Forgiveness - What's Your Credit Score?

What does your forgiveness line of credit look like? In all my academic endeavors I don’t recall coming across a class being offered that taught forgiveness. I absolutely assure you we didn’t cover forgiveness in any course curriculum of the senior business management courses I took. Having been groomed in a corporate culture, fixed on a business success mentality, I was taught this golden rule – He who has the gold makes the rules. Forgiveness and mercy were viewed as weakness; leave those for the flower child and wimp! 

Peter asked Jesus how many times we had to let the recidivist wrongdoer off the hook. He offers Jesus the perfect number, seven, thinking he will score some points being overly generous. He gets a mind-boggling response. You can’t count that high Peter, but God can. Why is this forgiving so important? Why is it so crucial, that it is the hinge to Jesus’ perfect prayer: …forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those…? There is a distinct link between forgiving and being forgiven. It is in releasing another from their wrongdoing that one is freed them self. Forgiveness is not an abstract idea that Jesus thinks would be helpful for us to play better in the sandbox. It’s a must to be incorporated into anyone’s life who is his disciple.

So what is it that is at the hidden core, which causes a challenge with forgiveness and the need for it? If we go back to the very beginning, we will not only see where the concept of forgiveness comes from, but we will understand why it’s essential to forgive. The ultimate sin committed in the Garden rests in choosing not to listen to the creator of love. There are always serious consequences with not choosing love. You want to see collateral damage by not choosing to love and or forgive, you don’t have to dwell on any bad guys, look no further than the heroes of the Old Testament. One can’t miss the immense desecration passed on by their not loving more fully and forgiving.

And then the game changer enters the scene. In Jesus’ final human act, for the benefit of the very ones who rejected him, disgraced him, condemned him, scourged him, exposed his naked body, drove nails into him, mocked him, spit on him, and left him to die a grotesque death; for these people, Jesus prayed for forgiveness. They never apologized and nor did they ask for forgiveness. Jesus simply forgave them because it was in him to do it. He is the revelation of the mercy and love of God. He is what God is like. Jesus becomes the living, breathing, flesh-and-blood expression of God’s mercy and compassion. Forgiveness flows from him. As much as we challenge this with all the wrongdoing in our world, forgiveness doesn’t depend on earning it by some achievement of our own. God forgives because God chooses to and reconciliation is accomplished through the compassion of Jesus Christ. Without forgiveness, something vital is missing from our relationship with God, with our-selves and with others.

To forgive is possibly the greatest challenge that Jesus laid at our feet. He also commands us to love one another as he loved us. He teaches that there is no love without forgiveness. I sense that no one is ever capable of truly understanding forgiveness, if from the start, they don’t believe in sin. Accepting that we have done wrong and have the ability to do it again is the first and necessary step toward forgiveness. St. Francis of Assisi understood this well: It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned. Let each of us be open to grace and strive to learn to forgive, to practice it, to choose it, and to want it. For all we long to be rests in Christ and our journey to him begins with what is in our human heart.