Letting Go of the Wrong: REPENTANCE

REPENT! Or don't so I have permission to hate you forever! ...wait a second

In continuing this series on forgiveness, I'd like to discuss a fundamental part of the concept: repentance.  To repent is to change our mind. It's to admit that we've done wrong in the eyes of God, to both be sorry and to say that we are sorry (that is to confess), to turn again and try to do better. 

There is the only one unforgivable sin. I used to think of "unforgivable" as meaning it was sin so bad that God refuses to forgive it. That's not the case. God cannot offer forgiveness where there is no place for that forgiveness to go. That is, if someone doesn't think that they need to be forgiven. And we cannot offer forgiveness where God can't. We can be ready to offer it. We can let go of the anger and hostility and be at peace. We can offer it to God and we can move on. But neither we nor God Himself can force someone to accept forgiveness when they don't think they need it. Unrepentance, the equivalent of unbelief, is unforgivable because the person makes it so, not God.

Cain and Abel
Jacopo Tintoretto, 1518-1594

Fine then, some of us might say. The jackass who did this to me has never set foot inside a church in his entire life. There is no way he's repented in any sense of the word, to me or to God. He is no brother of mine in any way, shape, or form. ...Yeah, okay, Cain, and where exactly did you leave Abel again? (Genesis 4)

There are, of course, Christians who refuse to see when we have done wrong anymore than someone who has never set foot in a church does. Just because someone hasn't come to the faith yet doesn't mean he isn't a neighbor whom we are commanded to love. (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; Luke 10:27). He is.

If we read those passages and have to ask who our neighbor is, we've missed the boat entirely. EVERYBODY IS (see the Parable of the Good Samaritan) because Jesus died for the sins of the world. And until someone has taken their last breath, there is time for them to repent, and there is time for prayers to be said on their behalf.

Whatever happened to us pales in comparison

to what is happening to an unrepentant soul. 

That's the ugly truth. If we revel in that fact, we have lost our way and must also repent and turn back before we lose our souls as well. That's why forgiveness isn't about finding peace for ourselves. We pray that those who wronged us would come to Christ for their own sake, so that they may be forgiven. In the meantime, we are at peace knowing that Christ's sacrifice is indeed once and for all, and that the forgiveness that is waiting for all of us is real.

...but is he truly repentant? ...am I? Again, the focus has slipped from God and back onto ourselves. The fact is we can never know what is in another man's heart (1 Corinthians 2:11). But we cannot wait until the end of days to forgive each other, and so we must follow the 8th Commandment in its full spirit and give our brother the benefit of the doubt, leaving it to God to sort out the details. Our brother doesn't need to meet our requirements for repentance: only God's, and his sincerity is always between him and God.

We are forgiven in Christ,

not in degrees according to the sincerity of our repentance.

As for our own hearts, confessing that we feel justified when we know we ought to feel sorry and asking God to change our hardened hearts is also repentance. We are always uncertain of ourselves and never perfect. We commit sins we aren't even aware of all the time, for crying out loud! How are we supposed to repent of those?? Well, like this:

I, a poor miserable sinner, confess unto You all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended You and justly deserved Your temporal and eternal punishment. But I am heartily sorry for them, and sincerely repent of them, and I pray you of your boundless mercy, and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor sinful being. (Lutheran Service Book pg. 184)

Corporate confession (and absolution) as found in the Lutheran Service Book, Divine Setting III. Absolution from the pastor, given by the command and in the stead of Christ (Matthew 16:19), follows, as does the Lord's Supper. Complete and free forgiveness of all our sins: of what we have done, of what we have left undone, and of who we are ...in Christ, not of our own accord. Repent. Go to church. Be forgiven. Forgive.

