15: THE ROLE OF FORGIVENESS IN CHRIST-FORMATION

DURING THE WEEKS FOLLOWING my termination as a senior pastor, I was not thinking about forgiving the people who had hurt me; instead, I found myself nursing a grudge that was turning into resentment and bitterness. My thinking was locked on to a negative narrative that I was a victim. When a friend would ask me how I was doing, I would reply, “I feel like I was shot in the head and kicked out the door onto the street.” Or, “I feel like I’ve been broadsided by a semitruck.” These negative thoughts produced a damaging array of emotions, including hurt, anger, sadness, shame, and fear.

If those feelings weren’t bad enough, this experience triggered profound feelings of abandonment and rejection. I thought I had processed my childhood trauma but came to find out that healing takes place in stages; it’s like peeling leaves off an artichoke: Aspects of my childhood experiences were still lingering in my heart.

The more I engaged in this negative thinking, the deeper I sank into despair. I just couldn’t envision a future where things would ever be the same again. I was experiencing an emotional version of what aviators refer to as a “graveyard spiral.” This is a state of disorientation when a pilot doesn’t realize they are turning and overcorrects into a rapid descent that ends in a fiery crash. The trauma I was experiencing was causing major disorientation. My world had just been turned upside down, and the more I let the reality of this situation set in, the angrier and more afraid I became. If my descent wasn’t adjusted quickly, I was headed for a crash.

Initially, I wasn’t angry with God. I wasn’t pounding on the door of heaven screaming, “Why God, why? What did I do to deserve this? Why did you let this happen to me?” Instead, my anger was directed toward those who had hurt me—that is, until God spoke to me in prayer one morning. What he said not only took me by surprise but really ticked me off.

I was sitting on the beach by my house early one morning, trying to sort out with God the details of my termination. I remember that morning well; it was still dark, and I was alone. There were no surfers to watch, no dolphins playing beyond the break, and no pelicans dive-bombing for their breakfast to distract me from my thoughts. I was worried about what people in our community were thinking about me because of my abrupt departure: How many senior pastors leave a church they have served at for over ten years without even saying goodbye? It just didn’t look good; I was afraid it left the impression that I had done something terribly wrong, something that required immediate termination. It’s true that I had been struggling in my leadership and that this had caused a fair amount of angst with my pastoral team. In addition to my leadership challenges, I was in regular conflict with three elders, who thought the books my wife and I were reading and recommending to others—on topics of spiritual formation and soul-care—were controversial. This conflict produced a great amount of heartache for me and my wife because our only desire was to help the people in the congregation grow in Christ and experience the greater degree of abundant life that we were finding.

You can survive a few paper cuts, but after a thousand, you will bleed out. Figuratively speaking, it felt like I was bleeding out. No matter how much sleep or how many days off I had, I just couldn’t snap back.

Today, I know that these symptoms are signs of burnout, a very real and frequent condition many pastors face.[1] As I look back on that season of my life today, I realize I had been spiraling down into burnout a few years prior to my termination. My wife knew I was running on fumes and she tried to help me see it, but I was too stubborn and afraid to slow down; I thought I could handle it.

During the years I was a senior pastor, I thought I had given the church my very best. As I’ve heard it said, “I left it all on the field.” I gave that church ten of the best years of my life, and yet when I hit the wall, when I needed help, it felt like the elders just put me out, like you take out the trash. From my perspective, the harsh treatment and eventual termination were unmerited and unrighteous, and that morning, sitting on the beach, I was angry. I thought I had the right to be outraged about my situation; that is, until God told me otherwise.

I know it was God speaking because the thoughts that came to my mind were not something I ever would have come up with on my own. Ken, I want you to begin a reconciliation process with the elders . . .

I didn’t even let God finish his sentence; I immediately reacted. Are you kidding me, God? Are you serious? The elders hurt me! My pastoral staff betrayed me. They need to ask for my forgiveness, not the other way around. You need to read your e-mail, God, because you’ve got this thing all wrong.

Of course, God wasn’t intimidated by my angry outburst, nor did he strike me dead with a lightning bolt for my insolence. Instead, he started over and spoke to my heart, gently but firmly, saying, Ken, I want you to begin a reconciliation process with the elders by sending each man a text message humbly asking if he will meet with you so you can apologize for your part in the process that led to your termination. Tell each elder that you have no other agenda.

That was it—end of transmission. God had spoken, and I just sat there dumbfounded. God’s request made no sense to me because I was the victim in this situation. But as I sat there pondering all of this, I knew God was right. In fact, the longer I sat there and thought about it, the more I realized I needed to own up to my part in causing the train wreck.

But this was hard. I don’t know about you, but for me, sometimes knowing what to do and then doing it are two very different things.

As I look back on that conversation with God, I realize now that I was harboring a ton of bitterness in my heart—feeding it with the distorted thought that I was a victim—and it was eating me alive. I was in an emotional graveyard spiral, and God was taking the control wheel to adjust my attitude before I crashed. I am thankful for forgiveness: He forgave me for the bitterness I was holding in my heart and gave me the grace to forgive the elders and staff who had hurt me. But genuine forgiveness can’t be mechanical—it’s not enough to just say the words, “I forgive you”—it’s more than an act of the will, it’s a matter of the heart.

