Forgiveness–The Right F Word
“Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And they parted His raiment and cast lots.” Luke 23:34
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone about a bad decision that a friend had made, and said, “Well, she just doesn’t know any better”? There are plenty of folks who do really dumb things and actually “do not know any better”, but the majority of folks do dumb things when they do know better. They, whoever “they” are, say the the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again the same way hoping for a different outcome. I don’t call that “insanity”; I call it “wishful thinking” or “an exercise in futility”. I said all that to ask the question, “What do you do when someone unintentionally does something dumb that affects you negatively? Do you forgive them because you knew that he or she didn’t mean to hurt or inconvenience you? What if someone does something intentionally to you that does cause you pain, grief, or disappointment? It is not so easy to forgive those intentional acts against us, is it?
Consider Jesus Christ who was nailed in excruciating pain to a cross who never did anything to hurt anyone. He came to help men and women to be able to be reconciled with God after being separated from Him because of mankind’s sin. The above verse was the first of seven utterances that Jesus made from the cross. It was a fulfillment of Isaiah 53:12: Jesus…”made intercession for the transgressors”. This is what Jesus came to do–intercede for sinners, like you and me, who previously did not have a “ghost of a chance” of becoming righteous before the Father. Jesus was not just praying for the Roman soldiers who unmercifully beat and crucified Him or for the Jews who cried out for His execution, but for every person, all of us, whose sins were laid on Him in order to satisfy God’s demand for justice. The soldiers didn’t truly understand what they were doing; they were just following orders, but I suspect they got carried away in their cruelty to Jesus. The Jews had no real idea of how their rejection of Christ would affect them for generations.
In this age of information, many today don’t really believe that their outright rejection of or indifference to the Savior has devastating consequences. The gospel goes out across the world via TV, radio, in churches, through missionaries, and over the internet. Even for those who may not have access to the gospel, God has shown Himself in creation so that no one has an excuse to remain ignorant (Romans 1:20). God also indwelled in man a hunger to worship something greater than himself. Man will not be able to stand before God on judgment day and say, “I didn’t know.”
Jesus, in His request to His Father to forgive those who hurt Him, mocked Him, desired to see Him die, and who gambled for His clothes, which was just one more insult to Him, displayed a kind of love that is supernatural. I have not done those things that the crowd at Golgotha did that day, but I am still a sinner just the same. Before I was born again, I was just as guilty as those who did those terrible things to Jesus. However, for everyone who repents and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, including those at Calvary that day, and everyone born since that time, will be forgiven by Him for all eternity.
To return to the question of how can we forgive those who cause us pain, physically and/or emotionally, we have to let Jesus forgive them through us. Refusing to forgive another or hating another person is like drinking poison hoping it will affect the other person, but the one who is affected negatively is the one who will not forgive.