Forgiveness: Freeing Your Heart

Few commands in Scripture are as costly as the command to forgive. It asks us to release a debt we have every right to collect. It asks us to extend to another the very grace we have received.

"Bear with one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against anyone; even as Christ forgave you, so you also do." — Colossians 3:13

Forgiveness is not amnesia. It does not pretend the wound did not happen. It does not require that the offender be safe to trust again. Forgiveness is a decision of the heart to release the right to retaliate, and to entrust justice to a God who sees perfectly.

The cost of an unforgiving heart

An unforgiven offense is a stone we carry. It does not harm the one who hurt us; it weighs down the one who holds it. Resentment becomes a prison, and we are both the prisoner and the guard.

Corrie ten Boom, who survived a Nazi concentration camp, once said: "Forgiveness is to set a prisoner free, and to discover the prisoner was you."

What forgiveness is — and isn't

• It is not excusing. It names the wrong honestly.
• It is not reconciling. Reconciliation requires two willing hearts; forgiveness requires only one.
• It is not forgetting. It is choosing, by grace, to release the demand for repayment.
• It is not a one-time event. Sometimes forgiveness is a door we walk through again and again.

The well we draw from

We forgive not from our own reserves, but from the well of our own forgiveness. Look at the cross. See the One who prayed, "Father, forgive them," as nails held Him to the wood. If He forgave us that, we can — by His strength — forgive the lesser wounds done to us.

"Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you." — Ephesians 4:32

Lay the stone down. The freedom on the other side is worth the cost of the letting go.