“I suffered emotional abuse through all the years I was growing up,” wrote a woman of her childhood. “To this day, I wake up with nightmares of getting revenge. If I’m a good Christian, shouldn’t I be able after all these years to forgive them and be free from this awful pain?”
This dear woman is certainly not alone in her struggle with forgiveness. Consider the man whose wife had an affair and now he can’t find it within himself to forgive her. He has tried to save the fractured relationship, but his fear, distrust, and rage repeatedly undermine his efforts.
Other examples of the difficulty of forgiveness are easy to find, even if they don’t seem as serious. Take the person who gossips behind your back. In confidence, you had shared a personal struggle with a friend. Now it has become a juicy morsel whispered in the break room and shared on social media. You feel hurt, betrayed, and angry. You fantasize about vengeance. Forgiveness seems far from your mind.
What Does It Mean to Forgive?
Many people believe that forgiveness requires us to unconditionally release others from past wrongs. They assume that they have to forgive in order to love. Forgiveness becomes an unconditional offering of pardon that says, “No matter what you have done to me, I fully forgive you.”
The results of unconditional forgiveness, however, may not be truly loving. Think of a wife who forgives an unrepentant husband after he has privately beaten her and publicly humiliated her with his affairs. Is unconditional forgiveness the kind of love he needs?
When offenses occur—and they will—we are wise to ask, “What does Christlike love look like?” Our answer will depend on the situation.
Sometimes love compels us to say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (luke 23:34). Other times love will require us to forgive again and again (matthew 18:21–22). And sometimes love mandates that we withhold forgiveness (that is the privileges of a restored relationship for the sake of the one who has harmed us. For as we will explore, Jesus taught that, unlike love, a part of forgiveness is conditional.
Forgiveness Defined
Throughout the Bible, forgiveness carries the idea of “release,” “sending away,” or “letting go.” The Greek word often translated “forgiveness” was used to indicate release from an office, marriage, obligation, debt, or punishment. The idea of a debt or something owed is inherent to the concept of forgiveness.
In biblical terms, therefore, forgiveness is the loving, voluntary cancellation of a debt. It is the kind of release Jesus spoke of when He visited the house of Simon the Pharisee’s house. During dinner, a broken, repentant woman visited the house. She washed His feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, kissed them, and poured an expensive perfume on them (luke 7:37–38). Her gratitude to Jesus was lavish in its expression. But Simon the Pharisee thought to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is” (v. 39).
Simon found this woman’s actions shocking, and Jesus acceptance even more shocking.
So He said, “Simon, I have something to tell you” (v. 40). Then He told a story that puts forgiveness in terms we can all understand—a debt canceled.
“‘Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii [11⁄2 years’ wages], and the other fifty [2 months’ wages]. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?’ Simon replied, ‘I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.’
‘You have judged correctly,’ Jesus said” (luke 7:41–43).
Sin incurs a debt that the debtor is unable to pay. Only the one who has been sinned against has the ability to forgive the debt.
The greater awareness we have of how much we’ve been forgiven, the more love we have for the one who cancels the debt. The woman who expressed her thanks to Jesus knew she had been forgiven much.
Forgiveness—The Pattern
Jesus had much more to say about forgiveness. In Luke 17:3–4, He gave His disciples a pattern to help navigate the stormy waters of broken relationships, saying, “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them” (vv. 3–4).
Clearly, according to Jesus, there is an obligation to forgive when the offender seeks our forgiveness. Let’s take a closer look at the five parts of the pattern Christ outlines here.
ONE: The Offense. What is the offense or sin committed against us that Jesus told us to respond to? Although in this passage Jesus did not name a particular sin, we may define sin as any failure to love.
But if we identify the sin mentioned in Luke 17:3–4 as a violation of love, that raises a question. Was Jesus teaching us to confront one another for every failure to love? Or was He teaching us to deal with significant violations of love which, if not dealt with properly, would rupture the relationship and cause us to stop caring about the offender?
