“Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the one who sinned against you to DIE.”
Unknown
Unforgiveness
Getting over guilt, pain, and failure is not a walk in the park. It’s more like a fall from the monkey bars! But compared to living with the feeling of unforgiveness, it’s all a piece of cake. Unforgiveness is the state you live in when you cannot forgive someone who has hurt you or when you feel like you can’t be forgiven for something you’ve done. And when you live in it, it can become a strong undercurrent in everything you do and say. You might not consciously think about the pain of unforgiveness, but your body holds on to it for dear life, and so it takes all of your energy and taints most of your decisions. Unforgiveness that is lived with for years and years literally shapes who you become. It affects all your relationships and your choices. It shapes you into its image and pulls you away from the image of Christ. After all, Christ’s reason for existence here on earth was forgiveness. He himself brought forgiveness for all. And so failing to fully take hold of forgiveness is failure to take hold of Christ himself.
But forgiveness isn’t easy and it isn’t natural. In fact, the world encourages us to avoid it. We all by nature seem to distrust others’ motives; we all assume the worst when people are mean or hurtful. We see them as bad and as unlovable. We resent what they have done to us, and we want some kind of justice to be done. We want the score to be settled, even if we have to do it ourselves. And so we live our lives with thoughts of paying back evil for evil and setting things right. But when it comes to getting forgiveness for our own mistakes, we live with fear and worry, stress and strain over the terrible thing we have done that we think we could never be forgiven of by any human, let alone God.
Why is this? Because inside each of us is this notion that sin requires punishment. When we see something bad happen, we say stuff like “That’s not fair” or “Someone needs to do something about that.” We know deep within our DNA that wrong deserves discipline, and as fallen human beings we are eager to hand out some of that ourselves. We even want to punish ourselves at times when our own sin seems just too ugly for anyone to forgive. This sense that what we have done is too big even for God’s grace isn’t an unusual one. Millions of people all over the world are living in this kind of pain, which is such a shame because getting over unforgiveness is actually one of the easiest things a person could ever do, and we’re gonna tell you how to do it.
Before we dive in, let’s just take a little quiz to see how much we have been able to get over so far, shall we? Answer the questions on page 139 before you read on.
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are living with unforgiveness, and it’s got to be painful. Unforgiveness left to fester in your heart leads to all kinds of yuck. Stuff like bitterness, anger, resentment, and even depression can come from the fact that someone has done something wrong to you and you can’t get over it and forgive them. It eats you from the inside out, and it’s not a good way to live. People can do some things that are just plain awful, and it’s horrible when they do them to you. But what’s even more horrible is living with the pain day in and day out, just like they are hurting you over and over. It’s no way to live—and it’s not the way God wants you to live.
If you didn’t answer yes to any of these, then congrats! That’s awesome. But while you don’t have to read on, it might just be a good exercise to study forgiveness so you can share it with others around you who struggle with the concept. So let’s get going down the path of getting over what people do to other people and what we do to God.
The Symptoms of Unforgiveness
If you took the quiz, then you are probably starting to get the idea that unforgiveness brings with it all kinds of terrible little traits that trip you up and make your life miserable. Some of the most obvious symptoms of not being able to get over what someone has done are bitterness, resentment, anger, a desire for revenge, and even depression. They make you a victim of the past action perpetrated against you and of your own unforgiveness. But when you live under the grace of God, this tragedy doesn’t have to redefine you. When you can learn to get over the pain and even get through to forgiveness, you can take what has happened to you and turn it into a good thing, another tool in the hand of the potter who is shaping you and building you into a vessel useful for his service, instead of forever remaining a victim of the hands of someone else.
This failure to get over what has been done to you leads to obsessing over it—thinking about it all the time, talking about it nonstop, even dreaming of it. And that stresses you out. It makes you irritable, uneasy, and even sick. It can give you stomachaches, ulcers, heart problems, and all kinds of stress. When your body is under such pressure, you can want to medicate yourself to feel better. You may start down the nasty road of trying to numb the pain by drinking, cutting, doing drugs, having sex—anything you can find to stop the pain brought on not just by the actual experience but also by continually reliving it in your mind. Yep, unforgiveness is a doorway to all kinds of junk.
