Things we’re supposed to do

“What do you do when you forgive someone?

It is amazing how difficult that question is.  Did you ever think about it?  What do you actually do when you forgive someone?  I believe that God does three things when he forgives us and when we forgive, we do the same three same things.

The firs thing you do is rediscover the humanity of the person you hurt.  When somebody hurts me and I’m very wounded and angry, do you know what I do?  I reduce that person’s humanity to the size of what he did to me.  “Fred?  Who’s Fred?  He’s the louse who betrayed me.”  I totally define him in terms of what he did.

When you forgive, you discover that the person who hurt you is a lot more than just what he or she did to you.  She is a weak, fragile, sinful human being–not all that different from you.

The Bible gives us a wonderful metaphor for what God does when he forgives.  “God washes our sin away.”  He gets the outer layer of scum and dirt off and says, “Now I can see you for what you really are.  What a marvelous creature you are in spite of all your sin.”  He rediscovers our humanity.

The second thing I think God does is he surrenders his right to get even.  He takes this right that we all feel when we’ve been hurt–the right to balance the score–and he puts it in his hands and looks at it and lets it drop like water, never to be collected again.  He gives up his right to get even.  So do we when we forgive.

The third thing that happens–and for us, sometimes this takes a while–is that we revise our feelings about the person who did us wrong…

You know you are in the healing stream of forgiveness when you can get down on your knees–even if you only half mean it–and pray that God would bless the person who hurt you.  That is what the grace of God is all about.  The rule of the universe, the Maker of heaven and earth, wishes you well.  This is what happens when you forgive someone.”

-John Ortberg, et al. “Session Five - Forgiveness.”
Groups: The Life-Giving Power of Community.