What does
it mean to forgive as God? What does it
mean to forgive as man? To forgive as
God, God said it was necessary for God to become man. Forgiveness insisted that God shed His own
blood. To forgive as God is a perfect and eternal action that results in perceptible
and mysterious outcomes. Walter Wangerin (As for Me and My House)
calls forgiveness a divine absurdity. Forgiveness is the intention of the Lenten
journey. How can we conceive of what it
means to forgive as God?
Evidentially, it is to
forgive as man. God says it was
necessary for man to forgive in the same manner as God. In Matthew 6:12 Jesus says, And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors. He goes on to
explain: For if you forgive other people when they sin
against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive
others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matthew 6:14-15). God forgives as God and asks me to most
fully receive my forgiveness when I forgive in the same manner as He
forgave. Forgiveness insisted that I
fully receive the forgiveness of God by forgiving all who offend me on
earth. In this view, real forgiveness
requires a figurative shedding of blood on my part as I release all my human
instincts for vengeance against the wrongs that others commit against me. This is not possible in my humanity. I must receive God’s forgiveness in order to
give forgiveness. Jesus made it distinct
in Mark 11:25-26: And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye
have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive
you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive,
neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.
I don’t want
to forgive in an effort to protect myself.
I instinctively believe that if I could get payback, right all
injustices and cause my offenders to experience pain that I will be better off. Even if I don’t pursue payback, the least I
can do is to use my anger to keep the offender away from my soul through
avoidance or never forgetting what they have done to me. God knows that as long as I remain in that
state of mind, I have not truly reflected on what His forgiveness means. God is not a tit-for-tat God. He is not keeping score when it comes to
forgiveness. Rather He is inviting me to
the beauty of true forgiveness. I don’t
fully receive the forgiveness of God until I am experiencing the forgiveness of
man. St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew)
says: Nothing makes us so God-like as our
willingness to forgive.
Being
forgiven by God as man so transforms our souls that we are released from our
human limitations. As St. Augustine
wrote in Confessions: There is no sin or crime committed by
another which I myself am not capable of committing through my weakness; and if
I have not committed it, it is because God, in his mercy, has not allowed me to
and has preserved me in good.
My long
list of sins that I focus on this Lenten season will aid me in receiving my
forgiveness most fully by reminding me that no matter how horrific the sins
that others commit against me, they are nothing compared to my sins against
God. When others sin against me, I
forgive as I think about what God has forgiven in me.
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