This past week brought with it unthinkable evil as Dylann Roof murdered in cold blood nine brothers and sisters from Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. after spending an hour with them in a prayer meeting. It’s hard to fathom that a young man could participate in a prayer meeting and then callously shoot fellow human beings at point blank range. But as evil as that was, I don’t want us to miss the Christ-likeness of others from their church family. South Carolina law gave family members the right to address the accused killer and they did, but instead of spewing hatred and venom back at the perpetrator, many of them expressed to him forgiveness. The secular media picked up on this and obviously it is hard for them to understand how such a thing could be possible. How could relatives and fellow church family members offer forgiveness to the man who had just days before brutally and viciously killed the ones they loved? The answer is, only Christ can do that for us. I commend our brothers and sisters for it seems their very first response was to offer forgiveness.
Maybe you are struggling with un-forgiveness. A family member, a friend, or maybe someone you don’t even know did something to hurt you and you can’t forgive--you can’t get over it. Your heart is filled with bitterness and anger and if you could, you might put an end to their lives for what they did to you. How do you forgive even as members of the Emanuel AME church forgave Dylan Roof?
You are able to forgive when you truly understand forgiveness. To forgive means to release, to let go. When someone hurts us or offends us, our natural response--I would even say our sinful response--is to hurt back. It is to recoil in anger and bitterness and hate the person that has hurt us. We want vengeance; we want to unleash on them the same pain they caused us. To forgive is to freely and wholeheartedly reject that hatred, anger, bitterness and desire to hurt back and instead to willingly let it go. Ultimately forgiveness carries with it the heart’s desire for reconciliation. Where the sin and the hurt brought destruction, we want there to be healing. Forgiveness is to reject this natural hatred and desire for revenge that arises in us when we are hurt by others.
You are able to forgive when you understand how much God has forgiven you. When I know the depravity of my own heart and my own need of forgiveness from Holy God; and when I know how much God has forgiven me in Christ, I am able to extend the grace of forgiveness to others. Yes, what others have done has hurt you and angers you, but what you did also hurt God and offended your Creator, the one who loves you. God’s love was so great that He was willing to sacrifice Himself for you— to bear in His own body and life your sin and your death. When you and I realize to what great extent God went to forgive us in Jesus, we are able to offer that same forgiveness to people who have hurt and offended us.
You are able to forgive when you trust that forgiveness isn’t an act of feelings, but instead an act of the will. Forgiveness isn’t about emotionally feeling wonderful about the person who hurt you; it’s about choosing by an act of your will to let go, to release them. I don’t know about you, but my emotions can be all over the place; and though I think God wants me to rule over my emotions, it’s hard to say to myself, don’t feel that way. Forgiveness isn’t emotionally driven. I don’t offer forgiveness because I feel it. Instead I offer forgiveness as a choice I make regardless of how I feel. One of our Charleston sisters said about Dylann, 'I’m angry, I’m hurt, but I forgive you.' If we always waited on feelings there is much we wouldn’t do. Many of us wouldn’t go to work, and we wouldn’t do needed chores. Fortunately, forgiveness is an act I can choose. This doesn’t mean that I choose it one time and I’m done. I’d say we may have to choose it day after day for quite some time, but choose it we can.
You are able to forgive when you understand that God enables you by His Spirit to actually forgive those who have hurt you. You have a sinful nature that is bent toward anger and revenge, but you also have a new nature that is like God’s and you have His Spirit who is empowering you to live not by that old nature but the new. You may find it impossible to forgive on your own but you can when empowered by God’s Spirit. Ask for God’s help and then, as an act of your will, release the one who has hurt you.
You are able to forgive when you realize there is a God who will bring justice. How incredible it would be for Dylann Roof to experience the salvation that you and I know and the regeneration and restoration that comes from receiving Christ! His hatred would be erased, replaced instead by love for people of all skin colors and races. He would become gentle and kind, and a man filled with humility and repentance for what he’s done. But Dylan may not come to know Christ and one day he will answer to God as His ultimate judge. This is equally true of the ISIS men who killed the twenty-one Christian men on an isolated beach in Libya. The secularist has no ultimate justice in his or her worldview, but that worldview is not the truth; the truth is "it is appointed for man once to die and then the judgment.” And furthermore, even in this life God has given the government the right to enact justice. If tomorrow Dylan were to become a redeemed child of God, I’m convinced that human justice requires that he forfeit his life for what he has done. In forgiveness we are not saying men are not responsible; we are saying that we will entrust their judgment to the government and ultimately to God.
You are able to forgive when you realize that forgiveness is not optional for us as Christ-followers. Jesus called us to forgiveness over and over. He pointed to the great debt that we owed God which was forgiven in Christ; and then said, "If you will not forgive those who have offended you, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you." When he taught us to pray he said pray like this, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us." Some one has said, “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” We are never more like our Heavenly Father than when we are willing to forgive those who have deeply hurt us by their sin. Don’t put forgiveness on the back burner; it’s not an elective.
So if you are having a hard time forgiving someone in your life, be encouraged--you can forgive! God wills it and God empowers it through His own Spirit. There’s always help in the body of Christ. Share your need to forgive with someone you trust and let them pray with you. I once heard that bitterness is the only poison we swallow and expect the other person to die. Let go of your anger, your bitterness, your un-forgiveness and let God release you to experience a peace that surely has been alluding you through un-forgiveness.
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