Even if our understanding of patient, Christlike love tells us that Jesus was speaking of significant offenses, we still must exercise caution. We can’t close our eyes and hearts to sins that are more serious than we want to believe.
We all have an immense capacity for minimization. It’s in our nature to downplay harm. We pretend things really don’t hurt that badly, or we tell ourselves that we’re
just being too sensitive. A small crack begins in a relationship and steadily widens to the point that there is no closeness. We continue the charade by simply saying, “Oh well, people change.” And we miss an opportunity to experience one of the greatest joys of life that only come through honest love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Sin erodes the trust and intimacy for which we were made. Forgiveness, not only has the power to mend and grown a broken relationship, but to remind us again of just how important our relationships with other truly are.
TWO: The Confrontation. After having felt the sting of a significant
offense, a wounded person has a responsibility to act. Jesus said, “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them.” The word rebuke sounds harsh, but everything Jesus taught us must be understood according to the principle and motive of godly love. The rebuke He calls for will keep in mind the best interest of the one who has harmed us.
What does Christlike love require? That depends. A direct rebuke may not be called for. Sometimes we can pray as our Savior did on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (luke 23:34). Such love covers sins beyond the capacity of the offender to understand at the moment. However, we must be careful that our mercy is in the best interest of the other party and not merely a self-deceiving effort to avoid confrontation.
Loving confrontation can be gentle, perhaps requiring no more than a knowing look or a loving touch. On other occasions, a simple question like, “Do you know how that makes me feel?” or a statement such as, “You mean too much to me to overlook what you did,” may be the only necessary rebuke.
But sometimes the nature of the offense and the attitude of the offender require a more direct response like, “I need to let you know how much you have hurt me. You need to know what this has done to our relationship. You have betrayed my trust.”
Sometimes the confrontation escalates to legal charges and even imprisonment. But nothing is worse for the offender than to be allowed to go on in their sin unchallenged and uncared for until led into the judgment hall of God.
The Scriptures show us several different kinds of loving rebukes. The prophet Nathan found a creative way to confront King David with his sins of adultery and murder. First he appealed to David’s sense of justice by telling him a story of a rich man who stole his poor neighbor’s only lamb. When David reacted angrily to this example of exploitation and oppression, Nathan turned the tables on him to reveal that he was the guilty party (2 samuel 12:1–14).
There is also the example of Jesus who, with a gentle word, let His friend Martha know that she was so obsessed with trying to be hospitable that she had no time for Him. “Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her’” (luke 10:41–42). And when on the night of Jesus’s betrayal Peter denied that he even knew Jesus, the Lord addressed him with a single look (luke 22:61–62).
The need for loving confrontation is evident. Unresolved relational ruptures often result in greater distance and coolness. Ignoring what happened subtly suggests that the offense was no big deal and may actually encourage the offender to repeat the same pattern of behavior again and again. This is true whether we are talking about sexual offenders, thieves, liars, gossips, or promise-breakers. Many will practice their habit until someone loves them enough to say that it is not okay.
Whether the confrontation is tough or tender, we must always be careful. Some might feel the temptation to enjoy
putting others in their place. That is not what Jesus advocated. A thoughtful rebuke must be well-timed and tailored to fit the needs of the individual. Correction is more likely to be received if it comes from someone who is seen as a friend rather than an adversary.
A loving rebuke should be offered only with the desire to bring offenders to an awareness of their sin. They deserve the opportunity to understand clearly what they have done and how much it has hurt us. It is in their best interest to be given the opportunity, take responsibility for their wrongsit, and change their course of action by looking at what is going on inside of them that prompted their hurtful behavior.
A willingness to be lovingly honest with someone who has wronged us takes wisdom and courage. It takes wisdom to know when to speak up and when to keep quiet. It takes courage because there is no way to predict what the outcome will be. Our best efforts to show love may be met with the worst expressions of anger, denial, and avoidance.
Because there are no promises about how a confrontation will turn out, we need to prepare ourselves to live with a worst-case scenario as well as a best-case outcome. Recognizing the uncertainty involved in confronting those who have caused a significant rupture of relationship,
Jesus speaks to our fears, assuring us that God will enable us to be obedient if we give Him the smallest amount of faith.
