Forgiveness about choices, not feelings

Maybe the most difficult of the Christian duties found in the Bible is forgiveness. We like thinking God has forgiven us, but then we’re told we need to forgive each other as we have been forgiven.

As Joan Rivers used to say, “Can we talk?”

Can we just admit that forgiving someone who has hurt us deeply can feel impossible? It feels that way a lot. It may not even be a feeling that gets better over time.

I don’t have a silver bullet here, to fix this, but I have found that it helps to see what forgiveness actually means.

When we’re struggling to forgive, we may not even know what that would look like. We tend to think forgiving someone should feel a certain way, but it’s really about making tough choices.

Psalm 32:1-2 contains three word-pictures that describe God’s forgiveness of our sin. His forgiveness can be a model for ours.

The Hebrew word translated as “forgiven” in verse 1 literally means “carried.” The picture is of a man weighed down under a burden that is too heavy for him, until another comes along and carries his burden away. Christ carries the burden of your sin, the guilt and shame of it, to the cross. You are forgiven because the one who had the power to condemn you chose to carry your burden for you.

If someone asks for my forgiveness for saying terrible things to me, I’m faced with a choice, to either hold onto the injustice or to decide the pain is something I can absorb and overcome. (I’ve never said this is easy, but that it really does come down to these sorts of choices.)

Verse 1 also talks about God “covering” our sins. This is the idea that, once he’s forgiven a sin, he doesn’t keep bringing it up again. Once it’s been covered, he doesn’t remove the cover.

He doesn’t go blabbing about what you did.

In a similar way, when we forgive people, we shouldn’t keep bringing it up. Either we’ve forgiven or we haven’t. Married folks, I’m looking at y’all.

Verse 2 recounts the blessing of those whose sins God will not “impute” to them. This is a word having to do with accounting, or even banking. On a basic level, it’s not about whether you’ve sinned. We all have. A lot. What matters is what God chooses to keep on your record, and what he’s willing to erase. The person is blessed whose record God has chosen to wipe clean.

Christ was “credited” with your sin on the cross, so that you might have his own righteousness imputed to your account.

When I forgive someone for some offense, honestly, I may not feel warm and fuzzy toward them. It helps to remember that forgiveness is often about being willing to clear the record. It’s not that I forget what was done. It’s that I have decided I will no longer pursue payment for that debt. I’ve erased the “amount due” on their record with me.

Knowing what it means to be forgiven by God may help us forgive the wretched sinners in our own life.

Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at:

[email protected]