When forgiveness isn’t something you need to give someone else but something that you need to get, things can get just as bad. Living with feelings of guilt, like we talked about in chapter 2, can lead to all kinds of problems, the worst of which is just ending it all. See, our bodies weren’t meant to live holding on to such pressure and doling out such judgment. We need to take all our pain and suffering, all our guilt and shame to the cross and leave it there. But refusing to do that a lot of times is the easier choice. We do some pretty bad stuff, and then we think that a holy God could never forgive it. And that kind of agony will taint everything you do and say. It will steal your confidence, dash your hope, and destroy your ability to love anything but the pain that you nurse day in and day out. That’s the trouble with unforgiveness: it makes the pain of the offense the most important thing in the world. But we all know God should hold that number one position. So in order to start you on the road to forgiveness, let’s take a look first at how forgiveness takes place.
Feeling Unforgivable?
We mentioned earlier that Jesus came to earth with the sole purpose of forgiving us sinful humans. You realize that, right? He gave up his heavenly existence (see Phil. 2:6–8) and became a baby who was born in a stinky, cold, uncomfortable stable. He lived a simple life, not filled with the royal treatment, fine food, and expensive clothes but with nothing but the shirt on his back as he walked from town to town healing the sick and forgiving the repentant. He suffered a horrendous death on the cross, ridiculed and scorned by people who thought they were better than him, all for the purpose of forgiving you for your sins. Why would he put in all that work and go through all that pain and suffering if it wasn’t enough to forgive you for your incredibly horrible sins (see Gal. 2:21)? Sounds silly when you put it that way, doesn’t it? Not only is it silly, but it’s blasphemous to say that Jesus’s death and resurrection wasn’t enough for you because your sin is a particularly impossible case. But that’s what you say when you declare, “God can never forgive me for what I did” or “I can’t forgive myself for what I did.” Let’s take a look at these two statements, shall we?
“God can never forgive me for what I did.”
As believers we all fully realize that sin deserves punishment. But where we get it wrong is when we start to grade sins on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being little sins and 10 being monster sins that deserve life in prison or the death penalty. As human beings we understand the concept of judgment a whole lot better than the concept of grace. Grace, God’s kindness to sinners, makes no sense to us when sins start to clock out at an 8, a 9, or even a 10.
Everyone’s sin scale is different, but most would agree that murder, for example, is tipping the scale at a big 1-0. Doesn’t get much bigger than that. And child abuse is probably up at the top end of the scale too. Sexual perversion, rape, torture—those have got to be high on everyone’s list as well. In fact, this scale is even recognized by the most hardened, unrepentant criminals in the world—prisoners in maximum security prisons have a special hatred for certain sinners. Did you know that they consider child murderers and child abusers to be heinous criminals and single them out for special ridicule and attack? Even these hardened convicts rate sins by how disgusting they are. It’s human nature. And it’s where our sense of being too sinful for forgiveness comes from.
If the sin you struggle with seems especially high on the scale to you, then accepting God’s forgiveness can become almost impossible unless you understand one very important spiritual concept. And it’s this: according to God, all sin is equally bad. All of it. There is no sliding scale. All of it is a prideful turning away from our Creator toward ourselves and our desires. And it all requires the blood of Jesus to cover it up. That’s why the girl who disobeys her parents needs just as much forgiveness as the man who tortures Christians for their faith. God’s grace doesn’t see degrees of evil; it just sees evil and forgives it all based on one thing: the sacrifice of Jesus.
A good example of this is the life of Paul. Doesn’t it seem like he would feel the most sinful and least worthy of forgiveness when he had just stopped torturing Christians? But remember what he said about himself as time went on and he grew closer to God? Early in his faith he called himself the worst of the apostles, then as he got further along in his faith he saw himself as the worst of all sinners (see 1 Cor. 15:9; 1 Tim. 1:15–16). He didn’t consider his early violent sin to be worse than his post-salvation sin. In fact, he saw the sin he committed long into his walk of faith as adding up to more horror than his prior sin, not because of the level of sin but because of his level of awareness that all sin is against God. The more you understand the grace of God, the more you realize how much he has forgiven you of. And when you see that, every day is a miracle. Every day you live in his grace is unbelievable. Every sin he forgives is awesome—not just the big ugly ones but the little unseen ones. Even the acceptable ones that other people would never blink an eye at are totally unacceptable to the new you. So know that no sin you could commit could ever separate you from his grace (see Rom. 8:38–39).
