What Forgiveness Is (and Isn't)

Dannah Gresh: You’ve heard the saying, “forgive and forget”? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth cautions against the forgetting part.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: If you and I could not remember any of the pain we’ve experienced, how in the world could we have mercy and be tenderhearted toward hurting people? You see, the pain of my past can actually be a means of my extending grace and mercy and kindness to hurting people. 

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Choosing Forgiveness, for July 14, 2022. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Have you ever watched children learning to swim? Some kids start doggie-paddling right away, but others cling to the edge of the pool, too afraid to let go. Well, in the same way, some of us are hanging on to old hurts by refusing to forgive. We’re missing out on the freedom we can have in Christ. Let's join Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth as she encourages us to “dive in” and experience the joy of forgiveness. 

Nancy: We've been talking about the whole subject of forgiveness and just before this session, someone pointed out to me that there is a whiteboard behind me that has an eraser on it that says, "Erase all."

What a picture that is of forgiveness. We've talked about pressing the delete button on our computers and how that's a picture of our choice to clear the record of our offenders. And that we need to choose, as an act of our will, to fully forgive those who have sinned against us.

When we choose to forgive, not only are we releasing those whom we may have held hostage, but God then takes His great key of grace and opens the prison cell where we have been held prisoners and sets us free.

A woman wrote to me after hearing this truth and she said, "The Lord had me release a prisoner today that I have held captive for over sixteen years. Now God can restore the years that the locusts have eaten."

Could it be possible that someone in this room has been holding someone else a prisoner in unforgiveness for sixteen years or maybe even longer? We noted in our last session that when we refuse to forgive, that we become subject to what Jesus called "tormentors," those things that keep us in bondage.

And we said that sometimes these are even chronic physical or emotional disorders that can be affected by our refusal to forgive. Now I'm not saying that those pains aren't real, but I'm saying sometimes they are occasioned by our unforgiving spirit.

Let me illustrate that for you with another note I received. I did a conference and asked the women to fill out a prayer card telling us how we could pray for them.

At the end of the conference one woman wrote this note. She said,

"I had requested prayer on my prayer card for a back problem. After I made the decision to forgive my sister and my mother, I noticed that the pain in my back was gone. I have had this pain for several months. [It sounds like a tormentor to me.] I believe I have been healed in my heart and in my body by stepping out to forgive.

Now, I'm not going to promise you that if you step out to forgive, that all of your aches and pains will go away. There are other reasons for aches and pains besides bitterness.

But, I tell you what, if I had aches and pains, and when I do, I think it is wise to start by saying, "Lord, is there something that I have been holding in my heart, in bitterness or unforgiveness, that could be exacerbating or making this problem worse." It doesn't hurt to check, to ask so that God can show us what He may be seeing that perhaps we haven't even been able to see.

Now, I want to read another note that I received from a woman. It's a tough one, but I read it because it raises a couple important questions about this whole matter of forgiveness. This woman said,

I've been struggling with my husband's use of pornography. Lot's of money gone, broken trust, accusations and blame towards me. I have resisted forgiveness, but today I have made a choice to forgive my husband for twenty-five years of unfaithfulness in the use of pornography. He's fifty this year and I believe this is his "year of jubilee." I think the Lord was waiting for me to surrender and forgive him and release him from prison.

Now I think that raises this question. One of the reasons we sometimes find it difficult to forgive is because we think, If I forgive, does it mean that his sin doesn't matter anymore?

We are afraid that that means the offender will be off the hook, that they will be released from their wrongdoing. And what if they haven't acknowledged their sin and repented? Does forgiving mean that their wrongdoing doesn't matter anymore? The answer to that is no, that is not what that means.

Forgiveness does not let the offender off the hook ultimately. What it does is release the offender from my hook and put him on God's hook. It releases the offender from my custody and turns him over to God recognizing that God is the only ultimate true and just judge, that God didn't make me the judge, that vengeance is God's. You see, when I refuse to forgive, I really am putting myself in the place of God.