In Luke 17 Jesus taught His disciples about this God-given power in an unusual way. When they realized that they lacked the faith to put into practice Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness—“Increase our faith!” (luke 17:5), He introduced them to “supernatural landscaping.” Pointing to a mulberry tree, He said that with faith the size of a tiny mustard seed they could uproot the tree out of the ground (17:6).
The interpretation of Jesus’s words depends on a proper understanding of faith. It’s not the size or amount of our faith that is most important. It’s the object of our faith. It’s placing whatever faith we have in an Almighty God who can empower us to do what we never thought possible, which includes
walking through the difficult process of feeling, confronting and forgiving profound personal offenses.
Yet there remains much more to consider. God can enable us to do whatever it takes to confront and forgive, but it is just as important to see that Jesus made repentance a prior condition of forgiveness.
THREE: Repentance. Jesus didn’t teach unconditional forgiveness in Luke 17. Notice that He said, “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them” (vv. 3–4).
To repent means “to change one’s mind.” In and of itself, repentance does not mean to overcome sin and make it history. Repentance refers specifically to the change of heart and mind necessary for a real change of behavior.
Such repentance is essential to Christ’s pattern of forgiveness. He said that those who sin against us must be brought to the place where they will admit and own the hurt they brought into the life of another.
When we offend others, we cannot unspill the milk. But we can help clean up the mess we have made. We can admit our wrong. We can express genuine sorrow for the pain we have created. We can help those we’ve hurt by assuring them that we have no excuse for what we did. Overtime, we can offer evidence with our words and actions that our repentance is real.
We can’t expect those who have deeply hurt us to instantly embody all aspects of repentance. It often takes time for a person to see and admit they were in the wrong, let alone feel the depth of the harm they’ve caused us to experience. It took King David an entire year before he finally broke down and confessed his sin of murder and adultery. A truly repentant person will not continue to deny or justify what they did. They will not attempt minimize the great hurt they have caused to others. Instead, they will confess the wrong, offer no excuses, humbly plead for mercy, and quietly accept the consequences. That was the eventual response of King David (2 samuel 12:1-13),, a man after God’s own heart.
FOUR: The Forgiveness. Remember the definition: Forgiveness is the loving, voluntary cancellation of a debt. As we forgive each other, we lose our reasons for avoidance, distance, and coolness and seek to replace them with loving, honest relationships.
When an offense is owned up to, a forgiving heart that has truly felt hurt will freely say, “I can no longer hold this against you. I see that you know you have hurt me and that it was wrong for you to do so. There may be times that I will need your forgiveness as well.”
On the other hand, to lovingly withhold such forgiveness that restores relationship may be necessary if there is no evidence of repentance. In the worship service, a church might refuse to serve communion to such a person. In a marriage, forgiveness withheld might involve refusing to act as if nothing is wrong. In a friendship, a conscious, unresolved issue can result in lovingly withholding communication, or whatever is necessary to let the other person know that the offense is of such a nature that it has broken trust and will not be swept under the rug as if it never happened.
At the same time, we must also remember that it is wrong for offended people to withhold forgiveness if they have not been willing to offer the loving, honest confrontation Christ calls for. Restoration of relationship can be rightly withheld only if motivated by Christlike love. This kind of love cares enough to do the difficult work of serving another person notice that they have caused a significant rupture in relationship that is sorely in need of attention and repair.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean “Oh, well.” It doesn’t mean that people are completely exonerated from the consequences of forgiven sin. King David received forgiveness from God but paid an awful price in the death of his son, family discord, and national turmoil (2 samuel 12:14–23).
In forgiving us, God does not suspend the natural law of “sowing and reaping.” Paul wrote, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life” (galatians 6:7–8).
God does not forgive so that all consequences of our sin can be removed. He forgives so that we can enjoy His loving acceptance of us. He forgives us to offer us a relationship in spite of the losses incurred by our sin. He removes the guilt and the shame—but not all of the scars and consequences we must live with.