Whole-Hearted Forgiveness

Genuine forgiveness is the result of a whole-hearted process informed by Scripture (thoughts), motivated by gratitude (feelings), activated by the will (decision), and empowered by grace (the work of the Holy Spirit). Let me explain how this forgiveness process works.

Informed by Scripture

Your thoughts are under your control; as such, you can choose how you think about forgiveness. The whole-hearted forgiveness process begins with thinking about forgiveness biblically. That takes us to one of Jesus’ most instructive parables about forgiveness.

One day, Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive a brother who sinned against him. Before Jesus could even respond, Peter suggested an answer: “Up to seven times?” (Matthew 18:21, NIV). I’m not sure if Peter’s question was sincere or if he was looking for Jesus’ approval for being so generous. At any rate, I’m pretty sure that Jesus’ answer surprised him. “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22, NIV).

Why did Peter think seven times was enough? How in the world did he come up with that number? Jewish teaching of the day held that you needed to forgive the same person for the same offense three times. You could liken their thinking to “three strikes and you’re out” in our day. In other words, after three times, you have fulfilled your obligation to forgive your brother. This teaching was cited from Old Testament passages, including Amos 1:3-13 and Job 33:29, where it appears that God would forgive Israel’s enemies a total of three times before dropping his hammer of judgment.

Jesus’ understanding of forgiveness was very different from contemporary Jewish teaching. Jesus taught that genuine forgiveness could never be a matter of law but only of grace. To forgive was more than an act of the will, it required a certain condition of the heart. To reinforce his point, Jesus told the parable of the unmerciful servant.

The parable begins with a servant who owes the king an enormous amount of money. In our day, the amount would be the equivalent to billions of dollars—a sum so large it could never be repaid. The king orders the servant and his entire family to be sold to recoup at least some of the debt. The servant is distraught and falls to his knees begging for mercy. Moved with compassion, the King forgives the entire debt.

You would think after experiencing such an astonishing act of mercy, this servant would be so grateful that he would eagerly extend mercy to others. And yet, sadly, the heart of this servant has been unchanged by the generosity of the king. He runs into a man who owes him a sum of money that was a pittance compared to the debt he had owed to the king. When confronted about paying his debt, the second servant falls to his knees and begs for mercy. But instead of extending the same mercy he had received from the king, the forgiven servant assaults this man—literally, grabbing him by the throat—and then has him thrown into prison.

What a tragic outcome, right? Oh, but this is not the end of the story. It seems other servants of the king witness the forgiven servant’s shocking lack of mercy and report it. The king is outraged by the news and confronts the forgiven servant: “‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’” (Matthew 18:32-33, NIV). Because of the servant’s unwillingness to show mercy, the king reinstates the debt in full and throws the man into prison to be tortured by the jailers until he can pay it all back.

Jesus concludes the parable by saying, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (Matthew 18:35, NIV). What is Jesus saying here? He’s making the point that those who have been forgiven their debt of sin—a debt they could never repay—should be so grateful that they’re eager to forgive others who sin against them.

The moral of Jesus’ parable provides a biblical way to think about whole-hearted forgiveness. All of us are like the first servant in Jesus’ parable in that our debt of sin is impossible to repay. God—like the king in Jesus’ parable—showed us unprecedented mercy and kindness by accepting Jesus’ death on the cross as payment in full for our sin. The more we allow the truth about our debt of sin to inform our thinking about forgiveness, the more eager we should be to forgive others when they sin against us.

This teaching on forgiveness is not intended to minimize the hurt we experience when someone sins against us, but it does put our need to forgive them into perspective: We are to forgive others as we have been forgiven (Ephesians 4:32). We can develop this desire to forgive others as we cultivate a heart of gratitude to God for forgiving us.

Motivated by Gratitude

One way to cultivate a heart of gratitude is to reflect on the truth of what Jesus has saved us from and what he has saved us for.

JESUS SAVED US FROM THE SECOND DEATH

According to the Bible, the first death is physical and a consequence for sin. Paul writes, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned” (Romans 5:12, NLT). The second death is referred to in the Bible as spiritual death. This, too, is a consequence for sin: It results in an eternal state of separation from God that is so horrible, it is hard to discuss. And yet, in order to fully appreciate God’s forgiveness of our sin, we must understand what the Bible teaches about the horrible reality of the second death.

In Revelation 20:15, John refers to the second death as the “lake of fire,” a place reserved exclusively for Satan (the Antichrist and false prophet) and the people throughout human history who have rejected God’s gift of salvation through his Son, Jesus Christ (Revelation 20:7-10). The second death is terrifying, which reveals how seriously God takes sin. But if you’re a Christian, you have nothing to fear: The second death is not for you.[2]

While it is not necessary to dwell on the horrific details describing the second death, a general understanding of it can cultivate a greater sense of gratitude that motivates us to quickly forgive those who sin against us. In a more positive manner, our desire to forgive others can also be enhanced by reflecting on biblical details of the abundant life that Jesus has saved us for.

