Selfless Forgiveness
Forgiving someone who has deeply hurt you is truly one of the hardest things God calls us to do. If someone has committed an atrocity against you or a loved one, actually forgiving that person in your heart and moving on from it is much easier said than done. Human nature causes you to want to hold onto a wrong rather than forgive and let yourself and the person who has wronged you heal. In her book When You Don’t Like Your Story, author Sharon Jaynes describes the act of forgiving in two different and helpful ways. In the first way she says, “...forgiveness is like cutting someone loose. Imagine that the perpetrator (the unforgiven) is roped to the back of the victim (the unforgiving). When we refuse to forgive, we bind ourselves to the person who has wounded us. When we forgive, we cut the person loose from our backs and set ourselves free.” While we might think that holding onto what someone did to us solely affects that person, it is truly affecting us and our hearts by making us bitter and keeping us captive to our pasts.
“...forgiveness is like cutting someone loose. Imagine that the perpetrator (the unforgiven) is roped to the back of the victim (the unforgiving). When we refuse to forgive, we bind ourselves to the person who has wounded us. When we forgive, we cut the person loose from our backs and set ourselves free.”
Jaynes describes forgiveness a second way: “Forgiveness can also be understood as canceling a debt. Not just canceling a debt as if it never occurred but taking the loss and refusing to make the offender pay it back. When we forgive someone, we absorb the cost of the wrong. All forgiveness is costly.” Letting go and ‘absorbing the cost of the wrong’ is against our selfish human nature, but as Jaynes says later in her book, “We are never more like God than when we forgive.”
“Forgiveness can also be understood as canceling a debt. Not just canceling a debt as if it never occurred but taking the loss and refusing to make the offender pay it back. When we forgive someone, we absorb the cost of the wrong. All forgiveness is costly.”
We forgive others because God forgave us in the most selfless, unthinkable, and marvelous act of love and grace that we will ever know. God gave us His Son–the only one He had–to die a terrible death He didn’t deserve so that we could be made righteous in His eyes. God canceled our debt, set us free, and called us His even though we will never deserve it. As Christians, we are called to live like Christ, and absorbing someone’s debt is the most Christ-like thing we could ever do. Think how freeing Christ’s death is for all who believe in Him. All of that freedom came because He chose to forgive us instead of holding us captive to the sin in which we would surely die. Choosing to forgive like He did will give you freedom too, and that is exactly what God wants for you.
When I was 15, and I was coming out of my freshman year of high school, my best friend completely betrayed my trust and it really hurt me. She had written out a list in a journal of all the things she thought were wrong with me over the course of several months. While we were out for coffee one day, she showed me all that she had written and encouraged me to improve myself in all the areas listed. I sat there completely speechless, dumbstruck that someone I was so close to had secretly written such terrible things about me in an attempt to somehow better me. I had no idea she felt that way about me and possibly had for months, maybe years. I felt betrayed, angry, vulnerable, and mostly just sad.
When you’re a 15 year old in a public American high school, you’re already wracked with insecurities, and this incident would have gone over a lot better now. At the time though, it felt like my world was absolutely falling apart, and I don’t think I stopped crying about it for three days straight. This friend was like a sister to me: I had shared every single one of my personal stories and secrets with her, we had sleepovers every weekend, we had been basically inseparable for the past 10 years, and all of a sudden it felt like I didn’t know her anymore. I was sure that she had gone too far and would never be able to let it go and get past it. I remember going through my phone and deleting every single picture or video I had of her, blocking her number, and throwing away all of our friendship bracelets. I sat in my room wallowing in the hurt and the anger, thinking about how terrible she was and vowing never to speak with her again.
The next time I saw that friend was in a group setting, and I’m sure it was more than obvious to everyone there that something was off. She and I were usually attached at the hip, laughing until we cried within moments of seeing each other, and that day I didn’t even look at her. She didn’t apologize to me either, and she wouldn’t for another year. In that year though, she did try to reach out to do things with me, but I turned her down every time because I was waiting for my apology. Chances are, if I had gone out to do one of the many things she suggested, she would have apologized there, but I was too bitter to see that. Even after she apologized a year later and I told her I forgave her, I know I didn’t mean it.
After what had happened, I let myself wallow in anger and self-pity for so long that I had turned someone who used to be my best friend into a villain in my head, and it took so much longer to eventually forgive and move on. I let myself hold a grudge for years after that incident, and all it did was harm me. Group hangouts where I knew I would see her became something I hated, and I ended up missing a lot of things that would have been super fun. Mostly, though, I let myself dwell on the damage, and it damaged me. I honestly had a couple years of my life where I couldn’t think of that person without feeling like I hated her, and that is not how I am at all. I lived in this state of unforgiveness, exactly where Satan wanted me, and it made me icky on the inside. If I had forgiven, even without her apologizing, I would have cut her from my back and let myself free, just like Sharon Jaynes was talking about.
Now, five years later, I am happy to say that while we aren’t BFFs by any means, she and I are on good terms, and I would probably even consider her a friend. She apologized to me again a couple years ago, and while I should have forgiven her long before that, I finally stopped being angry and truly forgave her. Because I let myself forgive the past, I have moved on without all of the extra weight of anger and resentment that I was carrying around with me, and the same can be true for you. Are you ready to cut yourself free from the weight of holding onto your anger and pain? I understand how easy it is to keep those things close, but I promise that it is going to make you feel about 50 pounds lighter to give them up. Let go and let God heal you where you’ve been broken, remembering that He forgave you first.
Jesus died on that cross to forgive the sins of you, me, and everyone, and trust me, the burden He bore was a lot heavier than the one you’re carrying right now. Jesus took that sin, buried it in death, and then overthrew it when He rose from the grave three days later. That day, the day that all our sin was defeated, was forgiven, was the greatest day of victory we will ever know. You too can forgive and be victorious, knowing that Jesus did it for you first.
Let go of the weight that comes with holding grudges, clinging to past injuries, and let yourself heal by cutting loose those who have wronged you and giving it all to God. God is cheering for you, and so am I!
