Forgiveness can be a struggle. It’s a struggle to forgive someone who has really hurt you. It’s a struggle to confront someone with their sin in the hopes of being able to offer them forgiveness and reconcile with them. In Forgiveness Part 1 and Part 2, we talked a bit about vertical and horizontal forgiveness. Vertical forgiveness is when we take our offense and our pain to God. We talk to Him about what happened. We allow Him to define for us whether it was sin against us or not, and then we agree with Him and forgive as Scripture mandates. We work with Him to get through all the pain and healing that is needed to truly be set free from that sin. In Horizontal forgiveness, we’re confronting the offender after we’ve forgiven them through vertical forgiveness. We’re letting them know what they did and how it affected us. We are partnering with God in the hopes of bringing them to repentance and restoring their relationship with God first, and then if possible with us.
But what happens when we are the offender? How are we supposed to handle the sins that we commit against others? What does repentance and a need for forgiveness look like then? As hard as it is to forgive those who hurt us, it’s just as hard sometimes to approach someone we have hurt and ask for their forgiveness. It can be just as awkward to apologize as it is to rebuke someone.
Forgiveness from others is predicated on the example God gives in offering forgiveness. God is not short on mercy to forgive us. We learn from the parable of the Prodigal Son that God is ready and waiting, watching for us to approach Him in order to shower us with forgiveness. We receive ultimate forgiveness when we are born again. God forgives all our sins and cleanses us from them. We also receive forgiveness in smaller amounts after redemption as we have need of it. So when we commit a sin and become aware that we have sinned, we can approach God and receive confirmation of our forgiveness and a renewed cleansing from our sins.
We normally think of repentance in terms of vertical repentance. Just as vertical forgiveness involves us talking to God alone, vertical repentance involves the same thing. We recognize our sin against God. We bring that sin to God. We repent for the sin against God. The conversation is between me and God. When we sin against someone else, we need both vertical and horizontal repentance.
Where is the Scriptural foundation for repenting to our brothers and sisters for any wrongs we may have done? Romans 13:8 says that we are to “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.” Other translations say we are to “owe no man anything but to love him.” When I sin against you, I owe you a debt. I owe you truth. I owe you repentance. In some situations, I may even owe you restitution. Sin is a debt. When I commit an offense against you, I am leaving an outstanding debt. God clearly says that I can not do that. I need to pay that debt. I need to seek forgiveness by repenting to you for the sin I have committed against you.
Likewise, Romans 12:18 says, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Offense removes peace. I can not live at peace with someone I have offended or harmed in some way. And Paul is clearly saying here that I need to live at peace with everyone as far as it depends on me. That means I need to take ownership for the wrong I have done. Hebrews 12:14 (NKJV) tells us to “pursue peace with all people.” Pursue peace. That’s an active word. We can’t just sit back and assume peace will happen. We have to put forth effort to make peace. We have to be peacemakers. What if the person I approach refuses to forgive me? Well, I have done my part if I have repented. We can’t control how a person will respond to our repentance and apology. We can only control our own actions. If we follow God’s way and repent for our wrongs, then we have done everything we can–we have done the “as far as it depends on you” part of pursuing peace.
Does God really care about my relationship with other people? Yes! Matthew 5: 23-26 shows us just how seriously God takes our relationships with others:
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. 25 Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
If you are at church, worshiping God and you realize that your brother or sister has something against you, leave and reconcile with them. God is saying that we are to interrupt ourselves and make it right. God doesn’t want our worship if we ignore obedience. If we “remember” that our brother or sister has something against us, it’s because the Holy Spirit has spoken to our hearts to remind us of a sin we have not taken care of. We need to make it right to the person we offended. Then, God will accept our worship and our sacrifice.
I can’t force another person to accept my apology. I can’t force another person to be reconciled to me. In the post, Boundaries, we talked about the ways to figure out where my responsibility ends and the other person’s begins. I am only responsible for my part. In relationships, each person has their own “stuff” that they are responsible for. I can’t take responsibility for the other person’s “stuff.” I can only take responsibility for my own. It’s important to know where that line is.
Let’s look at the second part of this section, verse 25-26: “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
There are two types of consequences to our sin against other people: 1) Natural–Depending on the nature of our offense, we could very well be hauled into a physical court room and made to pay a fine or serve jail time for our offense. I need to do whatever the natural court requires of me in order to demonstrate my repentance and make things right. 2) Spiritual–Our real adversary is the devil. If I sin against you and I refuse to repent, I have opened a legal door to the enemy that allows him to come in and oppress me. I need to repent in order to close that door to the enemy. In Genesis 4:6, God is speaking to Cain. Cain has brought a sacrifice that God did not accept. As a result, he is offended at God. God responds: “Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Sin is crouching at all our doors. It wants to come in and wreck havoc on our lives. Living with unrepentant sin allows that to happen.
