Forgiveness: Love’s Toughest Work

Try this experiment. Rub your hands together quickly for 30 seconds. Feel the heat? It’s the result of friction. If you live with people, rub up against them, you’ll experience friction—it hurts!

HURT!

A business man had kept an under-productive staffer on his payroll.  “It’s a recession. You don’t fire a family man in a bad economy.” So he sacrificed his own income and savings for the employee. Last week the staff worker got a new job across town in a non-competitive industry. He left without so much as a thank you. And he also told his former company clients that the company was poorly run, that they were wallowing in debt, and were about to go under. All these “facts” were untrue.

So much for loyalty. Let’s hear it for kindness  repaid with slander. Can anything hurt so badly? Friction! It is inevitable in any human relationship.  The hurt can be verbal—slander, an ugly remark. It can be material—a theft, ruining borrowed property, failure to pay a debt. Or it can be a rejection—a snub, adultery, divorce. It can even be a colossal moral outrage—murder.

And, oh! It hurts so badly!  Thus begins the heat in human relationships.

HATE!

We can choose to handle such hurts in two ways. One: We can hate. This can be passive hate. Just walk away, cross the malefactor off your list, never speak to them again. Two: We can express our disdain actively. Tit for tat. Get even. Fight fire with fire. Ah, sweet revenge!

Either way, hatred is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die.

HEALING

Human relationships hurt. Human relationships can make us hate. But there is the healing of forgiveness. That’s the second way, God’s way to handle hurt. Try this: Rub your hands together again. Same heat. And if you do it long enough, you get blistered. Now, add one thing to your experiment. Rub them together again vigorously but with a bit of hand lotion. The lubrication cuts down on the friction and fills the room with a fragrant aroma.

That’s what love and forgiveness can do in the hurt and hate of human relationships. And such poise, such grace, is love’s toughest work. But how? How does a mere human reach such heights of merciful character? Some abiding principles:

Forgiveness is a choice. It doesn’t begin as a feeling or even an act. It is simply an intellectual thought. Take it from the Lord’s Prayer.  “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” “Lord, you’ve forgiven me so much! I choose to forgive my brother. I don’t feel it. I’m not even ready to act it out. But I choose to forgive.”

Understand that forgiveness is a process,not an event. For years I beat myself up by thinking I had forgiven someone, then after running into them and finding myself all stirred up again with anger, deciding I must be a bad person because I wasn’t yet “over it.” Actually, forgiveness takes time. The deeper the wound, the longer the recovery. And the harder the blow, the longer it takes to forgive. Some slights can be forgiven in an instant. Other wounds take weeks, months. But deep brutalization and betrayal can take years

Part of the process of forgiveness is to give up your rights. It helps each of us to remember that as Christians, we are slaves of Jesus Christ. As such we have no rights. No right to be appreciated. No right to an easy job. No right to be understood. No right to be vindicated. If such giving up seems hard to you, look at Christ on the cross. He gave up His dignity, His right to justice, even His own life—all for you. Now such love bids you, “Follow thou Me!”

Next, in the process of forgiveness, realize that mercy is at first a hidden work. Long before a handshake, there is a choice and an inner nurturing of that choice. Jesus taught “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). He bids us choose forgiveness. Now He bids us to take the first action, to pray for our injurers. In battle we tend to dehumanize our foes. In World War 2 Germans were “krauts” or “huns.”  So with nips, gooks, rag heads, etc. The whole downbeat! Prayer changes all this as we intercede for those who have hurt us. No longer do we reduce them to that one flawed experience that hurt us and let loose the dogs of hatred. We see them as created by God, loved, one of a kind, a fellow sinner, a potential fellow saint. And we pray for all this potential to be realized in us all.

So far all this work is hidden. But after time you can be certain the good Lord will give all your hard work a chance to show. You’ll know. God will say, “Now, act on it!” Go up and shake the hand of the offender. Pay him or her a compliment. Help them. Live out the restoration of the relationship. In John 21, you can see Jesus walking this out with Peter who had denied Him, abandoned Him in His hour of need. The two ate breakfast together and took a long walk during which Peter three times, once for each denial, reaffirmed his love for Jesus.

Not all relationships can be so fully restored in this life. Sometimes death intervenes, or divorce and remarriage, or great distances. We simply seek relationship within the bounds of reality. If two can’t stand on the top of the mountain together, simply climb it as far as you can.

NOW?

Oh, the dark acts of sin we each bring to relationships. We walk around with the hurt, storming inside, cringing when we see the perpetrator. Our minds think revenge. We hate so well! Our faces harden, our sleep is disturbed, and the weight of bitterness staggers us.

Yes, we know the hurts, and we well know the hatred. But can there really be healing? Can we forgive? Are verses like Colossians 3:13 realistic? “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

In Christ forgiveness is not only ours to receive. It’s ours to give. If we choose it, God will empower us. Like a humble flower seed, we plant it and God grows it into a flower of forgiveness. In Isaiah 4:10, He promises, “Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Is it the time for you to choose mercy? To deal with the hurt and hate by deciding to heal with forgiveness?