Letting Go of the Wrong: Reconciliation

...a Theological and Practical Must

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"But now in Christ Jesus you who once were FAR OFF have been BROUGHT NEAR by the blood of Christ. For He HIMSELF is our PEACE, who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that He might create in Himself ONE NEW MAN in place of the two, so making peace, and might RECONCILE US BOTH to God in one body through the CROSS, thereby killing the hostility." (Ephesians 2:13-16)

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I read one of the worst sentences of my life the other day: "Forgiveness is mandatory; reconciliation is optional." It comes from a pop-psychology self-help book that claims (and fails) to be Christian. Never in all my theological studies have I ever found where forgiveness and reconciliation can be separated.

Let's think about reconciliation for a minute. To be reconciled means the debt has been paid (by Christ). No more is owed. No bitterness is retained. The hostility is killed. This is what Jesus did between God and man: He reconciled us to God the Father through His sacrifice on our behalf. This reconciliation was made possible by atonement for our sins: an atonement greater than we could ever manage on our own. 

As a result, God sees no sin in us. He sees only the purity that was earned for us by His Son. We owe Him nothing. Our debt is paid in full,

and we are welcome in His Kingdom as His children.

As I've said before, some reject this free gift, but regardless of that fact, it is the objective existence of this free gift that we acknowledge when we forgive one another. Reconciliation with one another exists equally as objectively: the debt has been paid. Period. (This does not negate the necessity of repentance, nor our obligation to bring our brother's sin to his attention and give him the opportunity to repent, but more on that later). So then, if I'm the victim of a crooked insurance salesman, and he repents and I forgive him, do I have to buy more insurance from him? If a friend betrays me, and she repents and I forgive her, do I have to trust her with my secrets again? If my brother steals from me, and he repents and I forgive him, do I have to give him access to my money? If a man murdered my loved one, and he repents and I by the grace of God manage to forgive him, do I have to let him go free?

Well, in short, yes. It may take years to get to the point where we can do such things, if we ever get there at all, but if the hostility is truly killed, if the matter is truly forgiven, then the situation is put behind us. Nothing is left to be repaid: nothing is owed, nothing is left to be punished. The person we have become reconciled with in Christ has nothing to prove to us, and we—like God does with us—ought to go on as though nothing has happened.

But nothing is that simple. We are human after all, and we try our best not to be idiots. We have sayings for situations like this: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me," or "Once bitten, twice shy." Even if we honestly want to let the hostility go, it's tempting to treat the person who wronged us differently than we did before. We know human nature is inherently sinful, and that we're all prone to commit the same sins over and over again. The risk is just too great. But fear of getting hurt simply is not a good enough reason to hold any amount of debt over a person's head who has been forgiven in Christ. 

Remember, Christianity is inherently unreasonable by our standards of "reason." What God would ever die for people who hate Him?

However, abstaining from recreating the same situation with a person who has wronged us is sometimes necessary OUT OF LOVE for our that person, our neighbor, not out of hostility or fear for one's self or a lingering sense of mistrust. God and our neighbor are our top priorities respectively. If our goal is to protect ourselves or our assets from further harm, we've missed the Christianity boat entirely. Take the case of the fraudulent insurance salesman. It may be an honest fact that the person I attempted to buy insurance from doesn't have the resources to best serve my family's needs. Purchasing them again isn't going to benefit either party. I'm under no obligation to purchase services that don't work, especially if it harms my family. I am obligated to be a good steward of what God has given me, and so I'm at liberty to make an informed decision: not out of spite, but out of love (1 Peter 4).

There are times when we have to admit that the temptation for our brother to sin is too great to risk giving him the same opportunities we did before. Sometimes people do this for themselves, like when a recovering alcoholic chooses to abstain from any and all alcohol and cut off old friendships. Sometimes it's our responsibility to do this for them. If your brother has stolen from you and your parents and your sister and a few of his friends, it would be kinder for his sake to not allow him access to your property out of love for him, not because you derive satisfaction from of the look on his face when he sees you've change your locks.

