How Forgiveness Works

You may have to forbear someone who talks too much, someone who wears really pungent perfume, someone in your house who chews with his or her mouth open or who leaves towels on the floor, someone who seems incapable of replacing the toilet paper roll. You may need to smile and tolerate some of the weird opinions of others or if they have no opinions or are opinionated about everything—but that probably is more about forbearance than forgiveness.

If you don’t see the necessity to forbear, then you may be living a narcissistic life, as if your way of living and thinking is

superior in every way to that of others.

No, we have to live with the assumption that we live in an imperfect world surrounded by imperfect people, and not every bumping of heads means someone has sinned.

None of this is to say that we should take our sins against each other and minimize them, expecting others to just put up with our major mess-ups just because "none of us is perfect."

I’ll say it again: Forgiveness is the gutsiest thing a human being can do because real people do real damage to each other all the time—but it can be solved.

And so here are our marching orders: "Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you."

But how do you do that?

2. Be willing to forgive: striving for grace (Mic. 7:18; Luke 6:27-37; 15:11-32).

First, we have to be willing to forgive and willing to strive for grace. Micah 7:18 gives us a statement on why God forgives: "Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy."

God forgives because He delights in showing mercy. God does get angry. He does have wrath. But that is not the way He wants things to be. God delights in showing mercy.

Do we?

Let me ask you to be honest with yourself and honest with God: When you release somebody—when you tell him or her that you forgive—do you walk away with steam coming out of your ears, or do you, yourself, feel released? If we really have forgiven, we will feel released as well. Now that may take time, but the decision to forgive will set us on the right path.

In Luke 6:35, Jesus sets the high

standard of kingdom living:

"Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven."

Being willing to forgive, in the end, is not grudging obedience to a God who is saying: "Can’t we all just get along?" Being merciful happens—really happens—only when God’s character is impressed on the crookedness and hardness of our character.