FIVE: The Restoration. We’ve all experienced minor or major wounds in a relationship. When things are made right through repentance and forgiveness, there is a wonderful moment of release and joy for both parties that words can’t describe.
I vividly recall the tension I caused in my relationship with my wife one spring morning. I was finishing my senior year of graduate studies and was hard-pressed to complete one of my final research projects. My third-shift job had kept me working overtime for several weeks so I felt pressured to finish it with the small amount of time I had left. I decided to stay at home on a Sunday morning.
That particular Sunday was my wife’s first Mother’s Day. We had waited eight years for our first child. At church, mothers were honored with a flower. But I was not there to honor her. I had chosen to focus on my research project.
I will never forget the pain, shame, and anger I saw in her eyes as she returned home. In tears she tore up the flower and threw it away. I was stunned, silent. I had crushed her, not by being consciously abusive but by being insensitive and oblivious to her needs. I had missed an opportunity to honor her. Never again would there be a first Mother’s Day for us.
Tearfully, I went to her and apologized. I had no excuses. My failure was obvious. I asked her forgiveness. We talked, embraced, and wept. The paper didn’t seem important anymore. She didn’t deny the pain I had caused her, but she offered me the gracious gift of forgiveness that opened the door to rebuild the closeness we both craved.
Restoration in our human relationships gives us a taste of the joy God experiences when we come to Him admitting our sin. God loves to forgive! Love fuels His longing to forgive, just as it also motivates His willingness to make an issue out of sin.
The message of the gospel is forgiveness that leads to reconciliation. At one time we were far from God and living in opposition to Him, but we have been brought near to enjoy a restored relationship with Him (romans 5:8–11; colossians 2:12–19).
The Cost of Forgiveness
A high price is required from both sides in the forgiving process. The prime example of the high cost of forgiveness was what God paid to extend forgiveness to each of us—He punished His Son for our offense. The apostle Peter—who knew something about being forgiven—put it this way: “Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 peter 3:18).
When we have been offended, the cost is two-fold. First, we must enter into the heartache of being wounded. We cannot cancel a debt that we downplay and refuse to embrace. We who have been hurt must be able to feel the depth of the pain inflicted if forgiveness is to be real.
The second cost of forgiveness to the offended is to relinquish the
demand to seek revenge. The apostle Paul helps us understand this difficult but vital aspect of forgiveness. “Do not repay anyone evil for evil,” he wrote (romans 12:17). That sounds sufficiently difficult on its own merits, but Paul went on: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (vv. 18–19).
Paul concluded by quoting an Old Testament proverb that instructs us to treat even our enemies with kindness. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head” (v. 20, compare to proverbs 25:21–22).
We must agree to cancel the debt owed to us and seek the restoration of the repentant person.
When we are the offender, the cost requires our confession and repentance. We must stop covering up what we did and take ownership of the deed. We need to accept full responsibility for our actions and the consequences of those actions and make restitution where possible. This means we will stop rationalizing and making excuses for our behavior. Instead, we will embrace a brokenness that pleads for mercy and receives grace with humble gratitude.
While the cost of forgiveness is high for both the offended and the offender, the price is well worth the enormous joy of restoration and the release that comes when a broken relationship is allowed to mend and become even more than it was before.
Prerequisites for a Forgiving Life
What do we have to do to make forgiveness a way of life? The following suggestions give a starting point as we pursue a forgiving spirit.
Forgiveness is the process of a lifetime. Forgiveness is not a once-for-all event. It is a continual process of canceling the debts of those who fail us again and again and again. Remember Luke 17? There Jesus told His disciples that if someone sins against them seven times in a day, and seven times in a day repents, they were to forgive.
Jesus is not making seven the greatest number of times we have to forgive in a day. He was actually teaching a principle of unlimited forgiveness. On another occasion Peter asked, “‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times’” (matthew 18:21–22). The process is unending.