The same might go for a friend who's had difficulty keeping thoughts shared in confidence to herself. For her sake, it may be best to not tempt her into gossip with things you want to keep secret. Not because you're no longer friends (by Christ's example, who calls us all His friends, we do not rate our friends according to how much they can do for us) but because you are friends (John 15:12-17). It's hard enough to become reconciled with a friend who's blabbed your secrets all over creation. Imagine trying to become reconciled with a man who's murdered your son or daughter, adult or child. While I cannot even begin to fathom that kind of pain, I would venture that every breath of air that murderer is allowed to take in, every word they are allowed to speak, every smile they are allowed to see while my baby is with God and not with me would be a knife in my heart. All anyone might be able to achieve through fervent prayer and sanctification in this case would be an honest desire to want to forgive. And that's okay. God is merciful. 

But the principle doesn't change with the severity of the sin.

 Well then, shouldn't we let the murderers all go free as soon as they say they're sorry? Certainly not! By becoming or remaining citizens of the United States, or any country, we've signed an unwritten agreement promising to follow the laws of the land whether we like them or not (insofar as the laws do not compel us to sin against God, in which case we are obligated to "obey God rather than man" and suffer the consequences—see Acts 5—like refusing to turn in our Jewish neighbor to the reigning Nazi regime of 1930s Germany, or more contemporarily refusing to issue gay couples marriage licenses). When a person is incarcerated as a result of committing a crime, they are not being held for breaking God's law, but the laws of the state, which the state has every right to punish as it sees fit (Romans 13). Remember Jesus' command to "render unto Caesar..." (Matthew 22:21).

At the same time, no one is atoning for breaking God's law while he fulfills his duty to the state. No amount of time in prison can make up for the wrong that has been done in God's eyes, or often in our own. Perhaps the death penalty comes close. At least then the perpetrator will meet Jesus on our own time, but a death so peaceful can scarcely come close to reconciling such an act. The only thing that can is the death of the Son of God. That alone can reconcile a murderer to his victims. That alone has, and that is what must be accepted for reconciliation on our level to take place.

God has reconciled us to Himself and to one another through the sacrifice of the Son of God. We don't become reconciled through any actions of our own. We either understand the fact that reconciliation has taken place and accept it, or we don't and hang on to the hostility, calling Jesus' sacrifice deficient and reveling in the fact that the one who's wronged us can never atone for what they've done. 

It takes time. Lots and lots and lots of time to forgive. If you just can't do it, if you cannot see your way to accepting the fact that Christ has reconciled us all to the Father and to one another, please please please, talk to your pastor.

Reconciliation—with God and with one another—is the church's business.

"From now on, therefore, we regard NO ONE according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded CHRIST according to the flesh, we regard Him thus NO LONGER. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who THROUGH CHRIST reconciled us to Himself and gave us the MINISTRY of RECONCILIATION; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of RECONCILIATION. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you ON BEHALF of CHRIST, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:16-21)

Letting Go of the Wrong: Do YOU Really Know What You Do?

"The one who REJECTS me

and does not RECEIVE my WORDS has a JUDGE; 

THE WORD that I have SPOKEN

will JUDGE him on the LAST DAY." 

(John 12:48) 

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Last time, in the series on Letting Go of the Wrong, I talked about replacing the desire for vengeance with the desire for vindication. Vindication means that the person who's done you so much wrong will finally know exactly what he did. He will finally understand the suffering he caused you, and the suffering he caused our LORD, his Savior, and he will either kneel down in front of our LORD and beg for forgiveness, or he will reject Christ's mercy and be rejected by Christ in return. Whether you desire to withhold forgiveness at that point or not doesn't matter for him. But it matters a great deal for you.

There will come a time when each one of us will be on our knees in front of our LORD with Satan looking on, recounting everything we've ever done wrong in vivid detail. Maybe we've never driven drunk or killed another human being outright, or even injured anyone or stolen a dime ...but what have we done?

