Tag Archives: forgiveness

How Can I Forgive Someone Who Sexually Abused Me?

Dan Vander Lugt
God, Relationships, , , ,

You took the difficult and vital step of confronting your abuser, but far from bringing some resolution, his reaction made it clear that he still is remorseless and unrepentant. It isn’t surprising that you are upset.

You needn’t feel guilty about your strong feelings. God designed us to have an intense emotional response to evil. Your natural revulsion to unrepented sin isn’t wrong in itself, nor should it be considered contrary to forgiveness. Forgiveness never ignores the harm that someone has caused us. But even though your feelings of outrage are no reason for you to feel guilty, it’s good that you are aware of them. Your awareness of your feelings will make it possible for you to be instructed by them, rather than being consumed by them.

Ephesians 4:26 says, “In your anger do not sin.” Anger in itself isn’t wrong. What is wrong is being controlled by it in a way that leads to sin. Our anger may be partially driven by righteous outrage, but because of our fallen nature an element of our anger is always like the fury of a dangerous beast — rooted in a lust for power and vengeance. That’s why even though we can’t keep natural feelings from erupting,we need to take charge of our response to them.

It took courage for you to broach the subject with your abuser. Further, the fact that you are disappointed by his response implies that you would be ready to forgive him if he were remorseful. At this point the emotional distance that exists between you and your abuser is mostly the consequence of his attitude and behavior. You can’t bridge the distance alone.

Jesus told us to love our enemies. Loving means to seek the best interests of another. Through our relationship with Christ we can find the strength to seek the best interests of those who harm us. But seeking the best interests of others involves holding them accountable for their sin ( Matthew 18:15-17 ).

There is nothing loving about shielding an evildoer from the ugliness of his sin. Jesus didn’t serve as an “enabler” for evildoers seeking to conceal their deeds. Although Jesus was the personification of love,He truthfully characterized people who consciously resisted the truth as vipers ( Matthew 12:34 ), thieves ( Matthew 21:13 ), whitewashed tombs ( Matthew 23:27 ), liars ( Revelation 3:9 ), and murderers ( John 8:44 ).

The key issue is the attitude of your abuser. Jesus made it clear that forgiveness and reconciliation are linked with repentance ( Luke 17:1-4 ). Only when an offender confesses his willful sin can we rightfully forgive him for what he has done. This man will have to sincerely repent 1 to be a beneficiary of God’s grace ( Leviticus 26:40-42 ; Job 42:5-6 ; Psalm 32:5 ; Proverbs 28:13 ; Jonah 3:8-9 ; Luke 15:21 ; 2 Corinthians 7:9-10 ; 1 John 1:9 ). Although we can pray for an offender and take action to seek restoration, a relationship cannot be healed until he has done what is right in accepting the responsibility for his past wrongs.

Is it really loving to be so confrontational? Yes. It is sometimes the only truly caring course of action. Confrontation can be the first step in demonstrating that you believe in a person’s potential for godliness.It is likely that King David would not have repented of his wickedness in taking another man’s wife and arranging the death of her husband if the brave prophet Nathan had not told him a parable that portrayed his sin in all of its ugliness and then said, “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12 ).

This pattern reflects the way God Himself deals with our sin. The Bible declares that God can forgive all sin — including the cruelest and most intentional. God Himself paid the price for the reconciliation of all sinners ( John 3:16 ; Romans 3:24-25 ; Ephesians 1:7 ; 1 John 4:9 . But though God provided the basis for forgiveness, He imposes forgiveness upon no one against his or her will. He also expects those who have harmed others to make restitution where possible, or to take whatever measures are necessary to minimize the chances of harming others (Isaiah 1:16 ; Luke 19:8-10 ; John 8:11 ; Hebrews 10:26 ).

Your angry feelings are an important factor in keeping you from offering a premature forgiveness that would let your abuser minimize and ignore his evil. Yet your actions shouldn’t be based on your anger, but on a willingness to honor and obey God ( Exodus 23:4 ; Proverbs 24:17; 25:21-22 ; Matthew 18:21-35 ; Ephesians 4:32 ; Colossians 3:13 ; 1 Thessalonians 5:15 ).

