The Delight of Forgiveness

Somewhere along the way many of us have gotten a bad taste in our mouth when it comes to forgiveness. We readily want and accept this spiritual staple ourselves without a second thought or question, but few of us readily dole out forgiveness to friends, family, or anyone who has really slighted even in the smallest sense.  

Forgiveness has become one of the least loved pieces of following Jesus. So many other aspects of genuinely loving and following the Lord seem to cost us much less. We can give our time and energy to serve our community, our neighbors, and our friends. We give financially to support local churches and missionary work abroad. We laud defending the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the widow and the orphan – and for good reason since God expects and commands us to do so (James 1:27). Each of these pieces of practicing our faith does cost us something – but the benefit, the blessing we get in return for being obedient, is immediate. We can see hungry bellies being filled with food we provide. We can see our neighbors enjoying a warm home this winter because we stepped in and paid the electric bill after they lost their job. We can see a group of young men on a football team radically change as their coaches spend years investing and leading them. These are all great endeavors and the work God does in and through us sometimes even provides us with encouraging sight into how the Lord has used us.

But why is forgiveness so hard? Why does it feel like such a duty. For many of us we here Jesus command, “if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will refuse to forgive you,” (Matt. 6:15) and begrudgingly think, “alright, I will forgive you for this, but only because I have to.” For most of us, there is very little joy in forgiving.

I think we have forgotten and important, liberating truth: there is delight in forgiveness. We should be ready to forgive precisely because God found great joy, delight even, in forgiving us; and when we forgive, we too can delight in it. Forgiveness brings delight.

What Forgiveness Is Not

Before we think any further about forgiveness, we must first clearly understand what forgiveness is not. This may seem silly and unnecessary, but so many of us, myself included, find forgiveness laborious and dreadful because we do not really understand what it is not.

Many of us grew up under the lie that forgiveness means pretending. Playing along that we never really were hurt. From being picked on at the dinner table by our siblings to finding yourself victim to unwarranted ridicule on the football field to the constant, belittling comments from your boss, we all daily are the focus of actions by others that for one reason or another, aggravate, irritate, and in some cases, deeply hurt us. We all rightly move along from many of these little cuts and scrapes. No one can make it through life with paper-thin skin. But we all have days when the wrong comment, email, or conversation sinks in to our hearts and festers.

Then of course we are all aware of the catastrophic sins of our day that no thick skin can truly protect against. From rampant fatherlessness (43% of homes are without a stable, consistent father figure according to the U.S. Census) to sexual assault (around 20% of children are attacked before their 18^th birthday, 75% of them by people they knew and trusted), our world is coming unhinged with egregious crimes and sins against one another. And the lie many of us believe in the midst of it all? Forgiveness means pretending it never happened.

Failing to acknowledge sin’s painful effects crushes us. We may not be able to place our finger on why it feels so off, but we know we have been cheated when we believe the lie that we merely need to move on. This robs us – forces us to bury and leave unresolved very real injuries.

For extreme cases like fatherless homes, such denial and pretending is often devastating: 63% of children and teenagers who commit suicide come from fatherless homes while 70% of all students in juvenile detention facilities come from a home without a dad. There certainly is no exact correlation here – not all fatherless children commit suicide or are incarcerated. These statistics do show however, a severe degree of pain and heartache. How dare we dismiss or minimalize such pain with a false forgiveness that squelches someone’s suffering. Would we trust and follow the direction of a doctor who tells us a gunshot to the chest requires no medical attention? Neither should we cover up and leave unattended and un-healed the bruises, cuts, and sometimes deep gashes that come to us in life. To believe forgiveness is pretending is to believe a lie. To believe that lie, is to rob ourselves and others of joy.

God Pays the Debt

Forgiveness is letting go of a rightly held debt. We see this when we say “So-and-so’s debt was forgiven.” What bank would tell us they forgave us our debt if we did not in fact owe them money?

True forgiveness is more than just playing along with an illusion. It means acknowledging that someone has wrongly caused us pain – sometimes minor sometimes life-changing – and that unearned, unwarranted discomfort has placed them in debt to us. We did not deserve whatever we got – a sharp word, getting bypassed wrongly for a promotion, or assault or worse. The pain we experience is the result of sin. Wrongdoing is the culprit and we are not foolish or weak for acknowledging the hurt it has caused.

 False forgiveness pretends the wrong never occurred and tells us to bury whatever pain and discomfort we feel. But God practices forgiveness in a radically different way. Read any of the Old Testament prophets and what do we find – the unbelievably wickedness of God’s people and His anger against them. In His anger against their wrongdoing, God promised:

Because you despised what I tell you and trust instead in oppression and lies, calamity will come upon you suddenly. It will be like a bulging wall that bursts and falls. In an instant it will collapse and come crashing down. You will be smashed like a piece of pottery – shatter so completely that where won’t be a piece left that is big enough to carry coals from a fireplace or a little water from a well. (Isaiah 30:12-14).

In examining the wrongs of His people, God does not shy away from their sin. He calls it for what it is – oppression and deceit (among other things). After detailing their sins, the Lord acted as Judge, pronouncing the debt they owed to Him. The just and right punishment for the inexcusable wrongs? Sudden disaster and destruction. Elsewhere Isaiah and other prophet’s describe this coming, earned punishment as “crying in public squares and in every street…for I will pass through and destroy them all,” (Amos 5:16-17). There is no offer of some neutered forgiveness or hope of pretending all is well. God faces sin squarely, face-to-face, and declares the debt it causes. Wrong must be punished. The wrongdoer must pay the penalty – the debt – of their sin. God minces no words here – evil places us in deep debt to Him and He will not turn a blind eye to the pillaging of His creation by our evil hearts and deeds.