Have we chosen to do something else for an hour on Sunday morning instead of worshiping the Son of God who died for us? Skimped on our weekly offering so we could buy something for ourselves? Repeated unsavory gossip about our neighbor whom the Son of God loves enough to have died for? Felt hatred for that young man with the blue mohawk and twenty-five piercings when all Jesus feels for him is love? Felt cheated by the wonderful, glorious gift of free and complete forgiveness God gave to the entire world because that means He also gave it to someone we hate?

...have we hated Jesus?

In the end, does it really matter if we're the murderer set free or one of the thousands in the crowd shouting, "Crucify Him!"? Jesus wasn't just praying for those who were literally driving the nails into His innocent palms. He was praying for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US who put Him up there on that cross. It hurts. We hurt. Jesus knows that. He died for what happened to you, He died for you, and He died for the person who did this to you. That's what's at stake when it comes to withholding forgiveness: if we refuse theirs, we refuse our own (Mark 11:25; Matthew 6:14-15; Matthew 18:21-22; Luke 6:37; 2 Corinthians 2:5-11).

Letting Go of the Wrong: How Do I Live with Forgiveness?

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"ViNDiCATE ME, O God, and DEFEND my cause

against an ungodly people,

from the deceitful and unjust man

DELiVER ME!"

(Psalm 43:1)

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Now a practical application of the abstract in regards to what I discussed last time in the series on Letting Go of the Wrong that was Done to Me, and an attempt to answer the question, "How do I live with forgiveness when, because of what that person did, I can barely live at all?"

Start this very second by changing your daily prayer from, "Punish him," to "Vindicate me." But know that vindication doesn't necessarily mean to make what happened to you happen to that person. And it doesn't mean that person who wronged you will necessarily have as much trouble learning how to live with what he did to you as you do.

Vindication & vengeance are two different words conveying two different ideas. One belongs to us, the other to God, and both are actions taken by Him on our behalf (Romans 12:19).

Praying for VINDICATION means that you are asking for what happened to be made right, for someone to make up for it. And that someone was Jesus. He cried for you. He suffered for you. He died for you. He's immensely sorry that your life has to be this hard, and He promises it won't last forever.

Praying for VINDICATION also means asking God to change this person's heart so that when this person who's wronged you meets Jesus on his deathbed, or preferably beforehand, he will finally know exactly what he did. He will finally understand the suffering he caused you, and the suffering he caused our Lord, his Savior. He will feel it, and he will regret it. And he will kneel down in front of our Lord, and he will weep for what he did to you, and he will beg for forgiveness.

Whether you desire to withhold forgiveness at that point

or not doesn't matter. At least not for him.

Should this person instead reject Christ and His mercy, which is also our freedom (Mark 16:14-20), he will be rejected by Christ in return and judged according to his own deeds (John 12:48). The situation then becomes a matter of vengeance on the Lord's part. If someone has wronged us badly enough, the picture of them in hell may be a tempting one, but we cannot in honest, good faith ever pray that anyone would reject Christ without mocking the sacrifice Christ made for the world and putting our own salvation in serious jeopardy (Luke 9:51-56; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 10:13-16).

Next, adding to that same prayer, ask God for the peace that you know you so desperately need. Real peace won't come by any amount of effort you put into "working through" what's happened to you. "Working through it," though I am unsure of exactly what that means, is important, don't get me wrong. I assume it has something to do with the ability to face the incident and its ramifications, helping us to "come to terms" with our lives as they are now, to "accept it," which eventually aids us in the ever-present goal of "moving on." These things are good, but they are not sufficient.

Remember, Christianity is not therapy.

Real peace comes from God alone. Like forgiveness, it's a gift that can be received regardless of the circumstances around us. It's peace that doesn't come from no longer focusing on ourselves, our afflictions, or our enemies, but that allows us the freedom to not focus on those things: a necessary result of real forgiveness.

If in all honesty you're not ready to let go of that desire for an eye for eye, let God know that, too, even if your prayer is, "So help me, God, I want them dead." BUT -- and I have never been more serious in my life -- you must admit that your heart needs to be changed. No one expects you to do it alone. Ask God to change that heart of yours for your own sake, not for the sake of the one who wronged you. Immerse yourself in God's Word, read the Bible, go to church, talk to your pastor.

