Christians like to talk about forgiveness. Usually what they have in mind is Christ forgiving them of all of their sins. Or having others forgive them of their thoughtless actions. But rarely do they dwell on forgiving those who have hurt them, especially if they were greatly hurt by the actions of that person. This is sad, because this is a major theme in the New Testament.

All of us have been hurt by others at some time or other, we are all imperfect beings, offenses are guaranteed to happen. But that doesn't mean that we have to be bitter and hurting inside when we are the recipients of an offense. No one profits from holding grudges or fueling their anger against someone else. Jesus wants us to live in peace with each other and in peace with God. It is not an impossible task. In this article we will review what Jesus said about forgiving others, how bitterness impairs our spiritual life and seven practical steps towards forgiveness.

Heaven: No Bitter People Allowed?

Not only does our bitterness and unforgiving attitude make us miserable, but it endangers our salvation! Yes, really. Take a look at the verses below. In a nutshell, God tells us that He will not forgive you of your sins, unless you are willing to forgive those who have mistreated you. If we are not forgiven, are we going to end up in heaven? I doubt it! When's the last time you heard a sermon on this theme? We are all imperfect beings and sorely need God’s forgiveness and hopefully we are striving to enter our heavenly home after we die! This is serious stuff, folks! Furthermore, we are never to pay back evil for evil. Revenge should not be in our vocabulary. We should not remain angry. None of it could be any more clear than it already is in the scriptures below.

"For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions."  (Matthew 6:14-15)  (NASB)

Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. (Colossians 3:13)

“Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. And if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them."  (Luke 6:28, 32) (NASB)

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY," says the Lord.   (Romans 12:14, 17-19)  (NASB)  

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? (1 John 4:20)

Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.  (Ephesians 4:26-27, 31-32) (NASB)

Just as we may have hurt others, others may have hurt us. It may be quite unlikely that they will show up at our door asking for our forgiveness. It would be nice, though, wouldn’t it? So what does Christ ask us to do in these situations? We must take the initiative and forgive them. Now that may be hard for some of us to swallow. What if someone intentionally and severely abused you, does God really expect you to forgive that person? The Bible is clear, if you expect Christ to forgive you of all your sins, you must be willing to forgive those who have hurt you.

Paid In Full

"Then summoning him, his lord said to him, 'You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?' And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart."  (Matthew 18:32-35) (NASB)

And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. (Luke 11:4)

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven (left, remitted and let go of debts, and given up resentment against) our debtors. (Matthew 6:12) (Amp)

Now when Jesus talked about the necessity of forgiveness, he often referred to our sins using accounting terms, specifically, he often used the term “debt.” For instance, if you look at the Lord’s Prayer, you will see that Jesus said we should ask God to forgive our “debts.” I don’t think Jesus was talking about finance here, because when you think about it, is Christ telling us to have God to somehow magically pay off our loans or credit card bills? I don’t think so. In Matthew, the verses (6:14-15) immediately following the Lord’s Prayer clear up all mystery: “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” Christ is talking about trespasses against us---things which people have done, willfully or accidentally, which have hurt us.

Jesus again used the idea of a debt in a parable (see verses above). A slave who begged his lord for mercy and was forgiven of all his debts, but then he encountered a fellow slave who owed him money and had him thrown in prison. His lord was not pleased when he heard about this and he rescinded his forgiveness of the slave’s debts and had him thrown into the torture chamber. Jesus said the meaning of His parable was that "My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart" (Matthew 18:35). Jesus was not talking about money here, He was talking about forgiving the trespasses of others from our heart.

However, I don’t think it is a mistake that Jesus used debt as a synonym for the need for forgiveness. When someone has inflicted some wrong upon on us, we feel that we are owed revenge or at the very least, an apology—it is only fair, right? We can’t rest until this transaction has taken place. This concept is as old as man himself and is still very much alive in our present-day society.

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. (Exodus 21:24-25)

However, Jesus said things need to change…  

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.  (Matthew 5:43-45) (see also, Luke 6:27-32)

Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven."  (Matthew 18:21-22) (NASB)

See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men. (1 Thessalonians 5:15)

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.  (Titus 2:13-14)

Why were things different after Jesus came? Because He came on this earth to give Himself as a sacrifice for our sins, Christ made the ultimate accounting transaction for us, He gave His life to redeem our sins (Titus 2:14). And like the debtor in His parable, if He forgives us of all of our sins, He expects us to do the same for our fellow man. If we don’t do this, we will be like the ungrateful slave. And if we don’t do this we will get the same unpleasant fate as that ungrateful slave (Matthew 18:35).  