Our sin is a debt. We owe God repentance for sinning against our brother and sister because by sinning against them we have also sinned against God, and we owe the person we offended our repentance. God gives no leeway in His requirements for our relationships with others. We are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. “Do to others what you would have them do to you for this sums up the law and the prophets. (Matthew 7:12)” We want others to apologize and make things right when they offend us. We owe them the same courtesy. But God calls us to an even higher standard of love toward other members of the body of Christ. He tells us that we are to love our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ the way that Jesus loved us: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)
As members of the body of Christ, our relationships with others–especially with others in the church–is supposed to be a picture of Jesus to the world around us. When we’re busy committing offenses against each other, not seeking forgiveness, and not offering forgiveness we are not doing anything that would attract a non-believer. They’re going to look at us and say “No, thank you!” But if the church is functioning the way God wants it to function, then we are creating a safe place. It’s a place where we seek forgiveness when we hurt someone. It’s a place where we freely offer forgiveness and love to those who have hurt us. It’s a place that attracts the non-believer because it put Jesus on display and stands in stark contrast to the way the world works. True love attracts people.
Of course, when we’re talking about offenses, we are doing so in the context of what God says. We allow God to define offense for us rather than our own feelings or the feelings of the other person. We have to be willing to surrender the issue to God no matter what side of the issue we’re on. We allow God to define it. So there may be times when something happens and we think it’s no big deal, but the Holy Spirit begins to prick our heart and say, “you need to go make things right with so-and-so.” We can’t argue with God and tell Him how this is not a big deal. He sees more than we see. He’s the only one who sees the actual Truth of what happened. If God says what we did is a sin against another person, then it’s a sin against another person, and we need to repent to God and also to that person.
If someone approaches us through horizontal forgiveness and rebukes us, we need to be willing to listen. If we don’t see the event the way they do, we need to be willing to take that issue back to God and see what He says about it. It’s okay to tell that person, “I don’t really see what you’re seeing here, but I care about you and I’m willing to take correction. I’m going to take this back to God and see what He says about it.” That’s an okay step to take because we know that we have to truly repent before we can expect to receive forgiveness. We’re now on the flip-side of the equation from what we talked about in Part 2.
So, we’ve heard from God, we know that we need to approach the person we’ve offended and repent. How do we do it?
- We go to the person having heard from God first.
- We go graciously. We don’t approach that person with a chip on our shoulder. We don’t go just because God told us to when we really feel self-justified. That’s why it’s important for us to hear from God first.
- We go asking questions. We may know that we have offended someone, but we do not know their heart and mind. So we need to stay open to hearing what they have to say about the situation from their perspective.
- We repent, and we let the other person know that we repent. Basically, we apologize, and we mean it.
- We work to restore trust. We have to be willing to allow the offended person to explain their losses and the effects our sin had on their life. We need to be patient and careful.
Approaching someone to repent is uncomfortable. It may even make the person you’re apologizing to uncomfortable as well. Just as many people don’t know how to offer forgiveness to another person or how to rebuke someone who has offended them, many do not know what to do when someone apologizes to them. Our pastor tells this story:
When he was younger, our pastor stole a pocket knife from a local five and dime store. He thought nothing of it. Later as an adult, he was born again. God reminded him of the pocket knife that he had stolen. He went to the owner of the store and said, “Many years ago I stole a pocket knife from you. I want to pay for it and anything else you think is needed.” The owner responded, “Did you just get saved? I get people in here all the time telling me about stuff they stole because they got saved. Don’t worry about it. Welcome to the family!”
Once we’ve gone to the person with our understanding of God’s conviction, we need to be able to listen and hear how the other person saw the situation. God can use that to restructure how we view the offense and to restructure our understanding of sin in general. God uses it to grow up. We need to honor and respect the person we’ve offended, take their input, and sort it out with the help of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, we may need to seek wise counsel from a third party to know the best way to go about making amends and rebuilding trust.
Let’s be clear:
- We aren’t looking to this person for a clear conscience. The person we offended can’t do anything about our conscience. That’s up to God. We have to repent to God for our sin as well as to the person we’ve offended in order to receive a clean conscience. We are going to this person to help us understand our sin against them and to try to restore our relationship with them.
- We need to be able to distinguish between real sin and actual sin. This comes from God. Unless we have the conviction that we were wrong, we should not approach the other person to ask for forgiveness. We can’t ask for forgiveness if we don’t feel convicted that we were wrong because we are not truly repentant at that point. In order to truly repent, we have to believe that what we did was wrong and requires repentance.
Ultimately we need to make restitution to that person. It could be actually paying them back for something we’ve taken. If we’ve damaged their reputation, we may have to work hard to restore it. It may require us to humble ourselves and admit our sin to others in order to restore the reputation we’ve damaged. If we’ve gossiped, we need to go to those we gossiped with and retract our statements. There are also actions that we can do that demonstrate our repentance and understanding that do not fall under the category of restitution. The offended party is the one who determines what actions they need to see in order to restore the lost trust.
HOW CAN WE APPROACH THE PERSON WHEN ASKING FOR FORGIVENESS?
- “I want to have a good relationship with you…..”
- “I want to be under God’s authority in our relationship……”
- “I want our relationship to be free from offense…..”
ACTIVATION
Lord, is there anyone that I need to go to and ask for forgiveness?
A Beautiful Mess 