What do we mean by ‘forgiveness’? If you’re meant to forgive someone, what does this actually mean?
I fear that a lot of the ways we talk about forgiveness in the church are slightly out of step with how the Bible talks about forgiveness. While a thorough exegesis of the relevant passages would be helpful, I would like to suggest that one of the key problems is that we (and the Bible) use the word ‘forgiveness’ to cover three different realities that we often conflate.
It’s pastorally important to carefully distinguish between these categories. Ideally none of these would be called ‘forgiveness’ as they are all forgiveness, unfortunately I haven’t figured out an appropriately different name for the first of these three realities.
Psychological Forgiveness
The first of these is the one that most evangelicals today mean when they talk about forgiveness. I suspect that the various authors of the Bible mean this a lot less often than we read it into the text, though proving that would take something longer than a blog post.
By psychological forgiveness I mean the thing that we do within our own hearts that is primarily between us and God. This doesn’t involve the person who has wronged us and is done for our own psychological and spiritual benefit. It is, in essence, a deliberate choice to remember that we do not have a right of revenge, and instead vengeance belongs to God alone (Romans 12). It is choosing to place the person in the dock of God’s law court rather than in our own so that God alone can judge them. It is recognising that only God has the right to make those judgements and choosing to accept as good and true and beautiful whatever the Lord, in the fullness of time, judges to be right.
This has almost nothing to do with whoever wronged us and instead has almost everything to do with our own conception of God and his justice. It’s a choice, though usually more a long series of continually made choices than a one-off moment. It’s a vital part of discipleship. When someone says, ‘you need to forgive them,’ if they mean this sort of recognition that only God has the right of revenge to the way they hurt you, then they are correct. Telling the person that has wronged you that you’ve done this isn’t that meaningful.
This is rarely what the Bible means by forgiveness. However, lots of people who have noticed that then move to deny that ‘psychological forgiveness’ is real. I suspect a different term would make these things clearer, but these are Biblical concepts. It’s possible that the modern sense of self makes this more important than it was at times in the past, but this is difficult to ascertain.
Reconciliation
The second of these is, I think, the thing that the Bible most often means by the word ‘forgive,’ though again proving that would be a harder task.
By reconciliation I mean something that requires an interaction with the person who wronged you. If they apologise and ask for your forgiveness then this is what they mean. Reconciliation involves the person who has wronged the other repenting to them, acknowledging the wrong of what they did clearly, and the wronged person then choosing to reconcile with them.
This involves relationship that was ruptured being ‘restored’ or, as we’ll see below, perhaps it’s better to refer to that as ‘repaired.’ There was a relational breach, you discuss the breach, one or both recognise their sin and own it, and then the breach is repaired.
If a Christian brother or sister is repentant you do have a duty to reconcile with them. Where they are not repentant you do not have this duty to reconcile. You must ‘forgive’ in this sense those who repent, you do not have to ‘forgive’ those who do not. We find this difficult in multiple ways, not least because the sentence ‘you don’t have to forgive’ gets our backs up, because we think of the wrong meaning of forgiveness. Sometimes Christians confuse this with the first category and so declare that ‘you need to forgive them.’ You do not need to do anything with the other person if they are not repentant of their sin against you. Of course, they may not be aware of their sin unless you confront them with it.
Reconciliation does not mean that everything goes back to how it was. This is not a get out of jail free card for relational abusers. It does mean an attempt at relationship should be tried, and a lot more times than we really feel like it should be (Matthew 18). Of course, after 70 relationship ruptures along the same lines you’re going to want some healthy boundaries, but Jesus is starkly clear that you have to try anyway.
All relationships require rounds of rupture and repair if they are going to grow. All of this is much harder to do than type.
Restoration
This, also under the banner of forgiveness, is when a ruptured relationship is repaired to be as good as, or often better than, it was to begin with. This does not automatically happen with reconciliation, but with repentant Christians it will be the eventual outcome of reconciliation.
The reason that this distinction needs to be made is because we often assume that reconciliation means everything is ‘back to how it was.’ It isn’t. Whatever happened did happen and it changed everyone involved. Restoration is always possible with Jesus, but it would be unusual for it to be immediate. Trust takes time to regrow. Those who are wounded need time to heal.
Christians who insist that everything should be back to ‘how it was’ because you’ve reconciled are misunderstanding this difference. The eventual end of the reconciliation wrought for us on the Cross is the restoration of all things in the cosmos. All things are reconciled and therefore all things are unmarred, reconstituted, and all of worst of us is ‘made untrue.’
We long for this taste of the Kingdom of God in our interpersonal relationships, but it’s not straightforward, it’s marred by the sin of everyone involved (not just the one who did the wounding), and it tends to take time.
God’s forgiveness of us
Jesus’ forgiveness of us, as won through his death on our behalf, is all three of these. It is a declaration that God can have revenge on us as he is the true wounded party in all of our sin, but that he has chosen to acquit us instead. It is an invitation for reconciliation between man and God. It is a promise that one day all things will be made right and the true intimacy that Adam and Eve experienced in Eden’s garden will be the joy of all people who trust Jesus as relationship is truly restored.
When we forgive, we are trying to live out all that will one day be.
Photo by Angelo Moleele on Unsplash
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