In controversies small and large, forgiving your opponent is one of the hardest things for a human being to do. We are filled with anger that can, if unchecked, consume us. Failing to forgive and bring peace to one’s own soul is, as a speaker at our church described it, like drinking poison with the expectation that it will kill your antagonist.
Forgiving someone who has wronged you doesn’t mean that you should not condemn wrongful action. Forgiveness has to do with your own soul, with getting into a right relationship with God.
That doesn’t mean that you can wrong someone and claim that God inspired you to do it. God doesn’t cause us to sin; our inherent sinful nature is the source. Unredeemed by Jesus Christ’s death for us, we are all lost. If God was willing to sacrifice his only begotten son for us, we have to be willing to let go our own anger and self-justification.
One of the Bible’s most striking examples of human forgiveness is Joseph’s reaction upon seeing the brothers who, many years before, had sold him into slavery in Egypt.
“ ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept.” Genesis 50:17
In the familiar story of the many-colored cloak, Joseph’s older brothers were jealous of the favor shown to him by their father. They sold him into slavery, took away his cloak, and told their father that a wild beast evidently had killed Joseph.
Years later, through an unusual chain of events, Joseph becomes the prime minister for the Egyptian pharaoh. Famine drives his brothers to Egypt to seek food, bringing them before Joseph to plead for aid. They don’t recognize him, but he knows who they are.
In the circumstances, Joseph had the power to punish his brothers in any way he chose. Instead, he forgave them and reunited his whole family. It was God’s will, he said, that put him in the position of power to help his family and others in Egypt at a time of need.
However counter-intuitive, rationalizing our actions and justifying our anger at others merely makes our own state of mind worse. We see only our side of the argument. We fail to see the other’s point of view or to acknowledge the other person’s good qualities.
As Jesus said, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person’s eye.” Matthew 7:5
The opportunity to acknowledge our own contribution to a controversy and to ask the other party’s forgiveness is a gift from God.
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