This is the third of three posts on defining forgiveness. Here's a brief recap.

Recapping My Definition of Forgiveness

So far I've defined forgiveness as...

• giving up the right to get even

• giving up the right to have your offender solve your problems

• letting go of the past and moving into the future

Then I started to give six words for what forgiveness is not:

1. Forgetting

2. Excusing

3. Trusting

Today I'm looking at the last three words.

4. Forgiveness is not reunion.

Just because you forgive someone, it doesn’t mean that you must automatically get back together as friends. I might forgive you but decide that you have betrayed my trust so much that I can’t be with you. For me to reunite with you would be self-destructive.

I’ve seen this when one person has an affair outside of marriage. Let’s say it’s the wife who had the affair and the husband is gracious enough to forgive her. The wife might assume they can just pick up where they left off but the husband says...

I love you and I do forgive you...but I can’t live with you right now. It’s not just the affair, it’s the five years of lying and deception that surrounded the affair. I need some time apart from you to reestablish my trust in you.

Sometimes you can forgive someone and be immediately restored to them. But sometimes forgiving is what frees you to separate from your offender for a season, or even move on from them if they are unhealthy.  

One author summed up reunion like this…

It takes one person to forgive…It takes two to be united. Forgiving happens inside the wounded person…Reunion happens in a relationship between two people. We can forgive a person who never says he is sorry…We cannot be truly reunited unless he is honestly sorry. We can forgive even if we do not trust the person who wronged us once not to wrong us again…Reunion can happen only if we can trust the person who wronged us once not to wrong us again. Forgiving has no strings attached…Reunion has several strings attached.  Lewis Smedes, p. 47, Art of Forgiving

5. Forgiveness is not conditional.

Forgiveness is not based on the other person.  Sometimes people tell me that they’d consider forgiving if they could get an apology but “the guy isn’t even sorry for what he did”.  They might point out verses that connect forgiveness with repentance. For example, Jesus said...

If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. Luke 17:3

There are other verses like this too. But we have to look at the entirety of scripture. I know some people teach that you don’t have to forgive unless your offender apologizes but I think it’s a bad teaching for two reasons. 

The first reason is that unconditional forgiveness is God’s model for us.

God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

God didn’t wait for us to clean up our act before he sent Jesus into the world. He took the first step and it was unconditional.

The second reason forgiveness shouldn’t be unconditional is pure logic. If forgiveness is conditional, that means my offender controls me. As long as my offender doesn’t apologize I am chained to them emotionally and they can always "jerk the chain".

Let’s just take this to the extreme. Let’s say my offender wants to really mess with me and so they say...If I don’t apologize then Remy will stay angry and become resentful and bitter. Remy will think about me the rest of his life. Ha, ha, ha.

No. I want to control my life and not let others control me. So don’t wait for your offender to apologize. Take back control and forgive them.

6. Forgiveness is not a feeling.

Finally, some people refuse to forgive their offender because they don’t feel like it. But if positive feelings toward your offender are required to forgive, I’m not sure forgiveness would even exist.

No, forgiveness is a choice you make to set yourself free from your past. As Lewis Smedes also said…

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.  

This is especially important to understand if you are a victim of abuse or betrayal.

The temptation is to live in the past, obsessing about what was  done to you. But what you need more  than ever is to win back your life. You do that by forgiving your offender and moving on with your life, not looking back. You forgive, in spite of your feelings.

Is it Time to Forgive?

I hope this series of posts helps you understand forgiveness a bit better...what it is and what it isn’t. But my real hope is that you’ll do it. Who is that person to whom you’ve been holding unforgiveness?

Here’s a secret; when you finally let go of the past… that’s when your future opens up. Forgiveness is a word that releases you into your future. But unforgiveness keeps you stuck in your past.

My Prayer for you:

Father we need to confess that even though forgiveness is central to who you are and what it means to follow Jesus, we are often slow to forgive. We have a thousand excuses why we don't need to forgive. Help us to let go of our anger, let go of the past and move into the future that you have for us.  Amen.

Question: What kind of questions still trouble you about forgiveness? Feel free to write me and I’ll email you my response or consider getting my book STUCK that walks you through the process of forgiveness in detail.

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