Each of us begins life hating God and the Son He sent to redeem us.In Christ, God provides the supreme example of forgiveness. His example makes it clear that we shouldn’t be nurturing hatred or desiring vengeance. Instead, we should be willing to forgive when our offender truly repents. Forgiveness and restoration, however,can’t take place until your abuser is truly sorry for what he has done.

Did this answer your question?
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (13 votes, average: 2.31 out of 5)
Loading...

How Can We Know If Our Guilt Feelings Are from the Holy Spirit or from Satan?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christianity, Personal Struggles, , , , , , , , ,

Because this is a fallen world, we do nothing from entirely pure motives. (See article on Depravity.) As the prophet Isaiah said:

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away (Isaiah 64:6).

Because our motivations are always imperfect and our choices often difficult, one of Satan’s most effective ploys is to confuse and paralyze Christians with his accusations, putting them out of effective action. As our accuser and enemy (1 Timothy 5:14-15; 1 Peter 5:8; Revelation 12:10), Satan delights in our anxiety and fear. Although we may intellectually accept the premise that no one merits God’s grace, Satan knows how to use our emotions to cause us to feel outside of the reach of God’s mercy. His accusations are often vague, indefinite, and persistent. They throb like a spiritual migraine. They torment us even after we have acknowledged known wrongs and asked God for forgiveness (1 John 1:9). Whenever we are overwhelmed by guilt feelings that aren’t traceable to a specific sin, or whenever feelings of condemnation persist even after we honestly confess them to the Lord, it is reasonable to assume that we are suffering from false guilt — guilt that is either coming from our own hearts or from our spiritual enemy.

Why can we assume that these feelings of condemnation are not coming from God? The Bible tells us that godly conviction is based on love, not fear. Its purpose is to instruct and to correct, not to torment. The apostle John wrote:

In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like Him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love (1 John 4:17-18).

God is not arbitrary or cruel. He always convicts His children out of love (2 Samuel 12:13; Luke 15:10). Conviction is His tool to bring us to a deeper reliance upon Christ (2 Corinthians 7:10; Ephesians 2:1-10; 2 Timothy 1:9). His Spirit doesn’t overwhelm us with feelings of condemnation for sins that have been confessed and forsaken or for choices that are unavoidably troubling and ambiguous.

When we sin, we will have to live with the consequences of our actions and with the loving correction of the Lord if we do not correct ourselves. Our position as God’s children doesn’t shield us from responsibility. But the natural consequences of sin will never cause us to lose our family relationship with God or any of the spiritual security that Christ has given us.

We need to always remember that it is not our good works but the blood of Christ that has provided for our every spiritual need (Ephesians 2:4-10). Christ is the foundation of our spiritual freedom and our emancipation from fear. Christ is the reason that Christians, unlike unbelievers, have no need to deny or conceal their sins. The entire price for sins has already been paid by the Lord — which gives us reason to quickly confess any sin that would damage our wonderful family relationship with God (1 John 1:9).

When we get to heaven, the process of our spiritual perfection will be complete and our motives will be pure (1Corinthians 1 Corinthians 13:12; 15:49; Hebrews 12:22-23). But in this fallen world, we will always struggle with some legitimate feelings of guilt. Here we wrestle with the tension of knowing that everything we do falls short of perfection. But faith trusts God’s promises. It is willing to go forward in spite of uncertainty (Hebrews 11:1,6), to be a good steward of God’s gifts (1 Peter 4:10), and to be as fearless of God’s wrath as a child is of a loving Father (Matthew 25:24-26).

Did this answer your question?
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (46 votes, average: 3.87 out of 5)
Loading...

Should Christians Pray for God’s Wrath on Their Enemies?

Jeff Olson
Ethics, Personal Struggles, Relationships, , ,

Depending on our motives, praying for God’s wrath can be a legitimate cry for justice. That is the cry of the heart you see reflected in such psalms as Psalm 94:1-2:

O LORD, the God who avenges, O God who avenges, shine forth.
Rise up, O Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve.

