My first sermon in Texas, and one of my first sermons posted on this blog, was on forgiveness, as discussed in Matthew 18. If you’re inclined, you can read it here.

Forgiveness is an important, commanded, and central aspect of the Christian faith. We have been forgiven a great debt. We forgive great debts. Even the worst of debts. Forgiveness is a good thing! It’s liberating. It’s powerful. It’s healing. Except…

...When it’s not.

Jesus’ forgiveness does indeed heal. True forgiveness does do all of these things. But the challenge is sometimes we confuse God’s forgiveness with talk of a type of forgiving others that excuses rather liberates.

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Shallow Forgiveness: An Example

One classic example of this confusion between excusing others (i.e. shallow forgiveness) and true forgiveness is one that I’ve heard from lots of different people over the years. My example is fabricated, but it’s an amalgam of the stories told. It’s the example of someone whose spouse has become destructive, if not dangerous. Imagine a woman whose husband has become addicted to alcohol and, in his drunken state, prone to verbal insults, demeaning behaviour and even physical violence.

The woman is a Christian and involved in her local church. Wondering what to do, she goes to the pastor of her church to ask for counsel. What does he suggest? How can she love this man she married?

She wants to honour her marriage vows. She wants to see her husband well. She knows she’s supposed to forgive, but equally she’s fearful of the next drunken stupor. She has young children and while he’s not touched them, she’s not sure how long that will stay the case.

So the woman asks her pastor what she should do. Should she leave him? Should she stay? How should she respond?

The pastor replies by saying something that amounts to the following instructions: (a) she must stay married because marriage is for life and God hates divorce and (b) she must forgive a limitless number of times, as it says in the gospels.

Now, I believe that marriage is a lifetime commitment and forgiveness is central to being a Christian. But I profoundly disagree with this attitude.

Why?

Well, first and foremost, the immediate safety of the wife and children is paramount in such a situation. And theologically, because the pastor prioritises marriage and forgiveness to the point of idolatry. He makes them paramount to the detriment of accountability and safety.

What is needed is a paradigm shift. It’s not that the husband is a wrongdoer who can suddenly ‘sort himself out’ and their relationship return to normal. No, the husband is harming his family. It is domestic abuse. The pastor’s counsel to the wife is enabling it to continue by telling her to stay. The woman was actively looking for help but the pastor reinforces the destructive pattern at work: keep tolerating sinful behaviour. Keep being passive. Don’t draw lines of accountability.

Destructive behaviour needs accountability and consequences. Not a shallow forgiveness that allows things to continue or even get worse.

Now someone might want to disagree with me and say isn’t that just psychology? Where is that in the Bible? Well, it’s there!

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The Case for Accountability: 1 Corinthians 5

I happen to think Paul would agree. Family is one form of community. Church is another. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul has pretty stern words for the community who is tolerating the man who is living with his father’s wife.

Note, Paul does not suggest seeing if the guy is sorry or willing to change. No. He says the man should be handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that he might be saved (1 Cor 5:4-5).

Whatever Paul specifically means by ‘destruction of the flesh’ (and there is debate here), I think the point is pretty clear that there are real, tangible—and painful—consequences for the offender. The church is not to tolerate his actions in the hope he will change.

Paul keeps it simple: the man is to be excluded from the community. The chapter concludes in v.13 with the command to ‘drive out the wicked person from among you.’ The spiritual health of the community is contingent on dealing with the problems in our own house. It’s not just the one person’s behaviour that’s an issue for Paul—the whole community has lost its way and is judging those in the world around them rather than dealing with what’s within their walls.

And the problems within the community are more than this incestuous relationship. In v.11 Paul’s ethic is applied to a number of activities including drunks and ‘revilers’ – who might equally be called ‘(verbal) abusers’.

Paul’s message isn’t addressing human familial relationships. But it is addressing the familial relationship of the body of Christ. And it is a potent illustration of how the gospel does not necessitate a naïve forgiveness that is devoid of consequences.

(If we’re in doubt about whether this applies to families, we would do well to consider Luke 12:51-53. Jesus tells us that the gospel can bring conflict within family life. It can break familial bonds and relationships. As such it is a helpful pushback for the temptation to idolise our next-of-kin.)

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What does real forgiveness look like?

