Just Believe

I was listening to a podcast, and heard Sharon Richer, one of the survivors of the church shooting at Charleston South Carolina in 2015,  speaking on forgiveness. “Unforgiveness is a process,” she said, “[one that] is very lonely and very isolating. You are dealing with anger and rage and your faith is shaken.”

Is this true? Is forgiveness really a process, a path that must be walked, it’s length determined by the seriousness of the crime? This just doesn’t mesh with what Jesus said. “Forgive,” he commands, “and you will be forgiven,” (Luke 6:37b). Seems like He is making forgiveness a point of obedience. 

Perhaps the problem is that deeper wounds do not create longer roads to recovery, but more openly expose the heart. For with every man, there is a deep enough wound where it becomes impossible to hide behind a superficial dismissal of injustice, that place where arrogant men boast that they are more forgiving than God. We aren't near as compassionate as we would like to think. True forgiveness is an astounding miracle.

“And he said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill? But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, Stretch out your hand. He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.” –Mark 3:4-5

Have you ever pondered what it was like for a man with a withered hand to hear, “stretch out your hand”? Probably similar to a paralytic man to hear, “stand up and walk” (Mat 9:5-7). Or lepers to hear, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” If it were me, I might have asked, “Don’t you need to heal me first.” And there in lies the problem for us all.

We don’t believe.

After World War II, Corrie ten Boom went to Germany many times to speak to the German people who so desperately needed the healing message of the Gospel. After such a talk where she spoke on God’s forgiveness, “when we confess our sins,” and His casting of our sins “into the deepest ocean gone forever,” she spotted a man move towards her against the departing crowd.

    And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.
    It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!
    Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent.
Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”
    And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?
    But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.
    “But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”
    And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?
    It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
    For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
    I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality.
    Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.
    And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
    “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”
    And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
    “I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”

Forgiveness is not a process, but a moment of surrender. It is a point where we stop clutching to our bitterness, stop trying to beg God to pry our fingers from our love of vengeance, and just let go. Like all other fruits of the Spirit and blessings of the Gospel, forgiveness comes only through faith. And faith is often intricately woven to a physical action that demonstrates our surrender to the will of God. It is that point where obedience demands an end to our own mustered abilities and strength, and a complete reliance on the power of Christ alone.

Many will feel that this simplicity belittles the horrific atrocities of perpetrators and the real struggles of their victims. But the truth is, the supremacy of Christ is far greater than them all, and His power is sufficient to swallow even the most brutal of barbarisms (1Co 15:54-55; 2Co 5:4).

“But wait,” some cry, “Are you saying that once a thing is forgiven, it’s forgotten and all trauma is erased?” Corrie dealt with emotional struggles following this, but gained clarity when confessing her sleepless weeks to a Lutheran pastor.

    “Up in that church tower,” he said, nodding out the window, “is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops.
    “I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.”

Forgiveness is granted upon immediate surrender by faith. Just believe Jesus and stretch out a hand of blessing. However, at the same time, do not be ignorant of our enemy and their strategies (Eph 6:12; 2Co 2:10-11). Once we let go, the enemy will not hesitate to bring back the bell of bitterness, especially if we have been tugging at it for so long to announce our anger.