While the desire for God to set things right is valid, Jesus introduced a new attitude to have toward our enemies.

Jesus didn’t teach us to pray against our enemies. He didn’t encourage us to request bloodthirsty revenge or the judgment they deserve. Instead, He called His followers to actually pray for their enemies (Matthew 5:43-45). This was nothing short of revolutionary for his Jewish listeners. In a time when the Jewish religious leaders touted radical vengeance as a virtue, Jesus introduced a whole new way of doing business. He taught that true sons of God are not only concerned for their neighbors, but for their enemies as well.

This seemingly outrageous mindset was an important part of the new era Jesus’ death and resurrection would establish. His willingness to give up his life for a world of people at enmity with their Creator (Romans 5:6-10) and His resurrection from the dead would make it possible to have a restored and better way of life with others—friend or foe. Praying for our enemies also reflected God’s ultimate plan to rescue and to reconcile both Jews and Gentiles to Himself.

It’s a mistake to assume that praying for our enemies means we are to be passive and to let them take advantage or walk all over us. There are times to take a stand and strongly oppose our enemies like the day Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers and drove them out of the temple in Jerusalem (Matthew 21:12-13). And the writers of the New Testament call us to appeal to civil authorities to enforce laws that are meant to hold evildoers accountable and keep them in check (Romans 13). Holding others accountable for their actions and seeking justice, however, are not the same as praying for and pursuing revenge.

Though we should never stop longing and working for justice, Jesus took praying for vengeance off the table. By word and example, Jesus urged his followers to replace a heart for revenge with a heart to see our enemies reconciled to God and us. His life, death, and resurrection empowers us to envision the glory of God restored in others, to seek peace and reconciliation when possible, and to leave the matter of vengeance up to a holy and wise God who will mete out revenge in His perfect time and in His perfect way (Romans 12:17-21).

Did this answer your question?
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (29 votes, average: 4.10 out of 5)
Loading...

Does Forgiving Mean Forgetting?

Tim Jackson
Relationships, ,

Many people believe that to forgive someone they must first be willing to forget. By this they mean that they must be able to dismiss from their memory the painful events that caused a break in their relationship. In other words, they need to pretend that nothing bad ever happened.

Simply trying to forget the wrongs that are done against us is like spray-painting a rusty old car. It seems like an easy solution at first, but eventually the rust breaks through and the problem is worse than before.

Well-meaning Christians often support the “forgive and forget” model of forgiveness by appealing to God’s forgiveness, as in Jeremiah 31:34. In their view, this text means that forgetting precedes forgiving. They say that if we don’t forget, we can’t forgive.

There is a sense, of course, in which God “forgets” our sins. Once He has forgiven us, He will never use them as evidence against us. But the all-knowing Creator can’t forget things in the way that we do. Data can be erased from a computer’s magnetic memory, human recollections can be obliterated by time and disability, but all of history is constantly before His gaze. From eternity to eternity, God is the same. The divine Author of Scripture caused the sins of Jacob, Moses, David, Peter, and Paul to be recorded for our benefit. He hasn’t forgotten their sins in a historical sense, but they will never be used as grounds for condemnation. It is our sin’s debt — the rightful wages of our sin — that God “forgets.”

God doesn’t expect us to wipe the sins of others from our memory. In fact, we probably won’t be able to, no matter how hard we try. He certainly wouldn’t want us to pretend that we have forgotten things we can’t forget. What He desires is that we forgive sins committed against us (Matthew 6:14-15) the way He forgives our much greater sins against Him (Matthew 18:23-35).

It takes greater forgiveness to forgive a grievance that we remember clearly than to forgive a grievance that we have partially forgotten. Merely ignoring our memory of a grievance isn’t forgiveness, it’s only suppression of anger. Genuine forgiveness, like God’s forgiveness, clearly sees the offense and then forgives it by withdrawing the penalty and continuing the relationship. It’s natural to deal with our anger by suppressing our memory of an offense, but it’s supernatural to remember it clearly and renounce our right to revenge. Revenge must be left in the hands of the only One who is always objective and just (Romans 12:19-21).

