Eagerness to forgive is heart of gospel

Our ability, and even our eagerness, to forgive really cuts to the very heart of what it means to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ through faith. Forgiveness deals with parents who may have abused us, or hurt us so deeply in their neglect or indifference. It deals with friends or spouses who have betrayed us, or we think they have, people whose wicked deeds have injured us deeply and personally. In a temporal sense, in many cases we will never recover from what they have done. But those are the kinds of people, the kinds of situations that forgiveness involves. And you see, if we forgive, it shows that we have embraced the grace of Jesus deeply in our hearts. His gospel has given us an overwhelming desire to glorify Him by showing mercy, particularly to the people who have hurt us and sinned against us. We will receive grace, we will then imbibe that grace, and what we want to do is we find a motivation to show grace. We are living in a society that has no other hope. Our whole society divides us up, puts labels on others, and hates each other. All we talk about is what we hate. All we talk about is what your group is doing to our group, and we will just hate each other and destroy ourselves.

As Christians, can we forgive? Can we love those who do not love us? Do we have this desire to show mercy? When a guy came into the Emmanuel church in Charleston, he shot people in a prayer meeting. The family later looked at him and said:  We want to show forgiveness. We want you to find Jesus, we really forgive you and we pray for your salvation. That shows that Christianity has been truly embraced. Someone said that true forgiveness results in willing the well-being of victims and violators in the context of the fullest possible knowledge of the nature of the violation. It is not sweeping the sin under the carpet. It is not pretending the offense never happened. Rather it is facing the guilt and the harm, and deliberately responding with the grace God has given to us. Let me say forgiveness is the only way we will ever live in loving harmony and we will ever experience real peace and joy, because we all sin. To be in a relationship is to sin and be sinned against. We all say things that we should not have said. We hurt people in the things that we do, and we all act selfishly. And so forgiveness answers questions like whether we can escape the burden of sin, of being victim and violator? Can our relationships be restored with love? I think of Charles Wesley and the great line in his hymn: my chains fell off; my heart was free. He was talking about being forgiven of his sins. But the same thing results when we find the ability to forgive others; the chains fall off and our hearts are free. Anne Borrowdale writes that " forgiveness is not some pious hope. It is something gritty, it's rough- edged, it's an act of will, it’s a recognition of pain. It is a genuine gift.” Forgiveness is also in so many cases, the way that others learn that Christianity is real, that the gospel is a real thing; that there is mercy and grace.¹

Richard D. Phillips