There is a powerful illustration of that in the Old Testament. In fact, this whole matter of forgiveness is powerfully illustrated through the life of Joseph, who, as you remember, and you can go back and read the last thirteen or so chapters of the Book of Genesis, and you can see how from the time he was a boy, he was wronged in one way after another.

But at the end of the story when Joseph's brothers, who had so sinned against him, came back to him and said, "Are you going to hold this against us?" Joseph said to them, "Am I in the place of God?"

He recognized that if he exacted vengeance on his brothers and now he was in a position where he could have; in fact, he could have had vengeance on everyone who had ever sinned against him because now he was second to Pharaoh in the land. But he said, "I am not God. And if I take vengeance on this person, if I refuse to forgive, I am really putting myself in God's place."

Now that leads to another important point about forgiveness and misunderstanding this point has led, I think, a lot of people into a lot of unnecessary bondage. Let me explain it this way.

Forgiveness does not necessarily mean forgetting. To forgive an offender does not necessarily mean that we forget the offense.

Now someone sitting here is thinking, But I thought forgive means to forget. You are supposed to forgive and forget. In fact, doesn't God forget all of our sins? The Bible doesn't say that.

You say, "Oh yes it does. It says he forgets all of our sins."

You won't find that in the Bible. What does the Bible say? And let me ask this. How could a God who knows everything forget anything?

What God says is, "I will not remember your sins against you again." God is saying, "I won't hold your sins against you. I am going to choose not to bring them up." That's what forgiveness is.

You say, "But if I could just forget all of the pain. Wouldn't that be wonderful?" Well, yes in a sense. And of course, we all wish that maybe God could just take this divine eraser and erase all of the painful memories of our past.

But I'm not so sure that on this side of heaven that would be an ideal thing. If you and I could not remember any of the pain that we have experienced from having been hurt or wounded by others, how in the world could we have mercy and compassion and be tenderhearted toward hurting people?

You see the pain of my past can be, the pain of offenses that I have experienced in my past, can be actually a means of my extending grace and mercy and kindness to hurting people.

God doesn't necessarily allow us to forget all of the hurt that we have experienced. You can forgive without necessarily forgetting all of the hurt. But those painful memories may be a reminder of the grace and the forgiveness of God on your behalf, the meaning of His grace.

If God chooses, He is more than able to release you from any of those memories that He knows will not bring ultimate glory to Himself.

Now, another point about forgiveness that we often forget is that forgiveness is not cheap. It is costly. To forgive means that we must have a willingness to take on ourselves the cost of someone else's sin. Someone has to pay.

Let me just pick on Holly back here. Holly and I have been friends for a long time. Suppose that Holly and her husband get into financial trouble and I realize that and I have a little extra income at the moment and I call Holly and I say, "You know, I want to give you a gift of $1,000 for you and your husband. And if you could just pay me back $100 per month for ten months then that way you can pay back this debt, it's a loan."

And Holly says, "Boy, we are so thankful for that. Thank you very much and we will send you $100 per month for the next ten months."

Well the first thirty days goes by and no check from Holly and her husband and I just think, Well, maybe they just forgot. The next month goes by; no check from Holly and her husband, and I think, They must have just had a really busy month.

Well, the third month, I've got to follow through on this now. I call and I find out that they have no intention of paying back this loan. They are just not taking this seriously. And then suppose just for the analogy here that God pricks my heart and says, "You know, I've blessed you, and you could make this a gift. Why don't you do that? Let them know that the debt has been forgiven."

Now I keep a very meticulous, detailed ledger of all of my finances. I have debits and credits and if I had made this $1,000 loan, it would be recorded in my ledger, in my financial journal. So when I call Holly and I say, "God has just impressed my heart that I am supposed to make this a gift and that you don't owe it anymore."

Now, who has to be out the $1,000? I'm out the $1,000. I have got to be willing and able to absorb the $1,000. Someone had to pay. That forgiveness was not cheap. It was costly.

