Two Kinds Of Forgiveness

There is more than a little confusion on the subject of forgiveness. Sometimes it’s the mistake of thinking that to forgive is to forget. This causes some of us to think that, because we can’t forget, we can’t forgive. The reality is that it’s not even possible to forget in that sense. We never really forget anything that happens to us. It’s in there somewhere, whether we can recall it at will or not. And think about it, to forget what someone has done to us could quite possibly subject us to an endless cycle of abuse which God never intended. On this note, we should not confuse forgiving someone with trusting someone. They are not the same thing. Forgiveness is free. Trust needs to be earned.

There is also the mistaken notion that when we forgive we’re really doing ourselves a favour. It’s true that our lives improve a hundred fold when we practice forgiveness, and the refusal to forgive is like a disease that eats away at our souls until there is nothing left. The old saying, “forgiveness is setting the prisoner free only to then realize the prisoner was me” speaks to this truth. And the saying, conversely, that “resentment (the opposite of forgiveness) is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die” is also true. However, to make our own well-being the primary focus and motive for forgiving is to flip forgiveness on it’s head, twisting it into an act of selfishness rather than what it is to be in truth – an act of love for God and others.

Perhaps the other big thing about forgiveness that can cause confusion is that there are two kinds of forgiveness, or maybe it would be better to say that there are two aspects to forgiveness. Tim Lane and Paul Tripp point this out in their excellent book – ‘Relationships: A Mess Worth Making’. They refer us to Luke 17:3 where Jesus teaches us that forgiving someone who has sinned against us is conditioned upon their willingness to repent. But this is in contrast to Jesus’ teaching in Mark 11:25 where it is intimated that we should simply forgive people whether they repent or not. The answer to the seeming inconsistency in Jesus’ teaching in these passages is explained by this fact – there are two aspects or two types of forgiveness. Repentance is necessary if a true reconciliation is going to take place (see Matthew 18). But even when reconciliation is not possible, even when the other person is unwilling to repent, or maybe they don’t even acknowledge what they have done, we are to have what the authors call an ‘attitude of forgiveness’. We experience this attitude of forgiveness in our vertical relationship with God. We let go of the offense and we give it up to Him. He died after all for all of our sin, both the sin we commit AND the sin committed against us. His grace is sufficient for all of these things.

As I read through those pages I thought of Jesus Himself. As He hung dying on the cross at the hands of us who put Him there, He cried out to the Father, remember, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” THAT is an attitude of forgiveness. Of course, only those who genuinely repent will actually get to experience that forgiveness, as only those who repent are reconciled to God. But nonetheless, Jesus was right with the Father when He expressed that incredible attitude of forgiveness. And, once again, He is the one we are called to emulate.