No matter what your sin, God’s promise is the same: if you confess your sins, he is faithful to forgive them (1 John 1:9). Once you confess your sin, the next step is change or repentance. That just means you decide to stop living in that sin any longer. That doesn’t mean you might not occasionally slip up and take the bait of temptation, but it does mean that as soon as you figure out what you did, you stop and confess again right there. You don’t say, “Oh well, I’ll just do this for now and ask forgiveness later.” No, you call a sin a sin and then thank God for his immediate forgiveness. It’s that simple. So know that your sin, no matter how ugly, isn’t too ugly for the blood of Christ to cover it and make you white as snow (see Isa. 1:18).
“I can’t forgive myself for what I did.”
But what if what’s hard for you isn’t believing God but forgiving yourself? What if you just can’t stop feeling bad about it, can’t get over it, and keep thinking you deserve punishment? Maybe you take that job on yourself and you start to hurt yourself, neglect yourself, or otherwise pay yourself back for your royal mess-up. No matter what, saying that you can’t forgive yourself is saying that your standards are higher than God’s. Sure, he can forgive you for what you did, but your rules are more strict than his—you’ve got standards, after all, and you broke ’em.
First of all, let’s just clear up one thing: when you sin you don’t break anybody’s law but God’s. If you break your own rules, it’s not a sin, because sin is always something done against God. So whose forgiveness do you need—yours or God’s? Since the Bible never commands you to “forgive thyself for thy sinful ways,” you can stop with the crazy notion that you even need to forgive yourself. Okay? Let that thought be just an error of your youth (or some pop psychologist), and let’s get on with wisdom.
The only forgiveness you need is from God, and the only thing you need to do for yourself is to get over it. That means you have to get over thinking you are some kind of special sinner who needs more grace than all the rest of us and get over not trusting God with handling judgment. It’s a terrible thing to take something that is God’s; he’s not cool with that. Vengeance is his (see Rom. 12:19) and so is judgment (see Ps. 75:7), so why are you trying to dole it out on yourself? That’s just crazy talk. So getting over the sense that you just can’t forgive yourself takes only one thing: you have to stop playing God. No offense, but that’s what it is, and it isn’t something new—we all do it. Hayley’s done it many times; Michael’s done it; we all do it. It’s part of our sinful nature. We think we’ve got our lives covered and feel confident that we know what’s best for us, and in the case of our most horrible sins, we are sure that something must be done. But something has been done! It was done over two thousand years ago, and nothing you can do can improve upon it. So get over it and get on with God’s grace, his free forgiveness for all who ask for it. It’s yours for the taking today—all you have to do is take it!
And one more thing: we know that in light of your sin, it can be easy to think that you’ve messed up too much to ever be used by God. That just isn’t true. God specializes in using broken and sinful people to further his kingdom. Just look at the life of David, who was called a man after God’s own heart (see Acts 13:22). He slept with Bathsheba, then killed her husband to cover up the whole thing (see 2 Sam. 11). Look at the life of Paul, who was used to pen much of the New Testament even though he had killed Christians before his conversion. God’s specialty is using sinful people. So get over the idea that you’ve messed up worse than a murderer and a persecutor. Even if you have, it’s no surprise to God, and your level of sinfulness has nothing to do with his ability to get things done through you.
Unable to Forgive
Okay, we’ve figured out how to accept the forgiveness of God in your life. Now let’s talk about your inability to get over or to forgive someone who has hurt you. Thinking about forgiving the sin that others have done to you can make you sick to your stomach, but as we’ve talked about already, not forgiving can be even worse. The side effects of unforgiveness are overwhelming, so let’s see if we can’t help you get over unforgiveness toward others.