As A Practical Matter

We all need the guidance and help of the Holy Spirit.  And we need to be following Christ, if we expect the Holy Spirit to abide in us. However if we have bitterness towards someone, we are “leaving the books open,” so to speak, because we think we are owed something by the one who hurt or offended us; the “ledger” is not balancing because of it. The problem is that we can not make any spiritual progress until we have closed the books on our past. We need to put these things to rest before we can find peace with God. This is why this is an integral part of repentance, the Apostolic Christian conversion process.

A lot of us have invested a lot of time and energy in our anger against those who have hurt us. We do that by holding a grudge against them. The grudge may manifest itself only by the hatred burning within us towards our offender; we may have fantasies of hurting our offenders in some way, so that they can realize how much pain they caused us or we may even take delight in the thought of them burning in hell for their trespasses against us. Some of us may simply resign ourselves to leave our books open until our offender(s) come to us on bended knee, pleading tearfully for our forgiveness—probably an unlikely scenario. Some of us may be tempted to take action on our grudges by using every opportunity we have to hurt them.  

And we may be blaming those that hurt us for some issues that we are dealing with right now. And since we believe that they caused the problem, they need to fix it; we want to put the problem back into their hands. However, they are most likely very unwilling to accept this burden, and even if they were, we need to realize that those who have hurt us can probably do little to reverse the psychological damage that has been done. Instead, we need to go to the physician for healing and of course, that physician is Jesus Christ. The sad part of living a life bitter towards someone is that the only one sure to get hurt by it is the one holding onto the bitterness!

If we refuse to close the books on the offenses of others, we are like the ungrateful slave. Christ has forgiven us of sins worthy of death and hell, and we can not be unwilling to forgive our fellow man for his offenses towards us. It is not our duty to serve justice upon those who have wronged others, we need to leave that in the hands of God (Romans 12:19). Clearly, if we do this we are not following Christ commandment of loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate you and praying for those who despitefully use us and persecute us (Luke 5:44)!  

How To Close The Books

Jesus made it clear that forgiveness must come from your heart (Matthew 18:35). That means that it is true forgiveness, not just something done for appearance’s sake. However, it is easier said than done. Some of us are in deep pain because of the inconsiderate actions of others. How can you let go of these things, just as if they had never happened? Well, I have found seven steps that can help make that possible.

Try to see things from the offender’s perspective: The first step is to try to see things from our offender’s perspective. This may be a radical thought to some of us; we have been self-centered, we have been focusing only on our own pain. Try to put yourself in his shoes. Is is possible that we misunderstood what his intentions were? Were his actions directed specifically to us, or to everyone in his family or everyone around him? Are there things were in his past that may have contributed to his behavior? I think you get the general idea.

Don’t be unrealistic about your own faults and what you may have contributed towards your own misery: Nearly all of us have contributed more to our own misery than we would like to admit. It probably wasn’t things done knowingly. We need to take our own actions into account, instead of trying to place all of the blame on someone else. If we are more honest about our own faults, we can find it easier to forgive those of others. We have all done stupid things, selfish things, things done in anger we later regret.  Funny how easily we forget our own trespasses, yet can not forget the trespasses done by others to us! Let’s judge ourselves before we attempt to judge others.

Drop your unrealistic, childish expectations of people: We may have some childish, realistic expectations of our offenders, particularly of parents and authority figures. When we were small children, our parents and the authority figures we knew were practically gods to us, they could do no wrong. However, many of us may be subconsciously unwilling to give up on that idea. Even though we have plenty of faults ourselves, we are unwilling to let our parents have faults. So when our parents or an authority figure makes a mistake or loses their temper, we find it next to impossible to forgive them, because we are holding them up to a standard they can not possibly live up to.   

Grieve what may never be: Those that we love the most can hurt us the most. Relatives, brothers and sisters in Christ or ministers all fit into this category. For example, let's use our example of our father again. He may never be the "ideal father," the father you wanted him to be. It is time to bid bid goodbye to your idealized father (or other relative, or Christian sister or brother or minister, or whatever) and accept the real one. It would have been nice if he/she realized what they were doing to you or how much you were hurt by their actions, but they probably didn’t. We need to accept the fact, grieve the passing of the idealized one, and move on.

