Five words for Lent (4): Forgiveness

Having spent last week exploring the somewhat challenging idea of skandal, or taking offence, I want to spend this week exploring the idea of forgiveness, which is in many ways the polar opposite of being skandalised. Forgiveness is easier to understand; the challenge comes from living it out.

When Jesus is asked how often must we forgive the one who sins against us, must it be as often as seven times – he responds in exclamation, seventy times seven times! The point is not that we count to 490 and then stop. Rather it is that we stop counting at all. We are always to offer forgiveness. At this point I want to introduce a clarification, as forgiveness is often misunderstood. Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation, nor is it a command that we are to be doormats without the capacity to exercise discernment. Reconciliation – and we are called, as Christians, to a ministry of reconciliation – reconciliation is the fruit of two things. When one person hurts another person, the relationship between those two people is damaged, and reconciliation is when that damage is repaired. In order to effect reconciliation, the person who has been hurt needs to offer forgiveness, but the person who has been doing the hurting has to repent. Repentance plus forgiveness equals reconciliation.

One way to understand this mandate of forgiveness, then, is to consider it in light of the deadly sin of wrath. Anger is not a sin. Anger may be sinful in particular contexts but Jesus is angry sometimes, so there is such a thing as righteous anger in response to injustice. Wrath, however, IS a deadly sin. Wrath is an anger that has settled into something cold, hard and determined. It is a settled ill-will against another. It is, in short, a refusal to be reconciled with another. The refusal to be reconciled is to remain in that condition of being offended, or scandalised, to be filled with resentment against another, just like the elder brother in the story of the prodigal son.

At this point, let me bring in what I think of as one of the most important spiritual rules for Christians, when Jesus says: judge not, lest ye be judged, for the measure ye give is the measure ye receive. This is echoed in many different contexts, so the Lord's prayer, for example, says 'forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us'; Paul's letter to the Colossians says, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” I call this a spiritual law because I see it as something automatic. In other words, if we occupy the place of judgement and refusal of forgiveness then we are, by so doing, excluding ourselves from forgiveness in turn.

So how might we navigate our way in times of conflict? Jesus does, in fact, give explicit guidance on this, in the Gospel of Matthew, with the famous passage about church discipline. When someone sins against you, first take it up privately with them; then with a few witnesses; then in front of the church as a whole. Essentially what that process does is establish whether there is any possibility of reconciliation, and if someone who is sinning against another Christian refuses to repent then reconciliation is impossible, and such a person is to the church like a pagan or a tax collector. In other words, someone who is captured by the world. The door is never closed, of course – if there is repentance then a reconciliation with the church is possible. We are always to be like the Father in the story, keeping our eyes out for the return of the prodigal.

Forgiveness is the mark of the true Christian community. This is the ground for the famous remark 'see how these Christians love one another!' We have been forgiven, therefore we forgive in turn. What this means is that we no longer structure our lives around an effort to maintain a certain moral standard, what St Paul often means when he talks about 'the Law' – we are all sinners stumbling towards the light. This does not mean that we abandon any sense of right and wrong – that would be to ignore all the things which Jesus says about obedience to his commands – but it does mean that none of us have a place to stand from which to condemn any other member of the church. Judgement belongs to God alone, and we have all fallen short of his glory. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. We are never in a position to refuse reconciliation. We do not have the authority to make such a judgement, for vengeance belongs to the Lord. We are to set ourselves apart from that.

One last word: when Paul wrote that passage in Colossians the word translated as forgive is charizomai . Remember that grace is charis, it is the same root as charismatic, referring to the gifts. To forgive freely is an act of grace, it is enacted grace. That is why it is the hallmark of any healthy Christian spirituality. When we are baptised, and we die to the world, we die to that process of judgement and condemnation. We are then raised to the life of forgiveness. On this rests the ultimate fate of our souls. When the burden of judging has been given to God the soul becomes freed to pursue love. In other words, although there is undoubted benefit to a reconciliation between two sinners, the principal benefit of forgiveness is to the one doing the forgiving, not to the one being forgiven. To forgive is to be released from the Law, it is to claim what we say in our Lord's prayer: forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us.

In the mid 2000s there was an appalling school shooting in America, when an intruder broke into an Amish school and killed five girls before killing himself. The Amish responded with grace – they attended the funeral of the shooter, they set up a fund to support the widow, they let go of all desire for vengeance. That is what a real church community looks like. The refusal of forgiveness is when we stay on our crosses, defined by our pain and our shock and horror and offence at the pain we have received. When we forgive we come down from our crosses and are set free to live in the Spirit. The real question is: how might we become the same, how might we become a community as spiritually powerful as those Amish? Next week: faith.