JESUS SAVED US FOR AN ABUNDANT LIFE

If the only benefit of salvation were that Jesus saved us from the second death, that would certainly be enough. And yet, because of God’s extravagant love and mercy, he has provided us with so much more.

The abundant life is filled with incredible benefits. These include all the aspects of our new identity in Christ and an eternal state of existence that is so wonderful, it is difficult to imagine (1 Corinthians 2:9; 2 Corinthians 12:4). See Appendix B for a partial list of the incredible benefits of our salvation.

As I reflect on the benefits of salvation, I am overwhelmed by God’s loving-kindness. I imagine that if I reflected on this list every day and thought regularly about all that is true for me in Christ, I would become more grateful and more eager to forgive others when they sin against me. It would be impossible to hold bitterness in my heart while at the same time being mindful of such a great salvation. My desire to forgive others is directly related to the extent I recognize what Jesus did for me on the cross.

Activated by the Will

The truths of Scripture about the benefits of salvation promote feelings of gratitude, which in turn affect our will—that dynamic of the heart that activates thought and emotion. God commands every Christian to forgive in the same way they have been forgiven (Colossians 3:13); therefore, forgiveness is an act of obedience. But it’s also a really good idea, because when we choose to hold on to the hurt caused by an offense, we hurt ourselves.

Unforgiveness creates a stress response in the brain that signals the release of adrenaline and cortisol into the body to prepare us to “fight, flight, or freeze.” God designed the body to endure these potent chemicals for a short duration to help us get out of the way or fend off an attack. The body cannot endure a long-term state of stress without doing irreparable harm, however. Caroline Leaf’s explanation, quoted earlier in the book, bears repetition here:

When cortisol and adrenaline are allowed to race unchecked through the body, they begin to have adverse effects on the cardiovascular system causing high blood pressure, heart palpitations and even aneurysms or strokes. They also attack the immune system, making it less able to do what it is naturally designed to do: protect you from infection and disease. The hormones are not yet done on their destructive path. Next, the cortisol bathes the brain’s nerve cells causing memories to literally shrink, affecting the ability to remember and think creatively. This destructive path continues until the body begins to suffer total system breakdown, leading to an emotional black hole, creeping illness and even premature death.[3]

As I nurse a grudge, hold on to an offense, or maintain a victim mindset, feelings of anger, bitterness, and resentment produce a toxic response in my brain, hindering the Christ-formation process and any chance to experience the love, joy, and peace that characterize the abundant life.

Empowered by Grace

As we’ve discussed, Christ-formation involves our participation, but it is no less driven by the grace of God than any other aspect of our salvation. This is important because forgiveness involves painful memories of bad experiences, which attack our hearts’ capacity to choose good.

Fortunately, God works with us in the good work of forgiveness. The Holy Spirit is engaged with us in forgiving others. As we reflect on what we know from the Scriptures and tap into our gratitude for the kindness God has extended to us and as we determine to be Christlike in our decisions, we are drawing on God’s power to forgive. We are being rewired, becoming both more consistently capable of forgiving and less vulnerable to the destructive work of negative experiences. We are being formed in the image of Christ, and we are moving more steadily toward the abundant life God has in mind for us.

Restoring My Soul with God

In this exercise, I will provide you with a whole-hearted forgiveness process: practical steps to work through specific offenses you have experienced.

  1. Write down the name of the person who hurt you.

  2. Write down the specific offense using the following questions to guide you:
    • How did the offense hurt you? Be specific about the consequences you’ve experienced as a result.

    • How did you react to the offense?

    • Did the offense involve other people? If so, who?

  3. Write down a passage of Scripture that relates to your experience.

  4. Reflect on how, if at all, forgiveness is represented in this Scripture passage. Reflect more generally on what God’s forgiveness of your sin has meant for your life.

    Share what you wrote with a trusted friend who will give you safe feedback.

  5. Write down what will be involved in forgiving the person you identified on page 186.

  6. If possible, and if it is safe to do so, verbalize your forgiveness to the person who hurt you. (This can help to restore a broken relationship. However, you can genuinely forgive a person even if that person has died or is otherwise beyond your reach.)

Sometimes, a hurt is so severe that you need to work through all the steps in this process with a trusted friend, pastor, or therapist.

Restoring My Soul with Others

  1. Does Ken’s story remind you of a time when you were profoundly hurt by others? How did you work through the forgiveness process? Did anyone help you?
  2. What details stand out to you from the parable of the unmerciful servant (Matthew 18:21-35)? Discuss.
  3. When you consider the great debt of sin that God forgave you for, how does that help you to forgive others who sin against you?
  4. Review the benefits of salvation in Appendix B and discuss the specific benefits that stand out to you. How do these stir up gratitude in your heart? Do they help your willingness to forgive others? Why or why not?
  5. How does holding on to bitterness and resentment affect you physically?
  6. What are the dangers inherent in harboring unforgiveness in your heart?