Don’t demand forgiveness. Be careful when you ask forgiveness. The problem is not so much in the words themselves but in the motives of the person asking. Many requests for forgiveness are nothing more than thinly veiled demands to avoid the pain of wrongs and harm done.
The truth often comes out if forgiveness is temporarily denied. If the offender tries to turn the tables and shame the hurt person into letting him off the hook, then it’s apparent that the request for forgiveness is not an honest request. True repentance claims no rights while asking mercy for wrongs done. Real repentance expresses a broken, undemanding heart (psalm 51:17).
In anticipation of future hurts, begin developing a heart of forgiveness. There are at least four qualities of character that can help us to develop a forgiving spirit toward those who harm us.
1. A passion for more than what the present can provide. The immediate pleasure of sweet revenge is only temporary. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught us to hunger for that which in time will prove more satisfying. He said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (matthew 5:6). Here He approved of hungering for the ways of God who, in His time, will satisfy the longings of people who trust in Him.
This hunger for righteousness includes a Christlike love for those who are presently harming us (matthew 5:38–48; luke 6:27–36). Such kindness might look self-destructive to those who are living by the rules of this world. But this is the love that distinguishes us as followers of Christ.
Living in a sin-cursed, enemy-filled world can drive us to our knees. For the loving heart, this is not mere escapism. It is reason to long for God’s work in the lives of our enemies, to bring them to repentance.
2. A brokenness through sorrow and grief. As we become more aware of how much we need the mercy and forgiveness of God, we will be more willing to extend forgiveness to those who confess and repent of their sins against us.
The apostle Paul said, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret” (2 corinthians 7:10). When we have experienced this godly sorrow for our sins and have tasted the resulting forgiveness of God, we can coach others through the repentance that can lead them to the relief of God’s mercy.
3. A refusal to seek revenge. Imagine that you are given the choice to: (a) torment for all eternity those who have harmed you the most (the one who sexually abused you, your unfaithful spouse, the date rapist, the drunk driver who killed your child, your abusive parent), or (b) see them brought to brokenness and to their knees before the God who has been so kind to you. Which would you choose? This is a painfully hard question, but our answer will expose the direction of our heart.
Revenge is natural. Undeserved kindness is not. Those who live apart from grace live in various stages of bitterness, guilt, rage, fear, separation, and loneliness. The poison of an unforgiving heart is not merely offered to the enemy but is swallowed first by the one who is holding the bottle.
Leaving vengeance in the hands of God is not to deny justice against those who have harmed us. Turning our legitimate complaint over to Him is not to say to our offender, “Hey, no problem; it’s okay. I don’t care what you do to me.” It is saying, “I will not choose to seek revenge now. I am going to trust God to deal with you in His time and in His own way.”
The refusal to pay back evil with evil can throw off balance the person who knows he deserves judgment. It is not what he expects. It’s God’s role to mete out vengeance. Our role is to stun our offenders with unexpected kindness that gives them an opportunity to repent and receive the forgiveness that God has already shown us. Our challenge is to believe so much in God, who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay” (romans 12:19), that we find ourselves pleading for mercy on behalf of our offenders.
4. A courageous desire to love others as God has loved us. Loving others with a passion to see them receive the same forgiveness God has shown us is a distinguishing mark of a person who se desire is to follow Jesus.
here is no greater reason to love and forgive others than the realization of how kind and merciful God has been to us.
Jesus taught that a person who has been forgiven much loves much. It’s not natural to love in this way. Our mission is not to do what comes easily, but rather to seek to love and forgive sacrificially out of the riches of the One who sacrificially loved and forgave us. Our actions are to mirror our heavenly Father’s efforts to repair
ruptured relationships. Our love is to fuel and shape our willingness to forgive, just as God’s love caused Him to find a way to keep our sin from separating us from Him forever.
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 corinthians 5:18–19).
Misconceptions About Forgiveness
1. Minimizing the offense. To deal with a painful situation that we are powerless to change, we often pretend as though it didn’t happen, that it wasn’t all that important, or that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed at the time. We say, “It really wasn’t a big deal, so there’s little to nothing to forgive.”
