What it means to forgive
What does it mean to forgive someone?
When I think of the word “forgive,” I think of “letting go”. Letting go of my negative feelings toward someone who wronged me or telling them “don’t worry about it” after they hurt me.
By definition, the meaning of the word “forgive” is to cancel a debt that someone caused. This debt can be financial if the offender damaged my property, or it can be emotional if the offender damaged my emotions.
On paper, canceling a debt sounds like a nice thing to do, but it can actually be pretty difficult in practice because of how costly it is.
For example: if someone scratches my car, and it’s THEIR fault, then that means that legally THEY’RE the one who’s legally obligated to finance the repairs. That’s just the most fair way to fix the damages.
However… forgiveness isn’t too concerned about fixing damages in a way that’s “fair”. By nature, forgiveness is actually a practice that’s very UNFAIR—except instead of being unfair to the OFFENDER, forgiveness volunteers to accept the more unfair position ITSELF. Forgiveness seeks to put the OFFENDER in the more favorable position. Isn’t that crazy?
When I “forgive” someone, what I’m actually doing is using my own resources to pay for that other person’s mistake.
In the scratched car example, if I were to forgive the offender, I would basically be telling him,
“I won’t charge you to repair the damages you caused because I will finance the repairs with my own money.”
Spending my own money to fix someone else’s mistakes is pretty wild, but that’s what forgiveness is.
But money isn’t the only resource that can be spent in the process of forgiveness. Sometimes the ways people hurt me aren’t just financially—sometimes the damages can be emotional. For example, if someone close to me insults my intelligence, then the damages they’ve inflicted on me are emotional rather than financial. To forgive that person would require me to say:
“You don’t have to feel bad about what you said, because I volunteer to absorb all of the pain myself.”
Absorbing the damage instead of trying to inflict it back on the offender is what real forgiveness looks like.
Forgiveness goes against the grain
Forgiving an offender is pretty counter-intuitive. When someone wrongs me, my natural instinct is to wrong them back or at least demand that THEY be the one to repair the damages.
I think it’s easy to look at forgiveness and think that it’s “boring” because it’s what nice, vanilla people do… but forgiving someone is actually pretty against-the-grain. Paying for someone else’s mistake is definitely the more difficult of the two paths.
If the status quo is having the offender pay for the damages, then the act of forgiveness is so much more shocking and edgy than that.
Jesus forgave
Because sin leads to death, when God forgave me for my sins, what he did wasn’t just saying the words “I forgive you”. No, but in order to REALLY forgive me of my sins, he actually had to spend his own resources to pay for the damages that were caused by MY sins. When my sins caused the damages of death, Jesus basically said:
“The damage you caused was death, but I’m not gonna send you the bill for it, because I will finance it with my own resources.”
And then he willingly volunteered to spend his own life as a resource to pay for the damages. Isn’t that crazy? Jesus used HIS own life to pay for the damages of MY sins. Wow.
Benefits of Forgiveness
Forgiveness isn’t just some noble idea for me strive for—there are actually some real benefits that the forgiver experiences from practicing it.
The alternative is destructive: Failing to forgive only leads to bitterness and passive aggression which are both self-destructive tendencies that will only hurt myself in the long run.
Forgiveness facilitates inner peace: Forgiveness allows me to move on with my life and look for new opportunities, whereas holding on to a grudge just detracts from my quality of life. If my options are inner peace or inner turmoil, I’m going to strive for inner peace.
Forgiveness inspires change: Truly forgiving the offender of a serious wrong could be an experience deep enough to cause the offender to change for the better and adopt a more selfless way of life.
Conclusion
Forgiving someone is much deeper than just saying “I forgive you”. It’s actually using MY OWN resources to finance the repairs that the offender caused. Forgiveness isn’t fair: it counterintuitively favors the person who is in the wrong. Jesus demonstrated forgiveness towards me.