One of the most commonly asked questions for Christians is how to forgive someone who has deeply hurt them. Particularly, because these are the circles I’m engaged in often these days, Christians who have experienced abuse, neglect, or infidelity from their spouses really struggle with this question. 

Part of the struggle is due to a confusion about the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation; if you forgive does that mean take them back? If you don’t take them back does that mean you’re unforgiving? My answer to both of those is no, but sometimes yes, for reasons that should be clear by the end of this post.

Another part of the struggle with the difficulty of forgiveness is living in a weird tension between Christian and secular culture, one of which revels in grudges against ex-spouses, and the other which can apply external pressure to forgive too quickly. It’s a confusing place to be.

Another difficulty with forgiveness, which I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard talked about in church, is these two seemingly conflicting ideas in the New Testament. (1) God alone can forgive sins, and (2) If you don’t forgive others’ sins then God will not forgive yours.

• Mark 2:7 (ESV) “Why does this man [Jesus] speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who is able to forgive sins but God alone?” 

• Matthew 6:14 (ESV) “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Jesus speaking) 

How are we supposed to forgive each other’s sins if God alone has the power to forgive sins?

This apparent contradiction makes me wonder if we really understand what forgiveness is, how it works, and where it comes from. How do these two ideas fit together? How do you forgive when only God can forgive?

God, Justice and the Reality of Forgiveness

Forgiveness as a concept is directly related to the concept of justice. Without justice, forgiveness makes no sense. Forgiveness falls alongside retribution, punishment, judgment, acquittal, wrath, grace, and mercy as responses to wrongdoing of various kinds. In this list are 3 separate categories: Legal Responses (judgment, forgiveness, acquittal), Emotional Responses (wrath, mercy), and Active Responses (punishment, retribution, grace).

Here are some basic definitions:

Legal Responses to Wrongdoing

• -Judgment (a determination of guilt)

• -Forgiveness (pardoning of someone previously found guilty)

• -Acquittal (determination of innocence)

Emotional Responses to Wrongdoing

• -Wrath (righteous indignation)

• -Mercy (not administering a deserved penalty)

Active Responses to Wrongdoing

• -Retribution (retaliation, repaying in kind)

• -Punishment (carrying out of a deserved sentence)

• -Grace (granting of undeserved kindness or favor)

 Admittedly this is not a perfect categorization for two reasons. First, mercy isn’t as much an emotional response as a motivation (compassion), and second, retribution fits in both legal and active categories. 

All of these concepts operate within a system of justice. The basic definition of justice is a right standard, both in dealing with issues of good and evil, as well as social issues. Justice is a right standard. The standard, of course, being God Himself. Understanding God as the standard is vital to proper interpretation of the Bible, because the alternative is to see the standard of justice as something God operates within. God’s actions aren’t merely just because God always acts in a just manner. God’s actions are justice, definitively. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. God is the reason we know anything. God is the reason we have a sense of justice. As the Being whose existence explains the existence of justice, whatever God does IS justice. Actions are just or unjust on the basis of whether or not they match God’s character and righteousness. 

How do we know what matches God’s character (those things we must forgive)? God gives an amazing description of His character to Moses in Exodus 34:7. God tells Moses he is going to proclaim His name to him, that is, to explain what his name, Yahweh, means. God descends in a cloud around Moses and says

 “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (ESV)

The key phrase to focus on: “forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.”

• Forgiving iniquity (He forgives sins)

• Will by no means clear the guilty (He always punishes sin)

These two statements about God’s righteousness are reiterated numerous times throughout the Old Testament as well. This sounds like the description of two different deities, one who is loving and forgiving and caring and compassionate, and the other vengeful. But this is Yahweh, who says He is both. So how do we make sense of this?

The Answer to the Tension: Just and Justifier

The answer to the tension between these two concepts, which will be the key to understanding the forgiveness question, is found in Romans 3. These two concepts were fired off in the Old Testament, and in the New, we get to see where they land. This is a very helpful way to understand the Old Testament’s relationship to the New Testament.  Think of the New Testament as a shot pattern on a target at a shooting range. As the shooter fires off rounds at the target, the shot placement on the target is the New Testament. The Old Testament is everything that came before that determines the shot placement. The shooter’s stance, heart rate, breathing pattern, grip on the firearm, sight picture, trigger squeeze…like a golf swing, every little detail works to determine the trajectory of each round downrange. The New Testament is the result of everything that happened in the Old Testament. Some things in the Old Testament don’t make sense until we get to the New Testament to see where the bullets hit the target. This is one of those instances. How do these two seemingly conflicting character traits of God land on the target paper? 

Paul wrote the letter to the Romans for a few reasons, one of which was to help the church in Rome understand how Jewish and Gentile Christians were to interact with each other, and how they were to view each other in light of their own unique relationship to God, or in some ways how their relationship to God was exactly the same. In 39 AD all the Jews were forced out of Rome, and not long before Paul wrote his letter they had been allowed back in. So for a time the church in Rome was entirely Gentile, so with the re-introduction of Jewish Christians into the Roman church there were some confusions about understanding each other.

Paul spends the first 3 chapters talking about different types of righteousness, or right standing with God. Jews and Gentiles alike had righteousness that was insufficient. All human beings are fallen by nature, and while the Jews were given the Law and the Prophets and the covenants with God, their law-keeping never could save them. So a right standing with God can never be on the basis of behavior or belonging to the right group.

