Surprisingly, one of the best insights I have ever received on the subject of forgiveness came from a plastic surgeon/motivational speaker/secularist who doesn't even believe in the concept of sin. Maxwell Maltz was the author of the book Psycho-Cybernetics (updated by Dan Kennedy in The New Psycho-Cybernetics), and such a book is not the place I would expect to find profound theological or spiritual insights. And granted, the insight he shared on forgiveness that I was so taken with may be found in other writers, but I can't remember reading a Christian author who connected the dots on forgiveness as well as he did.
This great insight that Maltz pointed out is simply that, where there is no condemnation, there is no need for forgiveness. Or, to put it another way, the only reason we would be thinking of forgiving someone for something is that we must have condemned them first.
Take the woman caught in adultery, whose story is found in John 8. jesus did not offer her forgiveness. He didn't say "I forgive you," He simply said "I don't condemn you." In that case Jesus didn't have to take the next step of forgiveness, because He never took the first step of condemnation.
Granted, He did pray "Father forgive them," for those who crucified Him, a prayer which acknowledges the condemnation His tormenters had brought upon themselves. But still, the point there is that no condemnation had been pronounced by Jesus on those who crucified Him.
Maybe one of the reasons that forgiveness is so difficult is that we are missing the point and wrestling with the wrong thing. We wrestle with ourselves and our ability to forgive the crimes committed against us when maybe we should be wrestling with the sin within - the sin that causes us to condemn others.
The truth is that, no matter who we are, we are always equals with those who sin against us. God has a right to condemn because He is a holy God who is offended by unholy people. Sin is sinful because God is holy and sin offends God's holy character.
You and I are not holy. Our sins against each other are always the sins of equals. It is always one liar lying to another liar, one thief stealing from another thief, one murderer murdering another murderer (Matthew 5:21-22), and one adulterer committing adultery against another adulterer (Matthew 5:27-28).
When we take it upon ourselves to "wrestle" with whether or not we should forgive someone, we have, already taken upon ourselves the role of God in the life of the other person. We have assumed for ourselves a degree of holiness which we don't possess. This sense of holiness causes us to take on the role of judge in the life of the other person. We have forsaken our true identity as an equal with the one who has offended us.
Our "wrestling to forgive" is actually a very subtle and crafty red herring designed, almost subconsciously, to throw us and others off the trail of our own sinful self-righteousness. We take up offense because we are God-players, self-appointed kings against whom none dare trespass.
I realize how unfair this sounds. Someone will say that it is unfair that someone who has been offended should be called to account for their reaction to someone else's sin against them. It is almost as if they are being blamed for the bruise that was left by someone else's punch.
I am sympathetic to that. It hurts when your spouse leaves you, when you are abused, when you are misrepresented or betrayed by a friend. I'm not arguing that we can't or shouldn't be hurt when someone does something to us.
But, we will inevitably react to the punches thrown by others, the question is how? Will we react by blessing them and doing them good, or by revenge and doing them harm? It is possible to do bless and do good even while the bruise still stings. In this week's Christianity Today, R. T. Kendall lists six signs that you are moving in forgiveness.
- You do not tell anybody what they did to you (this would be trying to punish the one who hurt you).
- You do not try to intimidate them.
- You do not let them feel guilty.
- You let them save face.
- You accept the matter of total forgiveness as a "life sentence" - you have to keep doing it, indefinitely.
- You pray that they will be blessed and let off the hook.
Ultimately, it is only the gospel that can produce such an attitude in our lives. If the gospel penetrates our hearts, then all of those things will come naturally. In fact, the gospel will produce a kind of auto-responder in our hearts that does not allow feelings of condemnation to invade. Forgiveness is automatically and unconsciously extended because of the gospel.
I have often thought of the gospel as a teflon coating for the Christian. Yes, offenses and hurts come. We get dirts thrown on us and things spilled on us all of the time. And yes, they hurt. But because the gospel is like teflon for our souls, these things can't stick. They can't cause stains in our souls where anger, bitterness and condemnation have taken root.
In a gospel driven heart, forgiveness becomes almost an afterthought - we seldom even need to forgive, because we don't condemn.
Or as Tim Keller might say, we no longer have to condemn those who have offended us, because Jesus was condemned on their behalf. Someone has to pay the price for the offense, any offense; whether it's the person being offended and hurt physically or emotionally, or the offender, or Christ.
Posted by: djchuang | March 01, 2005 at 08:35 AM