Often it’s assumed that for­give­ness is easy – lit­tle more dif­fi­cult than pro­nounc­ing the word. But in fact there are few things more dif­fi­cult. Blows wound. Wounds pain. Lac­er­a­tions fes­ter. Of itself time doesn’t heal. Then what will heal? What can reduce tor­ment and relieve numb­ness. For­give­ness alone can. But where do we begin?”

The Start­ing Point

Begin with the cross. To begin any­where else means that we have begun with cal­cu­lat­ing: “Should we for­give – and how much? Under what cir­cum­stances should we for­give?” Cal­cu­la­tion in mat­ters that con­cern us fos­ters self-​​interest. We go to the bank to pur­chase our annual RSP. We esti­mate how the inter­est rate is going to fluc­tu­ate in the next few years, and we cal­cu­late which com­bi­na­tion of locked-​​in RSP rate and time period is best – for the bank? Of course not. Best for us. Cal­cu­la­tion feeds self-​​interest.

In the sec­ond place cal­cu­la­tion is fre­quently a con­scious cover-​​up for uncon­scious ratio­nal­iza­tion. Cal­cu­la­tion is a smoke­screen behind which there is, in our uncon­scious, a heart set on vindictiveness.

The Cost of Our Forgiveness

Scrip­ture insists that God’s for­give­ness of us neces­si­tated the death of God’s own Son. In try­ing to fathom this from the Father’s per­spec­tive I pon­der the anguish of our fore­par­ent in faith, Abra­ham. Abra­ham, trudg­ing with leaden foot and leaden heart up the side of Mount Moriah; he and Sarah had waited years for a child, had had none, had given up expect­ing any. Now they have to give up their child to death.

At the last minute the ram was pro­vided. His son didn’t have to die. But when the Father walked Jesus to Cal­vary “he spared not his own Son.” Here the Father bore in his heart the full weight of a dev­as­ta­tion that is inconceivable.

Next we try to fathom what the cross means from the per­spec­tive of the Son. What is it to be for­saken when the sum and sub­stance of your life is unbro­ken inti­macy with your Father? Before our Lord’s Good Fri­day dere­lic­tion we can only fall silent in incomprehension.

When we begin with the cross we have to be stunned at the price God has paid – Father and Son together – for our for­give­ness. In the same instant we are sobered at the deprav­ity in us that neces­si­tated so great a price. When we have trot­ted out all my book­ish, the­o­log­i­cal def­i­n­i­tions of sin we still haven’t grasped – will never grasp – what sin means to God.

The Impli­cates of Forgiveness

If we begin with the cross then the light that the cross sheds will ever be the illu­mi­na­tion by which we see every­thing else con­cern­ing for­give­ness. For instance, Jesus insists that our for­giv­ing our ene­mies mea­sures our inti­macy with God. How can we say we crave being recre­ated in the image of the God for whom for­giv­ing costs him every­thing while we make sure that our non-​​forgiving costs us nothing?

Two hun­dred and fifty years ago John Wes­ley wrote in his diary, “Resent­ment at an affront is sin, and I have been guilty of this a thou­sand times.” Because resent­ment at a real affront, at a real offence, comes nat­u­rally to fallen peo­ple we think it isn’t sin. How­ever, the most seri­ous con­se­quence of our sin­ner­ship is our blind­ness to the fact and nature and scope of it all. Then do we con­tinue to clutch our resent­ment because its smoul­der­ing heat will fuel our self-​​pity and our self-​​justification? Or do we deplore it and drop it at the foot of the cross, know­ing that only the pur­blind do any­thing else?

Unques­tion­ably the offences we sus­tain open up gap­ing wounds within us. We shall be able to for­give them only as we place them along­side what God has already for­given in us. In our Lord’s para­ble of the unfor­giv­ing ser­vant the king for­gives his ser­vant a huge debt; the ser­vant, newly for­given a huge debt, turns around and refuses to for­give a fel­low what­ever this fel­low owes him. The king is livid that the par­don the ser­vant has received he doesn’t extend to oth­ers. The king orders the ser­vant shaken up until some sense is shaken into him. If the ser­vant had refused to for­give his fel­low a pal­try sum, the ser­vant would merely have looked silly. But the amount the ser­vant is owed isn’t pal­try; 100 denarii is six months’ pay. The for­give­ness required of the ser­vant is huge. But the point of the para­ble is this: while the 100 denarii which the ser­vant is owed is no tri­fling sum, it is noth­ing com­pared to the 10,000 tal­ents ($50 mil­lion) that the king has already for­given the servant.

What For­give­ness Does Not Mean

We must be sure we under­stand what for­give­ness does not mean. It does not mean that the offence we are called to for­give is slight. Were it any­thing but griev­ous we’d be smil­ing at it instead of sweat­ing over it.

It does not mean that the offence is excused. We excuse what is excus­able. What is not excus­able, will never be excus­able, can only be forgiven.

For­give­ness does not mean that we are help­less suck­ers invit­ing the world to vic­tim­ize us again. For­give­ness, rather, is a dis­play of ego-​​strength. Jesus can for­give those who slay him just because he has already insisted, “No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord.”

For­give­ness does not mean that the per­son we for­give we regard as a dia­mond in the rough, good-​​at-​​heart. For­give­ness means that the per­son we for­give we regard as depraved in heart – as God’s for­give­ness means as much about us.

For­give­ness does not mean that the per­son we must for­give we must also trust. Many whom we for­give will never be trust­wor­thy. For­give­ness does mean, how­ever, that the per­son we can­not trust we shall nonethe­less not despise.

Any dis­cus­sion of for­give­ness includes for­giv­ing our­selves. If we say, “I can for­give any­one at all except myself,” then surely we have puffed up our­selves most arro­gantly. There is ter­ri­ble arro­gance in say­ing to our­selves, “I’m the great­est sin­ner in the world; the major-​​league cham­pion. I can for­give oth­ers because they are only minor-​​league sin­ners com­pared to me.”

There is no lit­tle blas­phemy here as well. “The blood-​​bought par­don of God, wrought at what cost to him we can’t fathom – it isn’t effec­tive enough for me. Where I’m con­cerned, God’s mercy is defi­cient, defec­tive, and finally worth­less.” This is blasphemy.

If we say we can’t for­give our­selves then plainly we want to fla­gel­late our­selves in order to atone for our sin. But the heart of the gospel is this: atone­ment has already been made for us. All we need do is own it in faith.

Then we must end where we began: at the cross. For it is here that God, for Christ’s sake, has for­given us. And here, there­fore, we must for­give oth­ers, and for­give our­selves as well.

Texts for Reflection

• Micah 7:18–20
• Psalm 32
• Colos­sians 3:12–17
• Matthew 18:21–35

Explor­ing Further

• Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giv­ing and For­giv­ing in a Cul­ture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids: Zon­der­van, 2006).
• Miroslav Volf, The End of Mem­ory: Remem­ber­ing Rightly in a Vio­lent World (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerd­mans, 2006).
• H. R. Mack­in­tosh, The Chris­t­ian Expe­ri­ence of For­give­ness (New York: Harper, 1927).
• C.S. Lewis, “Fern Seed and Ele­phants,” in Fern Seed and Ele­phants and Other Essays on Chris­tian­ity (Lon­don: Fount, 1975), pp. 39–43.