When Jesus was on earth, he talked about forgiveness and how important it is. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Since he has offered you forgiveness for anything you could ever do, why wouldn’t he expect you to do the same? Maybe you’ve read the story of the worker who was forgiven a huge debt he owed his boss but then went out and immediately threw a guy in jail for the small amount he owed him (see Matt. 18:21–35). Jerk! Who would be forgiven a huge debt and then freak out on someone who owed him five bucks? Since God has forgiven you so much ugly, repeated, selfish, prideful sin, shouldn’t you have mercy on other human beings who mess up just like you? Makes sense, right? So let’s take a look at a few of the things that God says about forgiveness.
In the book of Matthew, Jesus talks about our forgiveness beyond just confessing and repenting. He says that it requires something of you in relationship to other people—your forgiveness. Check it out: “If you forgive the failures of others, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your failures” (Matt. 6:14–15; see also Matt. 18:21–35).
“Our forgiving others is not a cause of God’s forgiving us, but it is a condition without which He will not forgive us.”
— Thomas Watson, The Lord’s Prayer
So if you can’t get over what someone has done to you, then how can you expect God’s forgiveness? That one hurts us too. How many times do we condemn other people for their sin while we have ugly sin of our own? How crazy is that? We hate that. But we aren’t judging you for doing the same thing we are doing, because we know we’re wallowing around in the same swamp. That’s our condition—we are all stuck in the same swamp of sin, so judging someone else for their inability to get out of the thick, sticky swamp is ridiculous since you can’t get out of it either.
In Colossians the apostle Paul says, “Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others” (Col. 3:13 NLT). It couldn’t be any more clear: God commands forgiveness. It’s a part of his nature, and he wants it to be a part of ours. But before you freak out and say you just can’t do it, let us clear up a few confusing ideas about forgiveness.
First of all, you can forgive someone for their sins, but that doesn’t mean that you suddenly forget. And that means that forgiveness doesn’t mean suddenly naïvely trusting them not to hurt you yet again; it just means offering them grace and not using their offense against them again. How do you do it? When you forgive someone, you promise not to hold what they did against them, using it as leverage to get them to do what you want or as an excuse to be angry with them. You don’t ever throw it in their face or use it as a source of friction between you. When God forgives a sinner of their sin, he doesn’t hold their sin against them and keep them from his presence, but he says, “I won’t let what you did separate you from me any longer.” So you can’t hold a grudge after forgiving someone. And that’s good, because that means that you can’t get all frustrated, bitter, or angry anymore because you’ve gotten over it. That’s a good thing.
The second thing that happens when you forgive someone is that you promise not to tell other people about what they did. You don’t complain, share, vent, or anything of the sort unless they could be a danger to others (like an abuser). Other than those cases where the other person is committing crimes against you or others and the authorities need to be involved, you keep your mouth shut because you have forgiven them. To keep talking about it is to prove that you have not forgiven them at all.
And finally, when you forgive someone, you promise not to obsess over it. You don’t think about it over and over, imagining how you could have responded or thinking about what they should have done. You don’t keep it in your head; you get over it. You’ve got to, because if you keep thinking about it, you keep convicting them of what they’ve done, and that’s the opposite of forgiveness. The Bible says that God removes our sin from us “as far as the east is from the west” (Ps. 103:12 NIV). That means he doesn’t keep thinking about it but puts it out of his mind. So each time what the person did comes into your thoughts, don’t freak like you’ve failed; just say, “No, I’m not gonna think about that anymore.” And then change the subject for yourself. That’s how forgiveness becomes real.
Peter asked Jesus how many times we should forgive someone—“seven times?” With this Peter thought he was being generous, but Jesus answered, “No, not seven times but seventy times seven!” (see Matt. 18:21–22). The point Jesus made with Peter wasn’t to keep count a different way but to always forgive, no matter how many times it’s been. Use this to help you to forgive the person again every time you start to want to think about or talk about what happened. There is no limit to how many times you need to just get over it.
What Forgiveness Looks Like
Now, with some people forgiveness isn’t possible in the sense of literally saying to them, “I forgive you for what you have done to me.” And here’s why: if someone has sinned but has not confessed the sin or repented from it, then you can’t verbally offer them forgiveness. See, God’s Word puts a condition on forgiveness for all of us. We get God’s forgiveness when we confess our sins to him—remember 1 John 1:9? If God requires confession of us in order to offer us his forgiveness, then why wouldn’t we require the same?