A woman who was brutally abused by her father was later asked about her life growing up. She responded, “It was a pretty normal childhood. Good times. Family vacations. The normal stuff.” It wasn’t until several months later that she began to release her stranglehold on the memories of abuse that continually terrorized her nights and paralyzed her relationships with men for forty years.
Minimizing the horrid reality she had grown up in offense served only to stifle her healing and growth. It wasn’t until she began to face and feel the painful truth of the damage done to her that she felt that genuine freedom was possible.
Admittedly, some go too far in the other direction. They seem unable to let go of even the smallest offenses, feeling they must always confront everything. That too is an obstacle to a healthy view of forgiveness. We must
seek a balance between the destructive extremes of always or never confronting sin. Preoccupation with personal safety is the basis of both extremes.
2. Forgiving and forgetting. Many believe that to forgive means to forget. They are likely to quote Jeremiah 31:34, which quotes God as saying, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” The resulting logic is, “When God forgives us He actually erases our sins from His memory.” On that basis such people reason, “We are to forgive one another the way God forgives us. Since He has forgotten our offenses against Him, we too will forget when we have truly forgiven.”
God, however, does not forget sin when He forgives it. From eternity to eternity He knows everything. He is the Author of Scripture, and He breathed into the Bible a record of David’s sin after he had been forgiven. The same is true of Adam, Abraham,
Moses, Paul, Peter, and the rest of the forgiven people of the Bible.
God is loving not because He chooses to forget the sin He forgives but because He chooses not to hold it against us. God remembers that Rahab was a prostitute, that David was an adulterer, that Moses was a murderer, that Abraham was a liar, that Paul killed Christians, and that Peter denied his Savior and sometimes spoke words that were more demonic than godly. God remembers their sins not to shame them but to tell us the truth about those whom He loves to forgive and restore to Himself.
The “forgive and forget” approach to forgiveness is an attempt to find a way to escape the hurt of the past. But it is based on a wrong assumption. God does not teach us to forget, but rather not to hold sins against one another. By His example, and by the help of His Spirit, He enables us to lovingly forgive even those wrongs we remember.
But doesn’t God unconditionally forgive us? No. He forgives us when we stop believing that we can take care of ourselves and when we begin believing that Christ alone can save us by His own sacrifice and life. When we do so, we become a part of God’s family.
Once we become God’s children by putting our faith in Jesus Christ, we don’t stop needing forgiveness. Neither does God unconditionally release His sinning children from responsibility for their choices. He wrote, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 john 1:9).
While it’s necessary for us to love in order to show Christlike forgiveness, it is not necessary to forgive in order to show Christlike love. The answer is not to forgive unconditionally but to ask the question, “What does love require?”—love for God and love for those who have harmed us.
Our unwillingness to love those who have harmed us reflects our own failure to understand how much God has loved us. The apostle Peter reminded us of this. After describing seven essential spiritual traits that culminate in godliness, brotherly kindness, and love (2 peter 1:5–7), he added, “For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (vv. 8–9).
3. We forgive solely because it is good for us. This is a tough one, and many counselors rightly point out that an willingness to forgive continues gives the one who has hurt us the power to keep hurting us through our own bitterness. That is why most encourage their clients to forgive so that they can be released from nursing a bitter grudge that is oppressive and destructive.
Forgiveness should and does benefit us. It has the power to break the chains of bitterness and hatred. Even the latest brain research shows that our mood and sense of pleasure rises when we extend forgiveness. But that is not the sole reason why we forgive. We forgive because we have been forgiven by a God of mercy and second-chances!
Have you ever asked God to forgive you? Have you experienced the joy of a restored relationship with God through the forgiveness of your sins that He offers through faith in His Son? If not, acknowledge your inability to pay the debt of your sin, ask Him to forgive you, and accept His gift of forgiveness. When we bring our anger, bitterness, heartache, and brokenness to Jesus, He readily welcomes us. He understands us and knows us completely. He alone can provide the lasting forgiveness that frees us to forgive others.
The debt has been paid. The offer stands.
