Forgiveness is central to a life of faith but it's often embarrassingly absent in our lives.

One of the biggest reasons people don’t forgive is because they misunderstand what forgiveness involves. We have too many layers of false information that scares us away from the idea. So today I want to help define forgiveness for us.

Are you holding something against another?

Let’s start with something Jesus said about prayer that gives us insight into forgiveness:

...when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.  Mark 11:25

Forgiveness is the opposite of holding something against someone. It means to let go of the event that separates you from another person.

It’s as if something stands in between you and another person with their offense written all over it. Your relationship is now defined by their offense. It’s all you can see when you look at them. As a result, you continually point to what they did and remind your offender of it.

Forgiveness is when you choose to remove what stands between you and this other person.

Jesus’ words above tell us that if we insist on holding something between us and another person that there will also be something blocking our relationship with God as well. A sobering thought.

Defining Forgiveness

Let me give you three definitions for what it means to forgive:

1. Forgiveness Means giving up the right to get even.

   When someone offends us there is a natural need for justice. We want to balance the scales. We look for payback. We don’t want our offender to get away with something. But forgiveness says, No, I’m not going to get even. I’m not going to retaliate or teach them a lesson. I’m just going to trust that God will somehow make up for my loss.

   You see, when you attempt to get even, you lower yourself to the level of the person who did you wrong, so, you are not better than them.

2. Forgiveness means giving up the right to have your offender solve your problems.

   What I mean is some people will spend their entire life insisting that their mom or dad or ex-wife, etc. fully apologize for what they did and make everything right. That’s just not realistic. That probably won’t happen. And the problem with that is you’ll spend your life waiting for someone else to make you happy. That only gives them power over you. You want to break free from that control.

   Jesus taught us to pray...forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. That tells us that forgiveness cancels a debt. It eliminates it...takes it off the books.

3. Forgiveness Means Letting go of the past and moving into the future.

   Forgiveness gives you your life back. It keeps you from walking backwards into the future focused on the hurt of your past. Isn’t that what you want? Too often, instead of facing the future we sacrifice our future by looking backwards into our past, obsessing on an offense from long ago.  

   It's like driving a car and fixating on the rear view mirror. You can only do that so long until you wreck the car.

There are many layers to forgiveness. To learn more about forgiveness, check out my book STUCK and see other articles on forgiveness on readingremy.com.

Question: How has a past offense kept you from embracing your future?

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