Forgiveness. It’s a word tossed around a lot in any christian conversation. And yet at closer examination, more often the conversation is on receiving it. Obviously it’s good that we talk about it. Reflecting on the beauty of God’s forgiveness is a beautiful, humbling thing. But that’s only half of it. What about the other times when the forgiveness is being asked of us?
So often, we narrow our focus of forgiveness to three steps: Person asks us for forgiveness, we graciously say we forgive them, everyone celebrates. But if you’ve ever had to forgive someone a serious wrong against you, you know that it’s never that simple.
Take Joseph for example. Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery out of jealousy (which I might add was a downgrade of the original plan to outright kill him). He then spends the next several years of his life at the bottom of the barrel, working like the slave he is, getting accused of a heinous crime he didn’t commit, and then rotting in jail for a few years for his trouble. Just when things are starting to look up (second in command of all Egypt is a pretty sweet gig after all), the brothers who got him in this situation in the first place show up begging him for food. Now, they don’t initially know that they are speaking to their long lost brother, but Joseph still had a choice to make in that instance. Did he send his brothers away to starve in retaliation for their wrongs? Or did he seek out a reconciliation? We know how the story ends, but how did that actually feel for Joseph?
I have to imagine that Joseph’s response of forgiveness wasn’t immediate. Maybe it was a decision he’d worked at for years before his brothers showed up to get himself on board with. Maybe one year he felt at peace with all that had happened and the next he wanted to stomp back home and pay every one of his brothers back for their wrongs personally. Maybe he caught himself daydreaming of all the ways his brothers could be punished for what they did to him. Maybe the moment they showed up he had to excuse himself to rant and rave and surrender all the justice he could have exacted himself.
But what does Joseph actually do? When the moment comes, he chooses to actively forgive his brothers, no matter how hard it is and no matter what it costs his own sense of justice. He does it, and his family is reunited and prosperous again.
Then there’s Jonah.
It feels odd to include Jonah as an example since no one ever wrongs him and if anything he repeatedly wrongs other people. But that’s just the point. If Joseph is the example of sacrificial forgiveness, then Jonah is the prime example of selfish non-forgiveness.
Jonah is a complainer who feels entitled to all manner of things. He feels he shouldn’t have to go to Ninevah, he feels he’s entitled to luxury, and most horrifically he feels he’s entitled to the total destruction of a people. After doing the bare minimum of what God asks of him in preaching to the Ninevites, Jonah actually sets himself down outside the city and eagerly awaits their destruction from God. And when it doesn’t come? He throws an absolute fit.
It’s horrific.
Jonah doesn’t take any time to rejoice that the people of Ninevah have turned from their wicked ways and are being restored to the Lord. He thinks after all his troubles he’s owed some justice. Even if it comes at the cost of an entire people. He feels so wronged by all his circumstances that he’d rather cry over a city being saved than rejoice in the redemption of a people. Jonah has got every last one of his priorities mixed up.
Now we can scoff at Jonah’s attitude of non-forgiveness, but how often do we do the exact same thing? Forgivness is an absolutely wonderful thing until you’re the one being asked to offer it. I’ve had times in my life when I’ve been confronted with the fact that I care more about the destruction of those who have wronged me than their restoration. Way more often than not, I’m a Jonah not a Joseph.
We live in a world that highly values justice. We see it in movements and trends and little isms we tell ourselves. We’re told to stick up for ourselves, get what’s yours, don’t take crap from anyone! We howl with victory when someone unpleasant experiences a downfall because finally! They had it coming for so long! They got what they deserved.
But forgiveness, as God sees it and designed it, shifts the emphasis from a get-what-they-deserve mind to a give-what-they-don’t-deserve heart. For forgiveness to take hold, justice and mercy have to do battle in your heart and mind. If mercy wins, forgiveness is the outcome.
Now let me be clear here. I am not advocating for you being a doormat. You can extend forgiveness and still make it clear that you will not be treated a certain way. Joseph didn’t run home and hop back in the well so his brothers could sell him into slavery again. Forgiveness is not turning back the clock to how things were before, but allowing the clock to start again with new hope.
And it is still impossibly hard work. A work that I fail at constantly. The amount of times I’ve had to ask God’s forgiveness for not being more forgiving? It doesn’t bear dwelling on. I want things my way so badly that I stand in the way of God’s design for things.
Forgiveness, in many ways, is the ultimate act of tithing. It’s taking everything you feel you’re owed, everything you want in that moment, and laying it at God’s feet for whatever he has planned instead. It’s trusting that he knows how you were wronged by others and does care, but that he has a plan of rescue in place for them. The same way he has a plan for rescuing you after all the wrongs you’ve done.
I’ve had to wrestle with this a lot. I’ve been deeply hurt by people in my life and so often I want God to teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget. I don’t want him to hold and comfort them and call them beloved. I want them wronged so they know how it feels. And it’s in those moments that God has to ask me if that’s how he should treat me for the ways I’ve wronged others. It’s shocking how quickly my stance changes. Mercy is a far better currency to deal in than justice. At the end of the day, God’s the only one who can get justice right so why don’t we leave it to him and know that he will fight for us? It’s going to eat us alive otherwise.
If we want to live in peace as a forgiven people, then we need to wage the war to become a forgiving people.
Let’s choose to forgive, even when it feels impossible and seems like to big of a sacrifice to make. Let us be Josephs and not Jonahs.
Let’s find some joy,
A
Avalon Robinson Author 