What do you do when you are wronged? It’s perfectly normal and reasonable to feel a sense of justice stir up within you, to feel a need for wrongs to be set right. That’s human because we are made in the image of God and the Lord is a Judge who loves setting things right. The challenge comes when the one who wronged us later comes back and repents. Turning off our anger is not always easy. Setting aside the need for justice to be done is not always easy, but that’s exactly what forgiveness compels us to do. Forgiving someone means not pursuing the justice that the wrongdoer deserves.
The choice is ours: We can respond with hatred and drive the wedge in deeper, or we can exercise love, which, according to Solomon “covers all sins.” (Proverbs 10:12), and which, according to Peter “covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
What does that mean: “Love covers all sins”? How does love “cover a multitude of sins”? I think Solomon and Peter are saying that there isn’t a crime against us that can’t be forgiven if we love the one who repents. There’s no sin that you can do to me that I must get vengeance on, no matter how much you repent and ask for mercy. If you are sorry, then the crime can be forgiven, no matter what. All I have to do is love you enough to forgive you. All kinds of sins are forgivable; all it takes is enough love to forgive them.
It’s not always easy to ask for forgiveness, let’s be honest with ourselves. We’re embarrassed. We’re ashamed. We fear the response of the one we’ve wronged. It’s tough to say “I’m sorry.”
But it’s commanded.
It’s not always easy to forgive, either. We have to suppress the God-given need to see justice done. We have to find closure, not in a physical “eye for an eye” payback, but in a mental “I will act like it never happened” reckoning. That’s not easy, let’s be honest with ourselves. It’s tough to forgive people.
But it’s commanded.
The secret to both is to remember your relationship, not with the one who wronged you, but with God. You wronged God and yet He forgave you. You went desperately to the Lord, seeking restoration, and He granted it. If He can do that for you, should you not also do that for the one who repented of his wrong to you? Yes, you should (Ephesians 4:32).
~Matthew