Astonishingly though, God does not insist that we pay our debt of sin. Isaiah 53 shows us entirely the opposite – that God offers to face sin squarely for us and the debt on our behalf so that we can be rescued. Speaking of the future work of Jesus, Isaiah wrote, “When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish he will be satisfied. And because of what he has experienced, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins,” (Is. 53:11).

In one simple verse we see the delight of forgiveness. Jesus offers us forgiveness, but He does not do so lightly. His justice and integrity demand that wrongdoing be punished; sin’s debt must be paid. But rather than force us to pay that debt ourselves, He steps in our place and pays the debt of many. God did not flinch to pay the price of sin. He did not pretend our misdeeds were really childish offenses easily forgiven. No, He chose the long, blood-soaked path that demanded death as just payment of sin. His death paid our debt.

His response after His sacrifice is equally shocking – delight. Isaiah wrote that He was “satisfied” when He saw what His death and anguish achieved: sin was punished, debt was satisfied, people were freed. The result is joy. I often struggle to believe that God finds joy in forgiving us. We often default to assuming God is an impatient Father, tapping His foot and shaking His head while watching us, all the while wondering “when will I get to stop bailing them out.” But God gives us a vastly different picture – He finds great joy, delight even, in forgiving – in acknowledging our wrongdoing and the debt it places us in and then stepping in graciously to pay that price himself so that He can free us from the bondage of sin. For God, forgiveness brings joy and delight (Eph. 1-2, Heb. 12:2).

When we are forgiven, we find delight in undeserved freedom. When we feel and understand the crushing reality of our sin, how profoundly inexcusable our behavior is we perceive and even accept that we owe the one we wronged. We are indebted to them for our sins. In our wrongdoing we have indebted ourselves to them until we can make right what we have made wrong. Unfortunately, no human repayment seems adequate. What is monetary gain for a child whose father has abandoned them for another family? What are tears and apologies when trust has been broken and friends or co-workers betrayed. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, we can forgive many things, but when we perceive the depths of our evil against another we realize no efforts on our part is truly satisfactory. We stand before them and before God totally, inexcusably guilty. With not a penny to our name, we cannot hope to pay those we owe.

Forgiveness brings joy. After being forgiven for committing adultery, conspiracy, and murder, King David wrote “what joy for those whose rebellion is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight! Yes, what joy for those whose record the LORD has cleared of sin,” (Psalm 32:1-2, 6). What David celebrated and what can give us joy today, is that though we are embarrassingly inadequate and unable to pay our debts to others and most importantly our to Creator-King, He offers forgiveness. He faced the price of sin down and paid it in full. He pays the price – we receive our freedom. In our freedom we delight in the One who out of no obligation to us, paid our debt to Him and others. In forgiveness we delight.

To Forgive is to Delight

Accepting forgiveness is easy. Forgiving others is hard. If you are like me, forgiving others can be difficult because a proud part of your heart rises up and says “they did not hurt me, they do not mean enough to me for them to hurt me. I’m stronger than that.” That is all well and good when we are dealing with a guy cutting us off in traffic. It’s a different story when it’s our father. Or our spouse. Or a close friend. It’s different when it’s someone we’ve been transparent and even at times vulnerable with.

Yet despite how much pain we may have wrongfully been dealt, God’s command stands firm, “you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. You must make allowance for each other’s faults and forgive…remember the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others,” (Colossians 3:12-13). Making forgiveness a command seems to steal the joy we could feel from it. Paul probably understood how we all like to accept it but returning in kind is not as easy.

We find joy in forgiving others because their debt can and has been paid. Without Christ, a person who has wronged us cannot really, truly satisfy their debt to us. As a result, we all find ourselves enslaved to sin and each other – there is no way to break free. But at the cross, sin was fully faced, it’s gigantic payment satisfied, and freedom became a possibility. Because Jesus’ faced my sin, I can walk in freedom, no longer shouldering the burden of sin and debt I have racked up against Him. Because Jesus’ paid for the sin of everyone in my life, I can offer them freedom because their debt has been paid as well.

When I want to see someone who has hurt me pay for their wrongdoing, I need only look to the cross. Jesus offered to pay their debt for them to. I can find peace and rest, knowing that the wrongs, however mild or profoundly life-changing, have been confronted. Justice has been meted out – Jesus has satisfied their debt for them (or at the very least offered to if they do not follow Him). I need not feel like I have been cheated, for Jesus has suffered the consequences of their sin for them. The debt owed to me because of their evil has been paid. In light of that – in light of knowing that the debt so-and-so owes me has been paid – I can let go of their debt. I can offer them freedom. I can release them. We can delight in forgiveness because we know the debt they owe us has been paid by Christ.

The delight forgiving brings does not mean it is an easy endeavor. Sometimes merely facing the deep-seated pain someone has caused us alone is a taxing, wrenching endeavor. Nevertheless, we must press into the command Jesus has given us – to forgive (release from debt) as we have been forgiven (been released from our debt). What we owed has been paid by, Jesus. What others owe us has been paid, by Jesus. Forgiving others at times will not be easy or enjoyable at the beginning, but it will bring us joy as we remember the debt Christ has paid for us and that He too has paid the debt others owe us. That is why we can delight in forgiveness.