And by the way, can I go back to Holly the next month and say, "You scoundrel. You need to pay me this $1,000 that you owe me." Can I do that? Not really. Why? Because I have forgiven.

The record has been cleared and I have written it off my journal. It's no longer something that is owed to me. It is something that has been paid in full.

It is important to realize that forgiveness can be extended in a moment of time.

Now, I want to say that the healing process of dealing with those emotions, of dealing with that relationship, that may involve a process. The problem is so many of us wait to get through the process before we choose to forgive.

We think, I've got to heal first and then I can forgive. If you wait for the process, you will probably never come to the point of being able to forgive. I'd like to suggest to you that the process begins with the point of forgiveness.

There are some issues as we have been talking about this matter of forgiveness that many of you have thought of, some heinous sins that have been committed against you. And you are thinking, This is really tough. I can't imagine how I could ever forgive this person.

And I hear women say, "I am moving towards forgiveness. I am working towards forgiveness." I understand the heart of what they mean, but it is possible that you might move and work towards forgiveness forever and never end up at forgiveness.

So, I want to challenge you with this thought: You can by God's grace choose to forgive in a moment of time and then allow God out of that forgiveness to begin to flow into your life the healing grace that will help to restore your heart, and even in some cases, that relationship. As we choose to forgive, we need to be reminded again and again that failing to forgive is as great a sin as anyone has or ever will commit against us.

I remember talking a number of years ago with a woman whose husband had become involved in some use of pornography. This woman was so distraught and so distressed and she could not fathom as a woman how these things had even been appealing to her husband. She didn't understand it. It was repulsive to her.

In the process, she let a root of bitterness grow up into her heart towards her husband. She became a prisoner even as she was putting him in prison, a prisoner of her own unforgiveness.

And I watched one day as we talked and a light went on when we came to this principle. I reminded her that her unforgiveness was as great a sin in God's sight as her husband's sin.

Now, her husband's sin is much more measurable and in our way of viewing things, it seems to be much more serious. It certainly does have some ramifications that her heart attitude of unforgiveness may not have.

But as she realized that not only was her husband a sinner but she was a sinner in her unforgiveness, then she was able to get set free from her bitterness, to release her husband through forgiveness and ultimately she was able to become an instrument of grace in her husband's life as God was able to deliver him from some of these moral issues in his life.

Now I have heard women say, "I have chosen to forgive, I have gone through this process of fully forgiving but I still kind-of get tied up in knots inside when I think of this person. How do you deal with the feelings, the hurt?"

Now we have said that God may allow us to keep some of these painful memories so that we can become merciful and compassionate towards others who have painful situations in their lives.

But God did not intend that you should have to live under the weight, the unresolved emotions here. And I think for many women, the reason that they haven't moved on to more complete healing of those damaged emotions may be because they stopped at the point of forgiveness.

The Scripture has two other aspects of the forgiveness process that I believe are important. We are not going to spend a lot of time on them but I just want to note them so that we can realize that they are important.

The next principle is the importance of returning good for evil. In the Book of Romans, chapter 12:17 the last several verses, the apostle Paul says, "Recompense to no man evil for evil." Don't pay back evil to someone who wrongs you. I think we would all agree that that's true. We should not take vengeance.

He goes on to say, "Avenge not yourselves but rather give place unto wrath," or as one translation says, "Leave room for God's wrath." Remember that's God's job. "For it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay' saith the Lord. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him drink." What is the apostle Paul saying?

When that person hurts you, they reveal that they have a need. Find out what their need is and ask God to show you how to meet that person's need. Is he hungry? Give him something to eat. Is he thirsty? Give him something to drink.

You think, Oh that is so hard. Of course it is. And this is something you can't do if you don't have the Holy Spirit living inside of you to enable you to do that which is humanly impossible.

Paul goes on to say, "Don't be overcome with evil but instead overcome evil with good." When you return good for evil, you are not only overcoming his evil with good, but you are overcoming in your own heart the evil of those emotions that keep you in bondage by returning good for evil.

