Forgiveness is Unnatural & Unreasonable
When’s the last time you were wronged?
No by something petty. Not annoying drivers, restaurants that don’t have sweet tea, or Chikfila being closed on Sundays when you’d kill for one of God’s own chicky-bisckies.
I mean, when’s the last time you were genuinely wronged?
Something personal. Something that wounded you, and you dwelled on it. Something you remember, against your will, still today and maybe for the rest of your life.
Question for you: when your pain and anger set in… how did the word ‘forgive’ resonate with you?
I don’t know your story. But I know my own.
When I’m hurt, forgiveness doesn’t feel like a natural response. Or even a possible response, depending on how hurt I am and who did the hurting. Maybe you can relate?
I 100% don’t blame you if you do. In fact, the inner tooth-and-nail resistance we feel against the idea of forgiving people who hurt us is rather natural for us. It’s hard-wired in.
…But therein lies the problem: the “what’s-natural-for-me” mechanism.
We’re all born with it. This ingrained heart reflex that always pushes us to react by doing what feels most immediately gratifying or comfortable… Which, in the case of forgiveness, generally boils down to one of a few things:
A) refusing to forgive and looking to settle the score
B) saying we forgive but actually holding on to the hurt while it festers and silently becomes something worse
C) avoiding the conflict altogether by pretending nothing happened
…Naturally, I’m an options B and C guy myself. But no matter which you most naturally lean toward, each of these reactions is as toxic as the others. Are they all easier in the immediate? Yup. Are they all terrible for you in the long run? Oh, definitely.
That’s why the what’s-natural-for-me mechanism is such a problem, particularly in the realm of hurt and unforgiveness. Listening to its influence may provide temporary gratification. It may help you insulate yourself from painful thoughts, avoid agonizing conversations you don’t really want to have, or even feel superficially better about yourself by villainizing your offender.
But ultimately that mechanism blocks you from Kingdom living. It stands in the way of you choosing this heart-wrenching-yet-God-glorifying spiritual discipline, forgiveness. It also puts the healing that comes from forgiveness out of reach, leaving you peace-less for unreasonable amounts of time.
Do any of us want that for ourselves?
We don’t set out to do this intentionally. But when we operate under the influence of that old mechanism, we can’t help but try to force forgiveness to be something reasonable.
In other words, we say: “if forgiving this person is something I can stomach; something I can rationalize; something I feel is fair for me and doesn’t cost me too much; something I can, at the end of the day, feel okay about…then I’ll do it. And if it doesn’t, then I can’t (or won’t).”
That’s the what’s-natural-for-me mechanism talking. The sarx — Greek for the “flesh.” The part of us that’s born not working right.
It’s also the part of Peter that spoke up one evening in Galilee:
“So, Jesus, be reasonable. Isn’t forgiving my brother SEVEN TIMES enough? Isn’t it honestly more than enough?”
…We all know how that conversation went: Jesus answers Peter’s ethics question with his usual transcendent flare and remarks that Peter should forgive his brother an unending amount of times. Several scenes later, Jesus then goes and spends his dying breath asking his Father to not hold his offenders’ wrongs against them.
“Father. Forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Unreasonable, no?
Let’s not look down on Peter though. He was only doing what the rest of us do: trying to make the things of God look and work like the things of us…struggling to reconcile two different kingdoms and navigate two competing natures…being both a man of this world and a man of the next world.
The sarx vs. the Spirit.
It’s the boat all of us are in. It’s also why the New Testament implores us to think like citizens of the next world, not this one.
“Set your mind on the things above, not on the things of the earth,” says Paul. “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God…Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature…” (Col. 3)
Dying to our earthly nature is precisely what makes forgiveness such gritty business. So hard. But so sacred.
Though it leads to eventual life, forgiving someone—especially when they don’t deserve it—feels like death in the immediate because, in a way, forgiveness is a resurrection process. As with all resurrection processes, you get to the life part by walking straight through the death part. So, when Christ asks you and me to forgive he’s really asking us to kill the old mechanism of “what’s natural, what’s reasonable for me” so we can live to His new mechanism of “what’s true of his Kingdom.”