Why go to all this trouble to rid yourself of a feeling that feels perfectly justified? Because there is more at stake for you

than you might realize.

We don't have to come up with the words that reflect a change in our hearts ourselves. Here are some ready-made Prayers for Vindication straight from God's lips to your ears: Psalm 35; Psalm 43; Psalm 54; Psalm 135. And here are some Passages on Peace you may find helpful when peace is nowhere in sight: Philippians 4:4-9; John 14:15-31; 2 Corinthians 4:7-18; Romans 8:18-30.

Letting Go of the Wrong: FORGIVENESS

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And JESUS said, “Father, forgive them, 

for they know not what they do." 

(Luke 23:34a)
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That was Jesus' prayer on the cross for those who were torturing Him in the most inhuman manner imaginable while they were torturing Him. Jesus' compassion is perfect. Mine is not. You can't tell me that man who got behind the wheel despite the fact that he was so drunk he could barely walk didn't know exactly what he was doing before he killed that mother and child. You can't tell me that man didn't know exactly what he was doing when he kidnapped that little girl and took her life. ...the truck driver who was in too much of a hurry to heed a stop sign... that surgeon and his 1%... the terrorists who flew occupied planes into occupied buildings... that person who put their love of money before the well being of your child... that woman who aborted her baby after choosing to have unprotected sex... that judge who denied you claim when God knows you were in the right... your brother who drove your family's business in the ground... that woman who let your child drown... that boss who laid you off... the landlord who evicted you and your kids because his friend wanted your house...

DON'T TELL ME THEY DIDN'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE DOING!!!

And if they didn't, they're guilty of a level of stupidity that ought to be punishable by law. It tears us up inside. Then we're asked, "How many days of our lives are we going to give to that person who did this horrible thing to us? He's not worth it." Wow. What a fabulous #@%*!$^ idea. Why didn't I think of that?? Because it's not about him, is it. It's about us: the wronged, the victims.

No, the person who wronged you is not worth dwelling on, but what happened to you is. What you've lost, the pain you felt then, the pain you feel now, the pain your loved one feels or felt, THAT is worth thinking about every day forever because it's going to be there every day forever. It's worth yelling about, screaming about, complaining about, punching about, obsessing about. But what you're losing by obsessing about it isn't. Don't hold on to the hate: it's not worth losing the love. Don't hold on to the anger: it's not worth losing the happiness.

And no, despite our have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too-because-we-all-have-at-least-two-cakes-anyway modern American culture, you cannot have both. Our hearts just aren't built for that (Matthew 6:24). I'm not asking you to force yourself to "be okay with" the event that changed the rest of your life, or took the life of someone you love, or changed a million lives or took the lives of thousands. No one can do that. I'm not telling you to "get over it," or "own it," or "look at the bright side," or "move on," or any other of pop culture's less than helpful cliché remedies for surviving injustice. I am asking you to forgive.

...whatever "to forgive" means.

To forgive means to acknowledge the fact that Jesus made up for the sin that was committed against you. He died for it and for the person who did it to you. The latter is an unpleasant thought at first glance, but it's true nevertheless. Whether that person believes and receives the benefits of the forgiveness that Jesus earned for him isn't up to you. That's between him and God, and that's what you and I aren't supposed to judge. We are, however, supposed to judge each other's (AND our own!) actions as right or wrong. We are not only able to judge the wrongness of actions: we're obligated to (Matt. 18:15-17; Gal. 6:1-2; 1 Thess. 5:14; James 5:19-20; etc.). Just as we are obligated to forgive the actions that are wrong.