So here’s how it works. Jesus puts it like this: “If a believer sins, correct him. If he changes the way he thinks and acts, forgive him. Even if he wrongs you seven times in one day and comes back to you seven times and says that he is sorry, forgive him” (Luke 17:3–4). In this, Jesus points out that before forgiveness comes an acknowledgment of sin and a change of action. So forgiving someone who hasn’t confessed their sin would be like walking up to some man who slugs you in the face and then laughs about it and saying, “That’s okay, I forgive you.” He’ll just laugh some more. “Forgive me for what? There’s nothing to forgive.” It won’t make any sense to him because in his mind he’s done nothing wrong. It’s the same in the spiritual realm. God doesn’t say “your sins are forgiven” to people who have not confessed their sin and are continuing to live in it. That would mean that sin held no real weight to God, and we know that isn’t true.
Here’s another example: Many years ago a couple of boys went to school with guns and started shooting people. They killed their friends, and then they killed themselves. A few weeks later a famous pastor who didn’t even live in the same state made the statement, “We forgive you boys.” Doesn’t that sound odd to you? The boys never repented. We don’t know if they were sorry for what they did, but chances are they weren’t. Besides, those boys didn’t kill the pastor or any of his family or friends, so who is he to offer forgiveness for an offense that wasn’t even done to him? That would be like us forgiving some girl who is spreading rumors about you to all your friends. Ridiculous!
So if forgiveness isn’t something you have to give freely to everyone, then what does that mean about the pain of unforgiveness over offenses where there is no confession? It means that all that is left for you to do is to get over it. You get over it in the same way that you forgive other than saying the words “I forgive you.” You don’t hold it against them. You don’t complain about them to others. And you don’t dwell on it. Do those three things and you will be over it even if they are completely unrepentant. People who fail to do these three things keep their identity as “the victim.” If you keep thinking about it, it’s like they keep doing it to you over and over again. And complaining about it or talking to others about it nonstop requires you to think about it. So in order to get over it, you have to stop reliving the offense. As long as you keep reliving it and making it important in your life, you will never get over it—never.
“Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me.”
— Unknown
The final step in getting over it, whether they have confessed and repented or not, is turning it all over to God and trusting him to work everything out for good (see Rom. 8:28). When God becomes more powerful and more important in your life than the sin that happened to you, then you will finally be set free.
We’ve experienced this personally. Every offense that has happened to us, we consider a blessing because we know that it served to move us in the direction God wanted us to go. A few years ago Hayley had a dream come true: a huge speaking tour asked her to speak on it, and it was heaven. But when there was a miscommunication about something, they chose to let Hayley go rather than work through it with her. This was total devastation to Hayley. She didn’t see it coming till the day they said good-bye. And while it hurt for quite some time, Hayley had to get over it. So she decided to look at it from the perspective of God’s providence and believe that God arranges things, even what seem like disasters, to move us to where he wants us to be next. As Michael often points out, it was right after Hayley getting let go that we got pregnant with our one and only daughter. And that probably wouldn’t have happened if Hayley was still busy traveling on tour. Now there is no question that being let go from that tour was the best thing that ever happened in her life! It just took getting over it to realize that. God honors your efforts to get over it and your trust in his providence. He has everything under control!
It has been said that because we are the most forgiven people in the world, we should be the most forgiving people in the world. Do you see it? If you want to get over the unforgiveness in your life, then you’ve got to take God at his word. You’ve got to trust him more than you trust your pain or your anger. Feelings are really good at lying. They can get you all worked up over something that God wants you to just drop, and they can convince you that something ungodly needs to be done about them. So don’t let your feelings define your faith, but be wise and look into God’s Word for the truth that you need to survive the pains of the sin in you and the sin around you.
Your forgiveness was secured the day Jesus came to this earth, and the forgiveness you give to others is a sign of your faith in that forgiveness (see Luke 7:47). Don’t deny God’s Word by failing to get over the sins of others. Remember what is at stake: “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” (Matt. 6:14–15 ESV). Make your forgiveness complete by vowing to forgive others who confess their sins and getting over those who don’t.