Forgiveness

 

Many years ago (and forgive me if I’ve told this story before, it’s a favorite) my young nephew taught me a beautiful lesson about forgiveness.  My nephew and our chosen son (whom my nephew refers to as “uncle”) were wrestling downstairs. After realizing he wasn’t going to win this battle, my nephew resorted to name calling. I don’t remember what the actual words were, but they were silly and meaningless, hurtful only in my nephew’s eyes. The rest of us laughed.

My nephew ran out of the room and up the stairs. After waiting a while for him to return, and certainly after life had moved on downstairs, I found him sitting on the stairs, in tears. When asked what was the matter, he replied, “I called Uncle by a bad name.”  I said it really wasn’t a bad name, just a name you meant to be mean. I suggested he go down and let his Uncle know he was sorry.  “I can’t”, my nephew replied. Why not? “It’s too hard.”  We sat a while longer and then, after reminding him all he needed to do was return to the room, I left him alone.  A while later my nephew rejoined us. He took the long way around the room towards his uncle. We watched his slow progress. It was almost painful to watch. Finally, he reached his uncle. He came around behind him and leaned in to whisper, “I’m sorry I called you a bad name.”  Our son reached around and engulfed him in a hug, telling him everything was ok. He was forgiven.

It is so hard to say “I’m sorry.”  It is particularly hard to ask for forgiveness.  What if our pride holds us back? What if they don’t want to forgive us? What if they don’t even like us anymore? The longer we wait, the harder it is to approach the person. All manner of worst case scenarios go through our heads. But if we push ourselves to go and make amends, and the person forgives us, there is no greater feeling.

As it is with people, so it is with God. He waits patiently for us to come and confess while we drag our feet and beat ourselves up. I realize many times we are not even remorseful, but most times if we are aware of what we’ve done, we do wish to make amends. But it is hard to admit we were in the wrong, and it’s hard to actually say the words “I’m sorry.”

To take this a step farther, I have a friend who wrote a book on forgiveness. He pointed out that it costs to forgive. The bigger the offense, the more difficult it is to forgive. Many times we feel like we wouldn’t accept their confession and forgive, we are just too hurt. Knowing how complicated and difficult it is to forgive, perhaps we’d be more careful with just throwing out “sorry”. It’s almost flip. If we instead of “sorry” were to ask for forgiveness, we’d sound more sincere, and we’d give the person we offended the opportunity to not forgive.  “Sorry” doesn’t allow for that.

Fortunately for my nephew, our son loves him very much, and was more than willing to forgive. All my nephew needed to do was re-approach his uncle and express his sorrow by nothing more than wanting to be in his presence again.  Amazingly, that is God’s response to us, but His open forgiveness cost a lot. Jesus Christ died in our place so we could be in a right relationship with God. Our forgiveness, our wonderful relationship with God as Father, came at a huge cost.

What if my nephew had never apologized?  His uncle would have still forgiven him and their relationship continued, but chances are it would be stilted for a while. Sometimes our pride and fear keeps us from seeking forgiveness. The other person may be graceful and keep our relationship anyway, but until we actually deal with the offense, the relationship can never be complete.

What if my son hadn’t accepted the apology? That’s our worst fear, isn’t it? We’ve done something so awful they will never love us again. But if we truly love someone, we can’t help but forgive, even at the cost of the pain caused by the offender.  Forgiveness doesn’t remove the pain from the one forgiving. That comes, hopefully, with time. But forgiveness does reopen the relationship.

God’s forgiveness is ever waiting for us. He’s always ready to open His arms and accept us in. Our salvation is secure in Christ’s sacrifice, so we don’t need to fear we’ve done something too awful for God to forgive. He forgave all our sins on the cross long before we committed them.  But when we sin, the relationship has a wedge in it, like my nephew and his uncle. There is a block in communication. It was never on our son’s part, but our nephew didn’t know that, until he re-approached his uncle. When we sin, our sin breaks our communication with God, and we can’t restore that without confession of what we’ve done. God is always waiting to reopen the lines.

When I was a youth pastor, there was an occasion when I inadvertently hurt a student. It wasn’t malicious on my part, but the student felt I had mistreated them. I asked for forgiveness, but none was given. The student finished high school and went on to college without our brokenness being healed. While still in college, the student volunteered to be part of our summer mission project. We always took a group of college and high school kids to a less advantaged area in our state. They would conduct worship services and lead a vacation Bible school week.  We lived very closely together in a church basement for that week. I was puzzled by this student’s desire to join the team.

During our preparations prior to the trip, we studied the work of the Holy Spirit in us. We talked about how the Holy Spirit can help us do anything. This student raised her hand and asked, looking me straight in the eye, “even forgive?” Yes, especially forgive. And in that moment she forgave me. What an incredible experience for us both. It took a long time, years, but through the power of the Holy Spirit in her, she was able to accept my apology from years back and to forgive me. We had a great week on that trip, something I never believed would happen.

Is there someone we need to forgive, whether they’ve even asked for it or not? God forgave us long before we came and asked. Is there someone we need to go to and seek forgiveness? God will give us the strength to do that, just as He helps us open up our lives to Him and seek His forgiveness. The joy when both the asking and the forgiveness come together is one of the most amazing things in this life.