How do I forgive those who have hurt me?

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44)

Last year, we began a discipline in our house of posting a verse or short passage on the kitchen wall every month for our children to memorize. This month’s passage is the one listed above, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:43-44. What a challenging word to learn and to practice at any age, whether the enemy is a schoolyard bully, an abusive parent, or a nasty co-worker.

One of the best quotes I have ever heard on the subject of forgiveness is by Miroslav Volf in his book Exclusion and Embrace, a book he wrote during the Balkan wars on the subject of loving your enemies. Volf writes, “Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners.”

Wow.

Do you understand what Volf is saying? Why do we struggle to forgive someone who has wronged us? Two reasons, he says. First, the pain caused by another leads us to view them as something less than human. We caricaturize them, embellishing their flaws: “she is just a vindictive woman.” “He is just a selfish man.” “That person is just rude.” Sure, we may have our flaws, but we are complex people, of course, a mixture of good and bad. But the other person? They’re just evil. Monstrous. Beneath us.

Secondly, we struggle to forgive because we forget that we are sinners too, just as desperately in need of God’s redemptive grace and mercy as the one who offended us. In our haste to point out the speck in their eye, we have missed the plank in our own eye, as Jesus points out in Matthew 7:3-5. As we refuse to forgive, we forget that we have been forgiven a million times over by our Heavenly King, as Jesus reminds us in Matthew 18:21-35. We have shoved God off of His throne, deciding that we have the right to be the judge, jury, and executioner of our offender. But when we forgive, we acknowledge that God is the rightful and righteous judge, and that He alone has the proper perspective to decide who deserves what.

Please notice that nowhere in Volf’s quote or in the Bible does it say that what the offender has done to you is not a big deal, so just forget it. Sin is always a big deal, as an offense against a holy God and an evil against the children He loves so dearly. To choose to forgive an offender is not to condone what they have done, nor is it to call their offense “no big deal.” Forgiveness is a recognition that if it were not for the grace and mercy of God – the undeserved gift of forgiveness we have received through Jesus Christ – we would be eternally lost. God’s kindness has led us to repentance (Romans 2:4), and the grace we offer to our offender is done in the hopes that they too might repent and find healing and a new way of living in Christ.

I pray for you as you struggle to forgive those who have hurt you, that you might have the eyes to see them as human, and to remember that you too are a sinner in need of God’s undeserved grace and mercy. May you find the strength to forgive and to leave your offender in the capable and just arms of God.