I read a quote on Twitter today by Dave Harvey that resonated in me. It said, "Forgive sinners, forgive sin." Short, simple, and straight forward. But I think it touches something that I, and perhaps many others, fail to realize in every day circumstances.
When I am wronged, I tend to overlook what happened, push it out of the way so that I no longer think about it, and call that forgiveness. I focus on the act and how it made me feel. But true forgiveness does not focus on the act and the resulting feelings. True forgiveness focuses on the PERSON who did the wrong, and justifies the PERSON - not their action. When God forgave us, He did not push the seriousness of our sin to the side. Rather He revealed His wrath upon sin by putting that wrath on His Son. He did not justify our deeds. He justified US. He did not reason away His anger concerning our sin so that He would not feel the need to hold animosity against us. No, He justified US in spite of our sin. He is the justifier of ungodly men, not of ungodly deeds.
When we are hurt by someone, we ought to take God's example of forgiveness. My tendency is to try to justify what has been done to me - to reason it away as not a big deal. But the fact is, when we are sinned against, it IS a big deal, but that person (and our relationship with that person) is a bigger deal. But we do not forgive based on redirecting our judgment of that person to something or someone else. We do not justify them by taking judgment on our pillow or our dog. We do not justify them by punishing them in our thoughts, putting them down and puffing ourselves up. In these cases, we acknowledge the seriousness of their wrong, but we belittle the seriousness of their humanity, their accountability to God, and our relationship with them. When we reason away the seriousness of their sin, we belittle the justice of God and the sacrifice of His Son. We forgive sins in the sense that we don't hold them against the one who committed them.
Colossians 3:13 says "as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." So we see the forgiveness of God is our basis for our forgiveness of others. Ephesians 4:32 says "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." There is an unfortunate chapter break here, but I will continue the passage with the beginning of chapter 5: "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." So our firgiveness of others is an imitation of God forgiving us. Not that we did not deserve punishment, but that punishment was fulfilled in Christ's offering. It all comes back to the cross. It all comes back to the Gospel.
When we attempt to forgive based off of earthly means as was described in the beginning of this post, we forsake the Gospel and turn forgiveness, even that of our own sins before God, into an issue of scales. In one way or another, the hurt committed against us still has an offering remaining to be made for restitution to occur. Forgiveness one person to another is a much bigger deal than is often understood! Our perception and imitation of the Gospel is at stake every time we are involved in a situation that calls for forgiveness. Do our relationships suffer due to hurt and lack of forgiveness? Then the Gospel has not been enriched in our hearts. We would do well to meditate on nothing but the Gospel. There is no more sacrifice to be made for sins! Not ours and not theirs. We are accountable to God. We are forgiven by God. We ourselves are partakers of the same forgiveness because we ourselves were partakers in the same sin. We of all people have no right to hold anything to anyone's account because of the great forgiveness that we have experienced from God. Have we even claimed the fact that we ourselves are grievous sinners? Even better, have we claimed the fact that Christ is the glorious Savior, and not just to us? That God was sinned against in a far more serious way than we have? Yet God forgives. Let His testimony of grace speak to us in our dealings with others. Let us be imitators of God in matters of forgiveness and base our forgiveness not in the need for restitution (no matter how abstract) but in the restitution that we have already found in the finished work of Christ.