Love Requires Forgiveness
In the Bible a lawyer, who was a Pharisee, asked Jesus this question in Matthew 22:36-40,
"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus responds, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
God has given us two basic commandments from which the rest spring. Simply put God says love one another. Loving others is both daunting and challenging. There are those who are hard to love like wife beaters, rapists, murderers, abusive people, mean bosses, insulting in-laws and other toxic people. If we depend solely on our common sense it seems nearly impossible to love unconditionally. Yet, God knowing the range of extremes people will go to be cruel and malicious says to love anyway. The scripture in 1 John 4:8 characterizes God as love and One who loves everyone.
The best example of pure love is found in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." God's love towards mankind is so immense he sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for everyone's sins, and reconcile us back to Himself. He did this without reservations or strings attached.
What a magnanimous gesture of love! God had no obligation to rescue humankind from his sin, He could have left him in his fallen condition, instead, out of His love saved him. God granted a pardon of sin through Jesus Christ to every person in the world which we can receive by accepting His Son Jesus Christ as our Savior.
Love Comes from the Heart
God expects us also to love everyone. Oftentimes we think loving people means only showing outward signs of kindness and consideration. But what are our real attitudes towards others? What we think about another has a lot to do with whether we are operating in love. A show of being nice out of obligation, is not love. Love comes from the heart and includes what we are thinking. Outward gestures alone can be deceiving.
God's love for us is not based on deeds, achievements, or whether we try to obey His commands. His love towards all is unconditional meaning there's nothing a person can do to deter God from loving them. God's love is based on our intrinsic value and worth as His precious creation.
It is different from humanity’s love. Humanity’s love is often connected to another satisfying our desires and needs leading us to have good feelings towards them. It is not founded on commitment like God's. Humanity's love may be withdrawn to wane or stop when our desires are no longer being met. God's love is not based on what is done or not done or about meeting individual's needs, desires, wants or dreams. A story of mine from years ago may help illustrate this important point. I went through a phase of working on loving others unconditionally. I prayed to God for help in loving others as He would want me to love them.
During this same period, I signed up to attend a woman’s conference. The morning of the conference I made a vow to myself I was going to be loving towards everyone no matter who or what. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to demonstrate love as I understood scripture.
I sat on the front row of the morning session enjoying the speaker. About two hours into the session I began to get hungry and looked forward to the lunch break. As time went on my thoughts of enjoying the speaker changed to assessing the speaker. I began to mentally criticize her weight and outfit, speaking voice, and words. Little judgmental thoughts about her surfaced in my mind as I continued to analyze her. I did not realize my attitude had changed and that my thoughts were unloving.
Love Requires Right Thinking
Suddenly I heard the Lord speak to me, "Everytime you judge another you are in unforgiveness and everytime you are in unforgiveness you are out of love." I was caught off guard and shocked. The Lord was telling me thoughts matter when it comes to love. Little judgmental thoughts about anyone are serious. I was being unloving and unforgiving at the same time for just thinking certain thoughts. This experience was a defining moment for me introducing me to a whole new level of what operating in love means.
I remembered Matthew 7:1 specifically warning, "Judge not, that you be not judged." I knew to act or speak by gossiping or criticism of another shows a lack of love. However, I'd never put subtle and random thoughts running through my head in the same category as acting and speaking. I was being judgmental, unforgiving and out of love with this individual just because of what I was thinking and not through interaction.
This brings up another problem with unforgiveness; it falsely puts us on level with God. When we withhold forgiveness, we act as judge and jury of the other person. James 4:12 says, "There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?" God is the only judge. We are inept in our ability to judge another. Most of our judgments are full of flaws, bias, assumptions and a lack of knowledge.
Similarly, forgiveness cannot be based solely on how we feel because our feelings are unreliable measures of right and wrong. We should strive to forgive for a higher reason, because God commands us to. If we don't forgive we open ourselves up to spiritual harm. Forgiveness allows God in our lives, unforgiveness opens the door to the enemy. Lack of forgiveness is disobedience, sin, which hinders our relationship to our Father.
It's clear people can hurt us deeply. It's true we may feel violated and want justice. We may think another owes us a debt. Forgiveness does not imply someone did nothing wrong, maybe they did something horribly wrong, but it releases us from the harm of being unforgiving. Instead of getting entangled in grief, anger, self-pity and distress over their wrong doing we choose to forgive, let go and hold no grudges.
Jesus exhibited a very high standard of love while on earth and we are called to do the same. Incredibly when Jesus hung on the cross He looked down upon His executioners and said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do" (Luke 23:34). We all know it would be reasonable while being tortured on the cross for Jesus to think negatively about those who unjustly sent Him to death, but He did not. It's obvious through His statement He was thinking of forgiveness and not judgment. What was Jesus doing by forgiving His tormentors? He was granting them a pardon.
Grant a Pardon
When I asked the Lord what I should do about my unforgiving, judgmental thoughts, He said, "Grant them a pardon." A pardon is an act of allowing someone to go free of their offense. We make a decision to absolve the other of any of their shortcomings, faults, deficiencies and hurtful words or behavior. We forgive and forget about it. They are no longer condemned.
We've all heard of a Presidential Pardon. A president or even a governor may grant a full unconditional pardon to a convicted person. The granting of a pardon fully restores the person's innocence as though he or she never committed a crime. This is exactly what happens when we forgive others trespasses. It is as though they caused no wrongdoing.
Granting a pardon is something we can do when we catch ourselves taking judgmental thoughts against another. If we find ourselves thinking negatively about another, we can grant them a pardon for the things we are wrongly thinking about them. I trained myself to catch negative thoughts of another and quickly say, "I grant them a pardon." Then I start looking and finding good aspects about the person. By saying this silently to myself, I intercept and stop the unloving thoughts before they take root.
Satan doesn't want us to walk in love. He knows this commandment is the most powerful of all and uses our minds to deter us from fulfilling it. He is the one who sends judgmental, critical thoughts of others to prevent love. One of Satan's biblical titles is the Accuser of the Brethren (Revelation 12:10). He's out not only to accuse people but also to entice us to accuse and find fault with others.
Everyday we have opportunities to forgive. Think about the car that cuts in front of us or the relative who berates with hurtful criticism. We are still called to forgive. We are still required to release that person, cancel their debt and grant a pardon.
The Bible gives effective guidelines on attributes of love. It tells us love "...does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;" (1 Corinthians 13:5). When we forgive it's similar to taking a debt another owes, tearing up their IOU and declaring the debt no longer existing. If we have forgiven someone they now owe us nothing, no explanation or apology, zilch. The debt is canceled and stamped out through our forgiveness.
No Strings Attached
Once we forgive we cannot have any strings attached. There's a little trap the enemy sets that can loop us back around into unforgiveness again. It happens when thoughts on the matter continue to surface after we think we have forgiven. To be mulling over someone's offense means we have not forgiven. True forgiveness requires forgetting what they did as though it never happened.
Not remembering is exactly what Jesus accomplished with our sins. Psalm 103:12 says God has removed our sins, "As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us." In the same way, we are called to forgive, forget and not think about any personal transgressions by considering them any longer.
When we struggle with reoccurring unforgiveness, we can override each unforgiving thought by speaking God's word in replacement. Say something like, "No, I've granted him/her a pardon. God bless them." The process of continually turning away unloving thoughts may seem tedious and even take weeks but with some effort you will succeed. Once you fulfill the Lord's commandment of love you will sense being set free of a burden. The closeness of the Father, His blessings, peace and joy will flood in to take its place.