“Forgiveness is a resurrection process. You get to the life part by walking straight through the death part. ”
That’s why every individual act of forgiveness is bigger and deeper than just the situation in front of you. Two opposing kingdoms are warring over your heart and in your heart. Christ’s Kingdom urges you to put your old self to death and trust the resurrection process. The earthly kingdom begs you to preserve your old self by trusting your natural (and sometimes justified!) self-preservation, anti-forgiveness reflexes: You want your justice, don’t you? You want your wrongs righted, don’t you? You want your enemy to pay for what they did, don’t you? You want others to know how fake and awful they are, don’t you?
Oh, don’t we all…it’s only natural.
But the bitter pill we swallow in becoming disciples of Jesus—the master forgiver and the master of mercy—is that we agree to exchange our natural for his natural, our reasonable for his reasonable, our limits of mercy for his limitless mercy.
And the way this happens is through a lifetime of trying and failing and trying again. A lifetime of discipline, because that’s what forgiveness is—a spiritual discipline. A lifetime of learning from the ultimate teacher. A lifetime of allowing Dr. Jesus (Ph.D. in Resurrection) to show you how to die, so you can really live.
And, dear friend, there’s simply no shortcut for this process—only a long, narrow road.
So, today, if you’re struggling to forgive, here are a few practical encouragements you might use to get started:
Show grace to yourself. Dying to our old mechanisms and learning to live to the new Kingdom mechanisms of heart and mind is extremely hard. Resurrection is inspiring to read about, but uncomfortable to live through. Being bitter and harsh toward yourself in the process helps nothing and damages your perception of the benevolent, merciful Father.
Be okay with the reality that forgiveness may take a long time. Sure, there are examples of people who overcame bitterness and fully forgave their offender in one glorious moment. But for every one of those examples, there’s a host of other examples where committed followers of Jesus had to choose forgiveness daily for weeks, months, even years. Again, forgiving others is a spiritual discipline. Meaning, you don’t pick it up one day and automatically master it. It takes devoted effort. A long obedience in the same direction. And God doesn’t always exempt us from processes that involve hard work and pain.
Choose to believe that forgiveness is worth it. Despite the pain, it’s worth it for you. And here’s something we don’t often think about: it’s worth it for the people around you. When you remain in unforgiveness, you sow and reap poisoned fruit inside your own heart. Fruit that hurts both you and the people around you. And that fruit doesn’t stop reproducing and re-poisoning—it continues harming you and the people you affect until you face your enemy and decide to love them. Loving our enemies is unnatural and unreasonable. But the gospel itself is a story of unreasonable forgiveness. God himself practiced this and, beyond any doubt, will work his power and goodness into your story as you begin to practice forgiveness also.
“When you remain in unforgiveness, you sow and reap poisoned fruit inside your own heart.”
Share your struggle with a few others you trust. Our enemy wants you to struggle in isolation—don’t give him what he wants. Real, authentic community offering you real, authentic support is a necessity, not an option. Be vulnerable with those worthy of your vulnerability. Face what happened, don’t avoid it. But face it in the safety and power of Spirit-filled, Christ-fixated community.
Start forgiving now. If you can’t do it all in one day, do as much as you can this day. Take your first step. Do the next right thing you know to do. And don’t judge yourself if your emotions don’t fully line up with your actions—they often won’t. Then, the next day do the same thing. Trust that as you plant your feet on the path to forgiveness, Christ commits to walking with you.
Start rejoicing now. This one can be as hard as forgiveness itself. Like forgiveness, joy must be chosen because it often doesn’t square with our emotions or circumstances... but, that’s precisely why rejoicing in spite of our wrecked emotions and our hurt is one of the most powerful ways our faith can express itself. Rejoicing willfully isn’t a denial of what happened. It’s a step toward freedom from what happened. So, I encourage you: Don’t wait until you feel like things have gotten where you want them. Fight for joy right now. And see if your fight to rejoice doesn’t somehow, in some miraculous way, also aid you in your fight to forgive.
The Father bless you and keep you as you choose a life of disciplined forgiveness in Christ, through His Spirit.
