Forgiven People Learn to Forgive

God forgives every sinner who repents and believes in his Son, and the people he forgives are called to put away bitterness toward every offender and to extend full forgiveness to everyone who repents.

The Debt God Covers

David opened one of his psalms with the happiest sentence a sinner can hear: “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Psalm 32:1–2). He knew the other side first, since “when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Psalm 32:3), and Chris, preaching the psalm, described what followed his confession as “the peace, the exuberant joy of a restored relationship with God. Knowing that the almighty, holy God of the universe had forgiven his sin, had covered his sin, counts no iniquity against him.”^[4]

The size of what God forgives is the ground for everything else Scripture says on the subject. In Jesus' parable the servant owed his king ten thousand talents, a sum no laborer could repay in a hundred lifetimes (Matthew 18:24), and Chris has described the believer's debt in the same terms: “We have been forgiven a tremendous, overwhelming debt of sin. God paid a weighty, massive, suffocating burden of sin for us.”^[1] Paul draws the line from that payment to the Christian's conduct, “forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32), and Chris has answered the hardest version of the question in one breath: “How can you possibly forgive that person? Because in Christ Jesus, God has forgiven you.”^[8]

What Joseph Did With His Brothers

Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery, and years later, with their father dead, they came to him afraid he would finally repay them. He answered, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?” and then promised, “So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” The narrator adds, “Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them” (Genesis 50:19, 21). Chris has pointed out that Joseph “doesn't just forget the sins of his brothers”; he names what they did and then takes up a different posture toward them, expressed in comfort and in provision for their children.^[3]

Preaching that chapter, Chris gave the church a four-part summary of what such forgiveness commits a person to. “Good thought” means thinking well of the one who was estranged, and “hurt not” means resolving to cause him no further pain. “Gossip never” means declining, as far as is appropriate, to keep retelling the offense, while “friends forever” means refusing to let the incident close the door on fellowship for good.^[3] Each of those commitments is a decision about behavior, which a person can make and keep on mornings when his feelings lag behind.

Bitterness and Forgiveness Are Two Different Works

A real wrong leaves a mark on the mind, which is why a person driving to work can find himself back inside an old injury before he knows how he got there. Talking with Dov about forgiveness, Chris described how “you could be thinking something for five minutes before you realize you're thinking it.”^[2] Hebrews warns what happens when that replaying goes unchecked, telling the church to see to it “that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled” (Hebrews 12:15).

Chris has drawn a line that clears up much of the confusion on this subject: “There's a difference between expunging your own heart of bitterness and forgiving someone.”^[2] Clearing out bitterness belongs to the one who was wronged, whatever the offender does, and it means bringing the hurt to God and refusing to let the mind marinate in it. Toward an offender who has yet to repent, Chris has said, “It's right to get yourself to be ready to forgive. Tenderhearted towards the person, praying for the person.”^[2] A Christian in that position keeps his heart soft and his hands free of revenge while he waits for the turning that full reconciliation requires.

Forgiveness Answers Repentance

Jesus tied forgiveness to the offender's turning: “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (Luke 17:3–4). Chris has described full forgiveness as “essentially a conversation and an agreement between the one who's sinned and the one who's been sinned against,” in which both “agree about the nature of this sin” and both “agree that we're going to move on,”^[2] and he defines the repentance that opens that conversation as “a full change of heart, change of mind, change of attitude.”^[2]

Preaching on Joseph, Chris quoted a line that follows the pattern of God's own forgiveness: “Christian forgiveness is a commitment to the repentant. It is not automatic. Christians are to forgive others as God forgave them. God's forgiveness is conditional… God offers grace to all people, but he forgives only those who repent and believe.”^[3] The same pattern binds the one who was wronged once repentance comes, and Chris has warned the church that when a brother has repented and forgiveness is withheld, “at the moment you don't forgive, you're the one in sin, not them. And… Jesus has shed his blood for that sin. And you are not in a good position, my friend, to say that that's not enough.”^[2]

When You Are the Offender

Some people come to this subject as the one who did the damage, and they wonder whether what they did has put them beyond reach. Jesus has already answered them, “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37), and Chris has said the same without qualification: “The gospel says that unequivocally you've been forgiven and that God looks at you as if you did not sin. If you've repented and turned to God with a broken and contrite spirit, He will by no means cast that out. He loves you. You are fully accepted and welcome into His presence.”^[7]

Pardon before God leaves some earthly harvest still standing, because “whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Chris has named what that harvest can include: “As you've sown into the flesh, habits have been formed, addictions have been created, trusts have been violated.”^[7] A forgiven man may spend years rebuilding the trust his sin destroyed, and he does that work as a son whose eternal standing is already secure, under a Father who is forming him through it.^[7]

A Heart Trained to Love

People who fight through the work of forgiving someone often find themselves “just generally more free,” and Chris, preaching on the disciples' argument over which of them was greatest, traced that freedom to something God is building: “As we learn to forgive those who have hurt us, as we learn to love those who have hurt us, we actually learn how to love those who might hurt us. And it opens up our hearts in a different way to the world, to people we don't know, to relationships that we've sort of danced on the edge of getting into. Somehow when the Lord trains us to love those who have hurt us, He's actually training us to love those who might hurt us.”^[5]

Filled With the Father's Love for the Son

At a Pharisee's table, where a forgiven woman had wept over his feet, Jesus said that “he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47), and Chris has described what happens inside a believer who receives that pardon: “Being forgiven means being loved by God… God applying his love for Jesus to you. He's forgiving you for the sake of his Son… As you repent and as you go to the Lord and say, I failed again, Lord… as you weep bitterly over your sin, you're being filled up with the Father's love for Jesus. What you're going to find is that you're full of love for Jesus, and it didn't come from you. It came from the Father. In His very act of forgiving you and pardoning you, He was giving you love for Christ. And you will be forgiven much, and you will love much.”^[6]