Living on the Edge, Forgiveness

How do We really “Bless” our enemies?

To be quite honest, this is where many of us get stuck. The thought of forgiving the person who has done such evil against us seems repulsive and impossible. We confuse the feeling of forgiving with the action of forgiving someone.

We unwisely and wrongly believe that to forgive someone is to “let them off the hook” and therefore justice will never be served.

Someone has pointed out that those who refuse to forgive are like those drinking the poison of their own vengeance, hoping it will make the other person sick.

But bitterness and hatred are like a cancer to our soul. When we refuse to forgive a person, the one we are hurting the most is ourselves.

Yet no matter how many verses we hear about forgiveness or how many appeals are made to our logic, many of us simply refuse to let go of the wounds of the past by forgiving the one who inflicted them.

I know, I’ve been there and I’ve done it! I believe much of our reluctance is rooted in a warped understanding of what it means to forgive someone and a lack of knowledge of exactly how to do it.

So let me explain to you what the Bible means when it says we are to forgive. Forgiveness is a three-stage process. Or for you language lovers out there, there are three verb forms of forgiveness.

Stages of Forgiveness

Stage 1—“to forgive”

is a choice; an act of the will. You do not need to feel like forgiving someone to do it. You do need to choose to release any desire for retribution and to ask God to treat the offending person in the same way God has treated you—with mercy.

Stage 2—“forgiving”

is a process whereby your choice to forgive begins over time to align with your emotions. This process sometimes takes months or even years. On one particular occasion when I was severely betrayed, I chose to forgive the person in a deliberate act of will and wrote the date and time in my journal. However, a few days later I heard more information about this person’s false accusations and my emotions began to spin out of control. I had already forgiven him of his sin, but this new information ripped off the scab of healing that had begun in my heart. There was no new sin, but the issue was brought again to my conscious mind and stirred up emotions of anger and bitterness.

This is where many Christians get caught in a vicious cycle. They either assume they have never really forgiven the person because the same emotions rise to the surface on occasion, or the repeated surfacing of such issues causes so much pain that they go into denial and bury their bitterness. Unconsciously they assume that genuine forgiveness is not possible in their particular situation and no final resolution ever occurs.

Forgiving is a process whereby your choice to forgive begins over time to align with your emotions.

So how does this process of “forgiving” actually work? Did you notice that Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us, while Paul tells us twice in Romans 12:14 to bless those who persecute us and to bless and not curse. “To bless” someone can be likened to a type of prayer, and Jesus commands us directly to pray for those who have persecuted us.

The key to stage two—“forgiving”—is prayer. In the situation I alluded to earlier of being betrayed, I vowed in my heart to begin praying for this person daily. My early prayers were ones of asking God to give him what he deserved, show him the error of his ways, and cause him to repent. As time went on, the Spirit of God began to remind me of how merciful and kind He has been with me despite the evil in my heart and the things I have done. Although it was slow in coming, I eventually began to pray that God would bless the person’s life, his marriage, his children, and his ministry. I made it a habit never to take the Lord’s Supper until I had thoroughly and from the heart sought God’s blessing on behalf of this brother.

About a year later a mutual friend visited this particular person in another state and brought back a positive report. Not knowing the depth of the betrayal that I had endured, he assumed I would be happy about the encouraging news. The initial reaction in my heart was anything but joy, but I quickly put a “Christian smile on my face” and told him how good it was to hear that this man was doing well. My first reaction told me that I was still in stage two—“forgiving.” My reaction revealed that I still had subtle desires for his downfall and for justice to be meted out to him. I had forgiven him—stage one, “the choice”—but the “forgiving process” was not yet complete.

It wasn’t until another eighteen months had passed (and I continued praying through this time) that through a different set of circumstances, I heard yet another positive report about this brother just minutes before I was about to preach a message at my home church. Without hesitation and without thinking, my immediate response was joy. After praying for over two years, stage two had been completed and stage three had begun!

Stage 3—“forgiven”

the Spirit of God aligns your choice to obey God in forgiving with the emotional experience of feeling genuine joy when blessings occur in that person’s life. It was not an easy process and I must confess that this was certainly not a onetime experience. I have had to practice these three stages of forgiveness in many situations over the years. But through this experience, I learned the three verb forms of forgiveness and experienced the peace and freedom that comes when we understand and apply genuine forgiveness.

I learned to bless my persecutor by praying for him and the person set free was me. So, how about you? Would you be willing to take a few minutes right now to ask yourself a few questions so you can begin your journey to freedom and peace?

• Who in your life do you need to forgive?
• What stage of the forgiveness process are you in?
• What lie have you believed about how forgiveness works that has held you captive?