FORGIVENESS TRUMPS CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
ADULTERY AND PORNOGRAPHY ARE NO MATCH FOR THE POWER OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST
Brad and Molly came to us in crisis. Three weeks earlier Molly had discovered Brad’s pornography addiction and his multiple affairs, including Molly’s best friend, Brad’s best friend’s wife and prostitutes. She was shocked.
A couple of days after the initial confrontation, Brad picked up his Bible. As he began to read something inside him broke. For two hours he tearfully read the Bible and, for the first time, understood the grace of God and the forgiveness provided for him through the blood of the cross. He was dramatically transformed. Heart cleansed. Desires changed.
Molly recognized the change but couldn’t get over the offense. “I thought we had a great marriage. I swore I would not be like my mom, but now I have become my mom because he has become my dad.” She went on to explain how her father would leave her in the car as an alibi while he had affairs with women.
Conventional wisdom wouldn’t give this couple good survival odds, but conventional wisdom doesn’t understand the power of forgiveness. I looked at Brad and asked who hurt him as a child. He described the horrific sexual abuse his sister committed against him from the time he was five years old until he was age eleven. We gently told him, “You must forgive your sister.”
As Brad began to forgive the numerous wounds from his sister, Molly began to weep uncontrollably. Toni knelt beside her and cradled Molly in her arms. After Brad finished forgiving the wounds from his sister, he forgave himself. I asked him, “How is your heart?” He told us he would never have believed his heart could be any better than the day he trusted the Lord, but in fact it was better now than ever. He was unmistakably free.
Then Toni looked at Molly and said, “You won’t be free, totally free, until you also walk through forgiveness.” After forgiving Brad and her father, the change in her countenance was remarkable, and as they stood up to leave, Molly embraced Brad for the longest time for the first time in three weeks. In fact, on the way home, she unbuckled her seat belt and slid over and snuggled next to him. He almost wrecked the truck! When we saw them a month later she told us their marriage has never been this good. Forgiveness trumped conventional wisdom.
What if I told you forgiveness was possible? What if the deepest betrayals could be dealt with here, today—right now? What if you could finally be free from torment?
Too often we think of forgiveness as some long process we need to go through before we can have peace. Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, forgiveness is transactional. When someone wounds us, a debt is incurred. The payment required to truly make us whole again is staggering. And who pays? No amount of apologies or other forms of restitution from the offending party could ever cover the cost of their sin that wounded us. But there is good news! God has given us a strategy in His Word to help us live out Gospel-centric forgiveness. To truly forgive someone, we must look to the Cross where the blood of Jesus covers all sin, including the ones that wound us.
IF YOU CUT THE GOSPEL ANYWHERE, IT BLEEDS FORGIVENESS.