Let go of that pride, that idea that you deserved better: Often, the roadblock to forgiveness is simply our pride. We have subconsciously assumed that we have the right not to be the recipient of any thoughtless actions or outbursts of anger or mistakes by others. But that is totally unrealistic.  If we live on this earth among other human beings, offenses will come, it is part of life. Why else would there be so much emphasis on forgiveness in the Bible—that is, the forgiveness of our sins by God and the emphasis on forgiving our fellow man for his offenses? To think otherwise would be to think that we are better than anyone else, that we deserve special treatment. To believe that we should never be on the receiving end of offenses is nothing but pure pride. Jesus brought this point home when he talked about the "speck" in "your brother's eye" (see below) and the parable of the ungrateful servant. How dare we condemn our brother for his offenses towards us if we are guilty of offenses ourselves!

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."  (Matthew 7:3-5) (NIV)

Another part of this process may be forgiving God. Yes, you heard right! We may have unconsciously shaken our fist at Him in anger, because we thought we deserved a better life than the one we have had so far. We need to reconsider how much we may have contributed to our own misery. And we also have to make peace with the things we had no control over. As the old saying goes, it doesn’t do any good to cry over spilled milk. We may not know why God let us go through some of the things we went through, but we can be sure that God had some very good reasons—some which will become apparent to us as we live out our life here on earth and some that will only become apparent when we get to our heavenly home. We need to learn to accept these things and submit our will to Him. Stop trying to tell the Potter how to make His pot.

Don’t dwell on past hurts, do your best to forget them: I have often heard people say something like, “Oh, I’ve forgiven him, but I will never forget what he did to me.” That is not true forgiveness. We are emotional creatures. Dwelling on old hurts and offenses will only reignite the smoldering coals of hatred and ill-will. Let’s face it, if we purposely dwell on them, we are willfully unforgiving them. That’s why we must give them up. We must make a resolution not to dwell on them. Let them go. Paul said we should reflect on the good things, not the bad (Philippians 4:8), so if there are any good memories or qualities (even if they are few and far between!) about someone who has hurt you, try to concentrate on these things when you see or think about him or her.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Now I realize that some offenses have cut so deep, it may be impossible to truly forget them. That may be, however we do have the power to not dwell on them. And when the memories do come up, we need to remind ourselves of what we learned through in this very process—the process of forgiving---that will help to assuage the pain and we will be able to focus our mind on more positive things. For instance, if there isn’t a single positive thing you can remember about someone who has hurt you, I find that dwelling on all Christ has done for me, and all the things He has forgiven me of, has the effect of blowing away those bitter thoughts, like smoke in the wind.

Ask the Lord to help you escape your bitterness: Don’t forget to ask the Lord to help you with each of step toward forgiveness. Make no mistake about it, He wants you to succeed at this, because the end result will be that you will be closer to Him. And if there is any one thing God wants from us, it is a close, loving relationship. Ask Him to help you get through the steps that might seem impossible. Ask Him to change your heart towards the ones who have hurt you.  He will not disappoint you.

Forgiveness—A Part Of The Christian Life

Some think that forgiveness is a one-time deal, or something only necessary rarely or only in extreme situations. However, as I have matured in my Christian walk, I have come to see why Christ was so adamant about forgiveness. If we interact with others in a meaningful way, it is literally impossible for us to live without offending them in some way at some time. After all, we are imperfect beings, we are all a little different and because of our human limitations, it is impossible to always understand others or always act in a way to prevent misunderstandings on their part. And of course, we are not perfect beings, and may even sometimes intentionally do things which may offend others because of our own selfishness.

Because of this, the only way we can live peaceably with other human beings is to be willing to humble ourselves enough to ask for forgiveness and to not be so proud that we can not forgive others for their trespasses against us. And clearly, the Bible exhorts us to live peaceably with all others (Romans 12:18, Hebrews 12:14, etc.). 

There have been many interesting psychological and medical studies recently showing how bitterness can literally shorten our lives. And other studies have found that those who are able to forgive, even the most grievous offenses, live much happier lives. If you have missed out on a lot of joy in your life, it is time to lay the burdens down and then learn to practice forgiveness in your daily life.