Jesus made the same point in the Gospel of Matthew where he said, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Bless those that curse you and pray for those who despitefully use you" (5:44).

If you want to move forward in the healing process, once you have made the point of fully forgiving, releasing them, clearing their record, then ask God to show you ways that you can invest back into the life of the one who has sinned against you.

Now, it may not be appropriate to reestablish the relationship. But can you pray for that person? You say, "I don't think I can pray for God's blessing on that man, on that person, on that woman, on that child."

As you pray for that person, in obedience to the Word of God, you will find what I have found in my own life, you can't long hate someone that you are praying for, asking God to bless and restore that person. The goal is reconciliation, that that person will be reconciled to God.

And so I encourage you to build bridges of love and blessing back to those individuals.

We talked about Joseph and how he was wronged by his brothers and Potipher's wife and others in his life. He spent years unjustly accused sitting in an Egyptian prison cell. But when he got out of prison, he set out to nurture and bless the very brothers who were the ones who had gotten him into that situation in the first place.

You will find if you build bridges of love and blessing back to those individuals, then God can actually fill your heart.

Now for some of you, this is going to sound almost unbelievable but it is true. God can actually fill your heart with love and compassion for someone that you have hated for years. It is a miracle of grace, God's grace.

I don't know of any story that better illustrates the power of God's grace to fill our hearts with compassion where once there was resentment than the story of Corrie ten Boom. You have heard her story and how her family provided a hiding place for the Jews who were being hunted by the Nazis. And then how she and her sister and family ultimately wound up in a concentration camp.

In one of her books she describes the struggle that she experienced with this whole issue of forgiveness. Let me read to you what she wrote. She said,

It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. [The concentration camp where Corrie and her sister, Betsie, had been imprisoned.]

He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there—the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie's pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. "How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein," he said. "To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!"

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.

As I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been sharing the powerful story of forgiveness in the words of Corrie ten Boom. Nancy will be back in just a moment. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into God’s perspective on forgiveness, I encourage you to read Choosing Forgiveness, by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. In it, she expands on many of the principles you’re hearing this week.

And here in July, in the middle of what we’re calling our “Summer of Surrender,” we’d like to send you a copy of this book as our way of thanking you for your donation to Revive Our Hearts. The size of your donation doesn’t matter. To give, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Ask about Nancy’s book on forgiveness when you make your donation.

From a tomato seed, you get a tomato plant, right? What happens when you plant a seed of bitterness? Tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts, Nancy will talk about the fruit of unforgiveness. I hope you’ll join us. Now, here's Nancy.

Nancy: The Gospel of Christ is that Jesus was willing to pay the price of my indebtedness. His forgiveness of me was costly. It cost Him everything.

And now He is saying, "Would you be willing to pay the price out of what I have given you, out of the rich, limitless, infinite treasure stores of My grace that I have poured out upon you, would you be willing to write off the debts that others owe to you?"

How about it? What does someone owe you? How costly will it be for you to forgive?

Would you say, "Lord, by Your grace and the riches that You have given to me, I am willing to pay that price, to write off all of those debts, to absorb that cost myself." When you do, you will be free.

Oh Father, how greatly You have loved us and how incredible is Your forgiveness toward us. We marvel as we stand before Calvary, and we contemplate what You did for us.

Thank You, thank You, Jesus, for Your forgiveness. And thank You, thank You that You can pour into our wounded, pained, grieved, bitter hearts Your forgiveness and Your love even for those who have sinned against us the greatest.

Oh, Lord, I pray for myself and for my sisters in this room that You would pour through us Your grace of forgiveness. And for the one who is sitting here struggling with the choice to forgive, may she know that it is Your forgiveness that You will flow through her.

Give grace, give courage, give the will and the faith to act on what we have heard and to forgive for Jesus' sake as You have forgiven us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is calling you to greater freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

¹Corrie ten Boom. The Hiding Place. Bantam Books/Published by arrangement with Fleming H. Revell Company, New York, 1971. "The Three Visions," p. 238.

All Scripture is taken from the NIV84.

 

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