How Forgiveness Works

Jesus answers in a parable in which a man owed a king ten thousand talents (Today’s equivalent? Millions of dollars.) and was on the brink of having to sell his wife and children into slavery to pay the debt. But the pleas of the man to the king resulted in a canceling of the debt. Forgiveness. Release. But the same man turns on a man who owes him merely a hundred denarii (for us, $20 or so). And when the king hears of it, he is incensed, saying, "You wicked servant, ... I canceled all that debt of yours. ... Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant?" The king rescinds his forgiveness. And Jesus’ closing words are these: "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

Forgiveness is release—being released by God, and then we are able to release other people in our lives.

B. The application of grace and truth (John 1:14)

Another way to understand forgiveness is that it is the application of grace and truth. I reference John 1:14 here, which says that Jesus came to us "full of grace and truth." That is how we know that the mercy of forgiveness is not a compromise of the firmness of justice. Grace and truth coexist. Forgiveness never means calling something that was very wrong just OK.

How can people in an Amish community start to talk about forgiveness within a day or two of a murderer having cut down their children? Is it that they don’t care about their children? Hardly. Is it that they don’t have it in them to be indignant over an act of unspeakable cruelty? No.

What happens to people whose lives are deeply, deeply rooted in the grace and the truth of God is that when a tornado of evil rips through their lives, they are left standing. They don’t let evil turn them evil.

The Amish have a deep faith in the providence of God—a knowledge that God is still there even when tragedy strikes. They have seen evil before. Their European ancestors were sometimes mercilessly persecuted for their faith—burned at the stake or drowned in rivers. They have seen evil raise its ugly face before. And the Amish have a strong bond of community. That makes all the difference in the world. When tragedy hits, and you know you are not alone, you have the moral strength to be able to stand up in the face of evil.

C. A new way of looking at others

Forgiveness is a new way of looking at others. It’s a radical and counter-cultural perspective on life. If you believe in forgiveness—that God forgives, even though He is not obligated to, and that we’ll have the best kind of life if we hold other people in our lives with a loose grip—then here’s how you’ll view other people. You will see people for what they can be and what they were intended to be, rather than simply as they are. You’ll learn to not focus on people who simply irritate you. You can focus on them, of course, if you choose to, and keep yourself in a continual state of irritation; and you end up irritating the living daylights out of other people around you. But it doesn’t have to be that way.