Forgiveness is a fact. Forgiveness exists objectively apart from ourselves, apart from our feelings, apart from our hurt and anger and injustice. That person is forgiven whether you forgive him or not, so why refuse to believe it? Why do we hang on to the resentment and bitterness for years, decades, even unto death? BECAUSE FORGIVENESS IS INHERENTLY UNFAIR, that's why. It isn't fair because none of us earn it. Jesus earned it for us on the Cross in the single most blatant act of injustice known in heaven and on earth (2 Cor. 5:21) where God allowed Jesus, entirely sinless, to become sin in our stead. Forgiveness is a gift.

So, I suppose practically speaking, the correct question for us to ask is, "How do I live with forgiveness when, because of what that person did, I can barely live at all?"

Read about focusing on the good in

Letting Go of the Wrong: Seeing the Good

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Or to read the answer to the above question, click on

Letting Go of the Wrong: How to Live with Forgiveness

Letting Go of the Wrong: Seeing the Go(o)d

"FINALLY, brothers, whatever IS TRUE, whatever IS HONORABLE, whatever IS JUST, whatever is pure, whatever is LOVELY, whatever is commendable, if there is ANY excellence, if there is anything WORTHY of praise, think about these things. What you have LEARNED and RECEIVED and HEARD and SEEN in Me—practice these things, and the GOD OF PEACE will be with you." (Philippians 4:8-9)

Sometimes, we are sinned against in such a way that takes our breath away. Attacked, taken advantage of, stolen from, made fun of, lied to, wrongly accused... It's times when something like that happens to me or to someone I love that I can find nothing good in all the world to think about. Then I have to remind myself--usually out loud--that there is always JESUS. 

Whatever else is honorable, just, pure, and lovely that I can't see on these darkest of days, it does not compare to the fact that the Son of God loves me, and He died for me. A few minutes dwelling on that fact, and suddenly, the world that I hate so much, that world and all the people in it who hate me right back, that world God loved so much He sent His one and only Son, doesn't seem so bad anymore. Don't get me wrong: it still seems bad enough to steal a night or two of sleep from me, but not bad enough to steal any more than that.

Repeat after me: "Yes, I am getting the shaft, AND..." Fill in the blank with whatever is honorable and just, accepting the fact that it's probably not the people around you. Start by adding, "Jesus loves me." The hard thing is knowing that sometimes, that's honestly all we have to fill in that blank. The best thing is knowing that all the time, that is all we honestly need.

Don't give up. Not ever. The letter of the man's law may be on the side of those whose sole purpose in life is to make a quick buck, that is generally what man's law was made for, but the spirit of God's law is on the side of those who are treated poorly. As a Christian, when Jesus commands us to turn the other cheek, this is what He means (Matthew 5). Why are we told to do such a thing, you ask? Well, what better witness is there to the necessity of a Savior than blatant injustice? Injustice that is screaming to be made right. Injustice that was made right: a right that will be realized on the Last Day. I, for one, cannot wait, although I fear there are some who are wanting vindication from me as well. For that, I beg for forgiveness, from them and from God, hoping that I am being prayed for in my wrong and not hated for it.

"You have heard that it was said, ‘AN EYE FOR AN EYE and a tooth for a tooth.’ BUT I say to you, Do not RESIST the one who is EVIL. But if anyone SLAPS you on the right cheek, TURN to him the other also. [...] You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall LOVE your neighbor and HATE your enemy.’ But I say to you, LOVE YOUR ENEMIES AND PRAY for those who persecute you." (Matthew 5:38-39)

Easier said than done, LORD. An eye for an eye feels so much better, so much more right, to me than turning the other cheek. But the eye I would receive in return for my deeds would surely be the end of me, and so I will try to both say and do as you command. That is, after all, all that I can do. You knew that going in, dear LORD, or You wouldn't have bothered to redeem me. And I must be capable of some sort of kindness in the face of evil, albeit an imperfect one. If I wasn't, I would not be able to carry the title of "Redeemed."

Suggested verse to repeat when having a severe case of the dwells is Philippians 4:13
PRC buddies, remember to breathe!

“I can do all things -------> 5 count inhale

through Him who strengthens me.” -------> 5 count exhale