Recently, a friend told me about a counseling course he had just completed. When they got to the subject of forgiveness, the presenter taught that one should not forgive until the offending party repents. They went so far as to say that it would be wrong to forgive someone before they repented. This is a commonly held position, and I understand why. It seems to make a lot of sense. The problem is that the Gospel message teaches the exact opposite. We don’t need to look any further than the Creation story to discover that, in God’s economy, forgiveness always precedes repentance.

Recently, we received an email with the following question: “We are having a bit of difficulty understanding the statement: ‘We don’t forgive people, we forgive wounds.’ Yet as you have taught in your protocols, we are, in fact, forgiving people—asking God who we need to forgive and then choosing to forgive these people from our heart. We are, no doubt, failing to grasp something in what you are teaching. Can you please explain further what you mean?”

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;

Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;

Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes

And clever in their own sight!

Isaiah 5:20-21

It often seems that we’re living in an alternate universe with the world upside down and spinning in the opposite direction. There has been a seismic shift in our culture as what God’s Word says is wrong is now declared right, and what God’s Word says is right is now declared wrong. How did this happen? We rise and fall on our definitions because whoever defines the terms wins the debate. We are experiencing the erosion of moral clarity as Biblical terms have been slowly unhitched from their Scriptural context and redefined in ways that don’t resemble what God intended.

A prime example of this redefinition push is the meaning of the word “love.” We are told that love requires full acceptance of a person, including their behavior, and that to reject a behavior is to reject the person and is therefore (another redefinition) “hate.” To speak against immorality is now considered hate speech. Unfortunately, Christian leaders have fallen into this trap, and the church is surrendering its authority to speak against sin in the name of love. It seems the goal of many is now to make people feel comfortable in their sin rather than leading them to repent of their sin.

“How do I forgive someone who has passed away?” is a question we frequently receive. It’s an important question because many of the people we have coached have been wounded by a person, often a grandparent or parent, who is no longer living. How can we forgive them if they aren’t here?

It’s important to know that when we forgive, we are talking with God, not the person who wounded us. “Father, forgive them…” were Christ’s words on the Cross. Notice that He didn’t address the ones who were crucifying him, but rather, He spoke directly to the Father as if they weren’t there. Following Jesus’ example, the person who wounded us doesn’t need to be present or even alive for us to forgive them for what they did to us. When we forgive, we are walking in the way of Christ in obedience as He was obedient. It is important for our freedom to forgive the wounds we have incurred in our lives from people, living or deceased.

It’s also important to know that we forgive people for the specific wounds they inflicted on us. “I choose to forgive my grandfather for making me feel that I wasn’t good enough, for saying I would never measure up, and for rejecting me” are examples of forgiving the wounds. We forgive those who are alive and those who are deceased in the same way. 

Man was created to be in a relationship with God. This relationship is intrinsic to our very being. We cannot be what we were designed to be without it. When Adam and Eve sinned, mankind, including you and me, died, which means we were separated from God. This created a God-sized hole in each one of us that could only be filled by a relationship with God. We desperately needed forgiveness in order to be restored back to life.

Forgiveness requires the settling of a debt. Just choosing to forgive someone doesn’t eliminate the impact of what happened. The debt is still there and must be dealt with. Forgiveness simply shifts the responsibility of the debt from the one who caused it to someone else who will cover it. In the Gospel, that someone else is Jesus. Jesus became human so that He could fully satisfy our sin debt to God by shedding His righteous blood on the Cross. Jesus, being fully God and fully human, was the only one who could pay that debt and thereby establish the basis for our forgiveness in order to restore us to a relationship with God so that we could live His Life.

One of the most well-known examples of forgiveness in Scripture is found in Genesis 37-50. It’s the story of Joseph and his brothers. Jacob had 12 sons. Joseph was the second to the youngest—Dad’s favorite. We know this because Jacob had given him a special coat, signifying the favoritism. Evidently, Joseph was also one of God’s favorites. We know this because God gave Joseph two dreams, and in both of the dreams, Joseph’s brothers bowed down to him. Joseph made the mistake of telling his brothers about the dreams. The brothers responded by throwing Joseph in a pit and then selling him to a band of Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt. The Ishmaelites were the descendants of his estranged great-uncle, Ishmael, which means they sold Joseph to a band of angry cousins. The brothers took Joseph’s special coat, poured blood all over it, and showed it to Jacob, leading their father to believe his favorite son was dead.

The cousins eventually sold Joseph to a high-ranking official in the Egyptian army named Potiphar. Joseph quickly became Potiphar’s favorite, who made Joseph the house manager of his estate. He oversaw everything that Potiphar owned, and all the other servants reported to him. Unfortunately, he became Mrs. P.'s favorite too. We know because she tried to seduce him. Several times! He resisted. Several times! She grabbed him. He ran away. She cried, “Rape!” He was arrested and thrown in the royal prison.

My late friend Mike Wells said, “People don’t normally understand how to live Christ's life until they are in their 50s. It takes that long to fail enough to learn dependence on Christ.” Failure, disappointments, and pain are the tools God uses to bring us to the end of ourselves so that we can learn to fully trust him. It’s really the only way we learn, and it normally takes a long time.

We may read about God’s faithfulness in the Bible and agree with it in our minds, but it is only through experiencing God’s faithfulness in times of struggle and failure does that truth move from our heads down into our hearts. God strategically and consistently uses circumstances to teach us deep truths about Himself and about us. As I look back on my life, I find that I learned more about Jesus and His Life in me through my struggles than through the successes of my life. It took multiple lessons over many years for me to finally begin to get it. The ministry of Forgiving Forward would not exist were it not for the betrayals and sufferings we endured throughout decades of serving in churches. Only God could have taken our misery and turned it into a ministry masterpiece.