To Forgive, or Not to Forgive

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/flikr/45457114/in/photostream/

Sometimes I feel like an onion--all wrapped up in layers.  It's kind of like when Shrek tries to explain life as an ogre to Donkey. Ogres have layers; onions have layers.  People have layers, too (and so does cake).

Have you ever been in a situation where it feels like all your layers have been pulled back, and you have nothing left to offer?  Maybe you have had all of the more pleasant layers pulled back and all that is left is the anger layer?  You feel tense.  Your ready for a fight.  You can just see a certain person, and your blood pressure starts to rocket.  Does that sound like your experience?

If you find yourself peeled back to the anger layer, you are serious trouble.  It means that you a flirting with unforgiveness.  Actually, it is more than flirting, you're, most likely, married to it.  The grudge you are nursing against that particular individual or group or place delights you in some way.  As you nurture your anger, it deceives you into believing that you are empowered by it.

But the person most injured by your anger is not the other person.  It's you.  Once, I passed a sign that read, "Being angry with someone else is like drinking poison and waiting for them to die."  I believed it then, and I still believe it.  However, that doesn't mean I always practice it.

My default mode, when wounded, is to retreat to anger.  If a person hurts me emotionally or otherwise (intentionally or unintentionally), I get mad.  In fact, when I get physically injured, my first reaction is usually anger.  I'm hardwired that way I guess.  Although, I am not trying to excuse it.  Harboring anger in our hearts is a dangerous thing.  Anger kills.  Haven't you ever heard of a crime of passion?

When I am not careful, I find myself nursing anger in my heart.  The wound doesn't have to be life threating to trigger my anger.  It can be a real or perceived slight.  I don't want to come off sounding like a hothead.  I can take a lot before I reach my boiling point, but when I do it is hard for me to simmer down.

James warns, "the anger of man does not produce the righteousness God requires" (James 1:20).  Instead we are to cultivate meekness.  We should be gentle of heart.  As believers in Christ, we are the recipients  of tremendous grace.  We are freely forgiven of our treason against God, and adopted into his family.  We are all sinners in need of grace.  We all acted in terrible ways toward our holy and merciful God, yet, in love, he offered us peace and fellowship.

In light of this reality, we should seek to extend the same courtesy to those who have offended us.  We should meet their hurtful ways with loving concern.  We should offer them forgiveness, free and without condition.  We should extend to them grace.  You might say, "Wait a minute.  They don't deserve my forgiveness!"  To which, I would respond, "Duh. That is why we call it 'grace.'"  Grace cannot be earned.

When we fail to forgive it reflects a heart that does not understand grace.  Most often, a heart does not understand grace, because it believes itself to have sufficient merit to earn God's favor.  The owner of an unforgiving heart is the slave of a proud heart.

More importantly, when we fail to forgive we come under God's judgment.  Jesus warns, "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matt. 6:14-15).  You may be saying, "But wait, isn't that works salvation?".  It might sound that way, if we take it out of it's context.  This quote comes from Matthew 5-7, often called the Sermon on the Mount.  The sermon instructs those who follow Jesus to start off by acknowledging their spiritual poverty.  They must realize that they have no righteousness of their own; they must trust God to provide it.

As recipients of God's grace, they should be quick to dispense grace.  Who can swim in the sea of forgiveness, and begrudge someone else such joy?  Only those who have never truly experienced the liberating joy of forgiveness can continually refuse to extend forgiveness to others.  This is the truth Jesus is trying to communicate with his warning.  To be forgiven is to be forgiving; to be unforgiving is to be unforgiven.

What do we do when we find ourselves unwilling to forgive?

• We need to assess the state of our heart.  Have we turned from our sin, to the living God, through Jesus Christ? If no, we need to repent and place our faith in Christ, and then ask him for the strength to forgive.  If yes, then we need to repent of our hardheartedness.  

• We need to mediate on the grace that saves us.  God was super-abundantly gracious toward us.  We have to spend time (lots of time) carefully thinking about God's grace, as revealed in Jesus.  

• We have to remind ourselves (repeatedly) that we are sinners who wound others.  By walking in their shoes, we help to prevent our heart from growing prideful.

• We need to do things to show them we love them even when we don't "feel" like it.  The kind of love that pleases God is not primarily an emotion.  It is action oriented.  Show kindness to your (former) "enemies."  When you do, you're imitating God.

If we will honor the Lord in this way, we can be sure that the Spirit is going to peel back the anger layer, and reveal a tender, merciful layer.  That's the Jesus layer.  Has the Jesus layer been revealed in you, yet?  What are some of the ways you overcome unforgivenness?