Did this answer your question?
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (32 votes, average: 3.69 out of 5)
Loading...

Should I Offer Forgiveness Without Repentance?

Allison Stevens
Relationships, ,

Unconditional forgiveness is canceling a debt to all those who intentionally offend us, whether or not they own up to what they have done. Offering forgiveness without repentance, however, does not follow the biblical model of forgiveness (Luke 17:3,4).

The Bible says that we are to forgive as God forgave us (Ephesians 4:32, Colossians 3:13). God forgives us when we repent (Mark 1:15, Luke 13:3,5, Acts 3:19). He does not grant forgiveness to those of us who are stiff-necked and refuse to repent. We must recognize our sin and repent to receive and enjoy God’s merciful forgiveness. God requires repentance and so must we.

Repentance is important because it’s a person’s only hope for real change (Matthew 18:3; Acts 26:20). If we don’t admit our sin, it’s impossible to be transformed. If we aren’t keenly aware of the sinful direction our lives are going, we will not see a need to adjust the direction. Repentance demonstrates that we need God to help us change our thinking, attitudes, and behavior.

An unrepentant person maintains a sense of control over his life through pride, which can lead to destruction, violence, and animosity (Proverbs 8:13; 16:18; 29:23). Turning toward God (repentance) is necessary to break the cycle of destructive behaviors and patterns of relating to others. If as believers we don’t require repentance on the part of the offender, we stand in the way of that person’s coming to see his need for God and experiencing His forgiveness. To put it simply, forgiveness is a two-way process: repentance on the part of the offender and pardon on the part of the offended.

When only one part of the forgiveness process takes place, the hurt felt by the offended one can lead to hatred, bitterness, and desire for revenge. Because we desperately want relief from the gnawing desire to get even, we can be tempted to let an issue go, or “forgive” without ever confronting the person or waiting for him to show remorse.

It’s wrong, however, to assume that if we don’t forgive someone, we’ll be weighed down with hatred, bitterness, and revengeful desires. That’s not necessarily true because the Bible says we are to love a person regardless of whether or not he or she shows any remorse. We can love our enemies1, but continue to have an unsettled issue with them. In many cases, it is more loving to withhold forgiveness until a change of heart is demonstrated than it is to offer forgiveness without the offender’s acknowledgment of deliberate wrongdoing.

Instead of giving in to revenge, we can soften our hearts toward those who have hurt us when we humbly admit that we, too, have hurt others. It is only by God’s grace that we can enjoy His goodness toward us at all. Just as important, we can have faith that God will avenge if it is necessary (Leviticus 19:18, Romans 12:19-21) and that He will hold each of us accountable (Romans 14:12; Hebrews 4:13 ). We don’t need to worry because our pain doesn’t go unnoticed by our Lord (Psalm 147:3). With that frame of mind, we can demonstrate a deeper trust in God and be led to pray for those who’ve hurt us.

Yes, an unconditional pardon can be granted without the offender ever knowing they’ve hurt us. But this one-sided “forgiveness” is not in our best interest, nor in the best interest of the person who hurt us. It devalues the significance of repentance and robs both the offender and us of the opportunity to grow in Christ.

The ultimate purpose of forgiveness is the healing of a relationship. This healing occurs only when the offender repents and demonstrates remorse and the offended one grants a pardon and demonstrates loving acceptance.

  1. An enemy can be defined as one who intentionally hurts us, is destructive, and can’t be trusted because of his or her lack of remorse. Unconditional forgiveness implies that our response to our enemies should be to offer a pardon with no response on the part of the offender. The Bible teaches, however, that we should respond to our enemies in love (Matthew 5:44). Scripture does not teach that we need to forgive our enemies. Instead, we should love them and pray for them. Love and forgiveness are not synonymous. Back To Article
Did this answer your question?
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (206 votes, average: 4.17 out of 5)
Loading...