August 4, 2021
Submitted by David Petty
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiveness you. — Ephesians 4:32
Two thoughtful and well-respected authors, Philip Yancey and Adam Hamilton, have both recently re-issued previous books on forgiveness. (Yancey’s has been re-titled and somewhat revised.) Evidently they, or at least their publishers, felt that this is an important subject right now. Given the amount of bitterness that exists currently in our country, and in our world and the church, I would agree.
Current events are one good argument for the importance of forgiveness, but there are others. Another is amount of attention given to the subject in Christian writing — and I‘m not just talking about modern writers like Hamilton and Yancey. The early church, for example, felt that forgiveness was important to enough to include in the statement of faith (Apostles’ Creed). Look back at the creed: there stands forgiveness of sins, apparently on equal footing with such theological giants as the trinity and the resurrection.
And Jesus included it in what we call the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, although that prayer contains general statements about such things as doing God’s will and avoiding evil, the only specific human activity that it references is forgiving others. Of all the good things we could do (and bad things we could not do) Jesus singled out forgiveness.
Hamilton has observed that knowing forgiveness involves three difficult tasks. First, we must believe that we have done something wrong; if we hadn’t done anything all that bad we wouldn’t seek forgiveness. Second, we must believe that God is capable of forgiving us. Some people are so overcome with the depth of their sin that they don’t believe forgiveness is possible.
The third task is to forgive others. It seems to me, though, that this can be broken down into the same two steps. That is, we must first believe that the others have committed a sin. That usually isn’t difficult. C. S. Lewis distinguished between excusing and forgiving. They are not the same thing; in fact, they are in a sense opposites. If there really is a good excuse for something, it doesn’t require forgiveness. If it’s inexcusable, forgiveness is the answer. Lewis said that we tend to overestimate the portion of our own behavior that is excusable and underestimate the portion of others’ behavior that is.
Finally, we must believe that it is possible for us to forgive others. Sometimes when we have been hurt badly, forgiveness of others seems impossible — but Christian teaching implies otherwise.
There is a lot more that can be said about the subject, and I’ve probably said a lot that you already knew. Please forgive me. Or excuse me. Or maybe some of both.
Gracefully submitted,
David Petty