So what does real forgiveness look like? To be honest, there’s not a ‘3 steps to real forgiveness’. (Wouldn't it be great if there was?!) By its nature, I think forgiveness is messy and costly. It’s not just about releasing resentment and debt, but it is humbling—both for the one doing the forgiving as well as the one being forgiven. But in my experience, it features the following:

1. Forgiveness must come from sober honesty
2. Forgiveness does not put those who have been hurt in dangerous situations
3. Forgiveness does not condone continued evil behaviour

Lesson #1. Forgiveness comes from sober honesty.

As I mentioned in my sermon on forgiveness, CS Lewis said this about it:

“Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being [wholly] reconciled to the person who has done it.”

Real forgiveness is not a short cut around grief. I have to be willing to name the pain and harm done. This might mean slowing down, unmasking. Digging into some feelings I’d rather avoid, like powerlessness, anger, sadness and fear.

It might mean saying relationships that are superficially ‘okay’ are not actually in great shape. When someone we love hurts us, the temptation can be to pretend they didn’t. It keeps an illusion of harmony both of the relationship and also of our reputation as Christians—we don’t have anything we need to forgive! Nothing to see here!

Sober honesty is a choice to stop pretending.

A commitment to real forgiveness means facing the full cost of the injury inflicted upon us. It admits the hurt done. It feels the associated shame and foolishness of trusting someone who could harm us so. It grieves for our blindness at not seeing it sooner. It challenges and changes how we view ourselves and the one who offended us.

It takes stock. Charts the losses. Not to form resentment or bitterness. But to know what it is we truly need to forgive. (And that might be more than we can realistically do without God’s grace).

Why? So we know what it is we’re actually needing to forgive. I don’t want to put a band-aid on a knife wound. I need to examine the injury. Tend to the infection. I might need stitches or a splint.

Lesson #2. Forgiveness does not put those who have been hurt in dangerous situations

If what I call forgiveness requires me to conceal wrongdoing, remove necessary consequences, or permit access to someone who may be harmed, it has become collusion.

Consider the various church scandals around safeguarding. The complaints are not primarily that the abuse happened but that those in the know did nothing about it. People who are not themselves abusers did not take wrongdoing seriously enough. People—leaders!—who excused the offender and allowed them to continue to do what they’re doing. Harm who they’re harming.

1 Corinthians 5 is clear the community of God’s people is called to do better.

It is no different if the person being harmed is you. It’s not easy to see this (and I’ve spent some of my life blind to it myself), but forgiveness does not mean tolerating the intolerable. It is not a green light for others to keep hurting you and taking advantage. Just because they say sorry doesn’t mean they have magically earned back my trust.

Forgiveness does not perpetuate harm. Now, I may forgive someone and they hurt me again at some point. Of course. We are all works in progress. But that’s different from expecting the victim of domestic abuse to stay in an abusive marriage and be the ‘bigger man’.

I can love my enemies, pray for those who have hurt me, hope they grow and become all that God has made them to be and also recognise when enough is enough in terms of what I can live with.

Lesson #3. Forgiveness does not condone evil behaviour

True forgiveness does not say ‘it doesn’t matter’ or ‘let’s just forget about it’.

But nor does it call the person a monster and be forever outraged at how they could do such a thing.

It is to name the wrong, call it for what it is, but remember that the person who did it is human and driven by human nature.

Gwen Adshead, a British forensic psychiatrist and Christian, wrote a brilliant book called The Devil You Know. It details some of her work with convicted criminals of the worst kind of offences you could imagine. She maintains that no-one is ‘evil’. They are all human. They may have entered ‘an evil state of mind’ to do what they did, but she holds fiercely to the truth that the convict in front of her is human.

I think forgiveness holds this tension too. People can enter an evil state of mind, they can do immeasurable harm, but they are human. Somehow that state of mind came about through a lifetime of human experiences and choices that, but for the grace of God, could have been me.

Calling time on evil is not to claim a moral high ground. This is not to say we’re better than anyone else. It’s recognising I am capable of the same self-centredness, same violence, same selfishness.

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I’ll be honest: this post was an ‘out loud’ thought about forgiveness and the attempt to put to words my thinking regarding this subject.

What do you think? What have I missed? Why do you think forgiveness is so easily misunderstood?

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