In Romans 3:19-21 Paul points out that the Law stops the mouths of sinful people, because before God they become defenseless because the Law’s impossibly high righteous demands demolish any defense before God. “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.”

So, if a right standing before God cannot be gained by behavior or by belonging to the Jews, a synagogue, or a church, then how does one come into a right relationship with God?

3:21-24 (NET) But now apart from the law the righteousness of God (which is attested by the law and the prophets) has been disclosed— namely, the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

The righteousness we must have to have a right standing with God was earned by Jesus and is credited to us by faith.

The next two verses answer the question of how God is both forgiving and will always punish sin.

3:25-26 (NET) God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed. This was also to demonstrate his righteousness in the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who lives because of Jesus’ faithfulness

What’s so interesting is that the Jewish nation, under the Law of Moses, was given a sacrificial system through which their sins were forgiven. Jesus fulfills that system. But also Hebrews 10:4 says “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”  The sacrificial system, it turns out, was insufficient to adequately remove sins so that God can live among His people. Through sacrifices temporary covering for sin was given, but the sin nature could not be taken away by it. This is what Paul means by God passing over the sins previously committed. 

By putting the Son on the cross and making him guilty of the world’s sins, God proved to the world that He is just and that sin must be punished and not merely pardoned or excused. The balance of justice must be accomplished. Sin cannot be excused in the interest of love, because a lack of justice is unloving. So God proved Himself just in the punishment of sin on Jesus. And He simultaneously enacted the justification of sinners through the only adequate remedy for sin, the blood of one truly innocent. So through the death of Jesus God proved Himself just, and became the justifier of those who live because of Christ.

Forgiveness is God’s responsibility. Only God has the authority to forgive sins, because it is God’s law we break when we sin. If your loved one is murdered and the perpetrator is arrested and goes to trial, it is not in your power to pardon them, because it’s not your law they broke. You can forgive, but you can’t pardon them. Forgiving them means choosing not to seek retribution yourself because they are accountable to the State’s justice system.

Forgiveness is a Posture, Not an Act

This means that forgiveness between people is a posture, not an act. It is a choice to not seek vengeance and to trust in their accountability to God. Forgiveness is not a one-time act as if we have some kind of internal mechanism that we activate that makes it happen. You can’t forgive anybody’s sins. Only God can. But you can choose to treat someone who has wronged you as one God has forgiven. When Jesus went on the cross He actively paid for all sins of all time. All of humanity’s sin record was wiped out 2000 years ago. No one has unpaid sin. Those who die without knowing Christ do not remain in a punished separation from God to pay for their sins. The Bible never says hell is where people pay for their sins. Jesus paid for their sins. People go to hell for rejecting their Savior.

So, if forgiveness between people is a posture and not an act, that means that it’s absolutely understandable why it feels like you have to do it over and over again when someone has wronged you very deeply. It’s ok. You’re human. You forgave, and then a year later you smelled a perfume that reminded you of her and suddenly all the old emotions came back and you find yourself angry again. So does that mean if you’re mad about her again that you never really forgave? Absolutely not! You’re human with a wound. Choosing to not seek vengeance and trusting in God’s justice does not mean you can’t ever feel pain about it again.

So how do you forgive?

We started off with the two seemingly contradictory ideas:

• God alone has the power to forgive sins,

• We must forgive or our sins will not be forgiven.

First, remember that the Gospels are Old Covenant era revelation. When Jesus taught, the New Covenant hadn’t been enacted yet. It had “arrived” but wouldn’t take effect until after the resurrection. In the Gospels forgiveness of sins is often stated as a future potential. “Then God will forgive you of your sins,” or “God will not forgive your sins.” But when you read the New Testament epistles, particularly those of Paul, forgiveness is put in past tense. “God forgave you your sins.”

Sins were forgiven at the cross. So when Jesus warns if you don’t forgive others God will not forgive you, that means something a little different to us now than it did to them, although it still stands as a warning. If you refuse to forgive someone, refuse to act in response to Jesus paying for their sins, refuse to act with grace toward them not seeking vengeance because they are accountable to God and not you, then that demonstrates your own refusal to acknowledge your sins before God.

Remember how Paul said that the Law stops the mouths of people because its demands prove they are accountable to God and without defense? Before you can really forgive someone, you first must have your own mouth stopped.

Those who forgive most have been forgiven most

The idea of confessing our sins to God sounds simple until we realize the Greek word in the New Testament means to agree. It means to be of the same mind as the one you are confessing to. So before you can forgive someone you have to come to terms with your own desperate need for a Savior. If you have not come to a point of recognition of your sin before God such that you are willing to say “Strike me down or raise me up to new life” because you know you have no righteousness to offer God…if you’ve never acknowledged your guilt before God to such an extent that you actually agree with Him in that you deserve eternal separation from Him…then you most likely do not belong to Him. The one who forgives much is one who has been forgiven much.

The more you’ve been forgiven, the easier it is to forgive, because you realize if you are that sinful, then the other person’s behavior is no worse than your own. Because the severity of sins is never to be evaluated in comparsion with other sins, but in comparsion to the One sinned against. As the Puritans used to say, it’s not that you’ve offended a chief or mayor of some town, but the Almighty Lord of Glory. So if you compare your sin to Christ, and your offender’s sins to Christ…rather than comparing your offender’s sins to yourself…then you can forgive because you see justly and know that God is just and your justifier.

Your path to forgiveness is your path to the cross.