross human error, negligence, and mistakes, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the nature of forgiveness. Being a Christian requires and commits one to the task of forgiveness. As C.S. Lewis remarks, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” The standard or basis for forgiveness is not the other person is deserving or repentant. Paul writes in Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” If God forgave my billion-dollar debt of sin against Him, who am I to withhold forgiveness against other sinners?

Tim Keller notes in Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? that, “Forgiveness is granted (often a good while) before it is felt—not felt before it is granted. It is a promise to not exact the price of sin from the person who hurt you.” Jesus so often used financial and monetary images when he spoke about forgiveness. In a sense, when wrong has been done, a debt has occurred. Someone suffers loss—the offended or the offender. To forgive means you personally eat the cost of the debt that has occurred. Again, Keller writes, “Forgiveness is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving, rather than retaliating, you make a choice to bear the cost.”

We should forgive others who have done wrong or made mistakes because God has forgiven us. We should forgive because to fail to would lead to deep and awful bitterness without our own lives. We should forgive because the other person has dignity, value, and worth and extending forgiveness is fitting for image-bearers, even to those who are the offenders. One thing that has helped me process is truly parsing out the nature of what forgiveness is and what it is not. I want to list some of the misconceptions and misunderstandings regarding forgiveness.

Forgiveness isn’t forgetting. Some may say, “But wait, the Bible says God doesn’t remember our sin (Isa. 43:25; Heb. 8:12; Jer. 31:34). He forgets!” The reality is when the Scripture says God does not remember our sins, it means He chooses not to hold us accountable for them because the debt has been covered. He does not cease to be all-knowing when He forgives. We simply cannot forget when evil, especially deep and heinous evil, has occurred. It could even be psychologically damaging to put that on yourself.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you cease hurting. To forgive means you suffer the loss. You bear the pain. You eat it yourself. Of course, the offense or mistake will continue to hurt. If forgiveness is an event that begins a process, the process can and will be full of emotions. Some things that happen in our lives may sting until Heaven. Scar tissue may grow around the wound and the amputation may heal, but the wound happened nevertheless. Sam Storms notes, “In most cases, the only way you can stop hurting is to stop feeling, and the only way you can stop feeling is to die emotionally. But passionless robots can neither truly love God or others.” He does not want that for us. We must feel the pain but refuse to cause that same pain to another in retaliation.

Forgiveness is not the same thing as trust or reconciliation. You can forgive someone truly from your heart but not necessarily decide to put yourself within the space to be hurt or harmed again. Tim Keller lists reconciliation as a goal or aim of forgiveness but it isn’t the same as forgiveness itself. He notes, “To forgive, then, is first to name the trespass truthfully as wrong and punishable, rather than merely excusing it. Second, it is to identify with the perpetrator as a fellow sinner rather than thinking how different from you he or she is. It is to will their good. Third, it is to release the wrongdoer from liability by absorbing the debt oneself rather than seeking revenge and paying them back. Finally, it is to aim for reconciliation rather than breaking off the relationship forever. If you omit any one of these four actions, you are not engaging in real forgiveness.”