Alistair Begg in his daily devotional guide, Truth for Living, states, “A forgiven person should be a forgiving person.” The challenge of this statement is the ‘should.’ Absolutely a forgiven person ought to be a forgiving person. But often the forgiving aspect is aspirational at best.
I think back to some of the people whom I had a difficult time forgiving. In these cases I always claimed the high ground. I stood on righteousness indignation. I had an airtight case that I was all right, and the other person was all wrong.
Forgiveness is indeed good, and necessary, but this was different. This person needed to be forgiven, but such needed to be earned. Forgiveness should not be given too quickly, or easily. An earned forgiveness is a honorable thing. Unless, of course, I am the one looking for forgiveness to be extended to me.
Forgiveness necessitates humility. When we are humbled under the graciousness of God’s forgiveness, we better understand the gift of forgiving.
When we try to generate a forgiving spirit, without a framework of our being forgiven, we often fall short. We limit our forgiveness to those we feel deserving. “Forgiveness doesn’t spring forth,” Begg writes, “From any human merit and isn’t the result of our own endeavors to be gracious and forgiving towards others; rather it comes from the grace of God.”
Genuine, complete, and unrestricted forgiveness is an outpouring of our deep sense of personal forgiveness. What we did not deserve, we extend without pretext, or expectation. We forgive simply because we can do no less.
Honest forgiveness does not, necessarily, wipe out the memory of a wrong done to us. We may not forget that which we have forgiven. However, God-infused forgiveness empowers us not to allow what happened yesterday, to impact what we feel today, nor hinder what needs to go on in the future.
Even if our forgiveness is rebuffed, which it can some times be, we are changed for all time. God’s forgiveness is not contingent on its being accepted, only that it has been extended.
The same is true for us. We extend forgiveness to others even if it has not be requested. And the completeness of the forgiveness is not validated by it being reciprocated.