Forgiveness of Injuries

Then Peter came to Him and said, "Lord, how many times could my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" "I tell you, not seven times," Jesus said to him, "but 70 times seven." (Matthew 18:21-22)

After this follows one of the most beautiful of all our Lord's parables, I mean the merciless creditor, who having had ten thousand talents forgiven him took his fellow-servant by the throat and cast him into prison for a hundred pence.

FORGIVENESS is a word which occupies a large and conspicuous place in the Bible, in both the Old Testament and the New. It meets us at every turn. It comes before us in the form of a doctrine to be believed, in the proclamation of Divine mercy through the blood of Christ to sinful man—and in the form of a precept to be obeyed, in the injunction to man to forgive his erring fellow-mortal. The scriptures resound with the word forgiveness, and are radiant with the brightness of its blessings. At every step we hear the announcement from heaven, "I am he who blots out your sins, and will not remember your transgressions any more; and do forgive as I have forgiven you." Hence, it is as impossible to make out our claim to the character of a Christian without performing the duty of forgiveness ourselves, as it is without believing the doctrine of God's forgiveness. For that cannot be a true faith which does not work by love; nor that a true love which does not act in the way of forgiveness. One might suppose, did we not know the contrary both by experience and observation, that it would be at once the easiest and the pleasantest of all duties, for the man who professes to have received forgiveness from God to forgive an offender; that in the fullness of his gratitude, joy, and love, for having received the pardon of his twice ten thousand sins, and in the consciousness of his inability to make any adequate returns to God, he would hasten to his "offending" brother, and say, "I have had so much forgiven, that I freely forgive you all." It would seem as if, by a kind of moral necessity, a forgiven man must be a forgiving man. And yet is it really so? Is not the very contrary the case? Is there any duty so difficult, so rare, or so reluctantly, grudgingly, and sparingly performed? Is it not almost as true in reference to the church, as it is to the world, that "a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city; and their contentions are like the bars of a castle."

I. As no duty is more mistaken, as well as neglected; and as forgiveness includes much more than is generally supposed, I shall show what it is really to forgive. This may seem to need no explanation, and it would need none, if men's judgments were not imposed upon by the deceitfulness of their hearts. It is to be feared that very many imagine they have discharged this duty when they have been brought to say, "I forgive him with all my heart, and pray to God to forgive him also." It is well to go thus far, instead of saying, "Forgive him! No never, I will pursue him to the utmost." But good words without good feelings, are but adding hypocrisy to revenge—and there is no doubt that forgiveness is often upon the lip, while revenge is in the heart. Men deceive themselves with their own professions, they believe their own lies. Genuine forgiveness is not only the declaration that we forgive, but an entire feeling of forgiveness. It is the heart saying, "I forgive," and the conscience attesting the truth of the assertion. The following things are all necessary to the right discharge of this duty.

It implies that we extinguish, or take great pains to do so, all feelings of ANGER and wrath towards the offender. The first impulse of the soul on the reception of an injury is to become angry, to look at the offence in the most aggravated form, to brood over it, and at every returning reflection upon it to kindle afresh into indignation. This is always the case with the relentless and implacable man. But the forgiving one calms the perturbation of his mind, keeps down his rising passions, and curbs the fury of his temper. Forgiveness puts a stop to the spreading conflagration of the soul. It extinguishes the flames of our fiery tempers and allows not even the embers to burn. We have never forgiven, whatever we may say, or however we may outwardly conduct ourselves towards the offender, until we have quite laid aside all bitterness, anger and wrath.

Every man that forgives an injury, must have a mind free from all intention and all wish to REVENGE. This is a word which most professors abjure, but it is a thing which very many practice. By revenge they mean great acts of injury returned for others as great; but it should be considered, any return, in whatever small way, of injury for injury, though it be a spiteful word, is revenge. And it is pitiable to see what petty acts of retaliation some will be guilty of, who perhaps imagine that because they have not openly and mischievously avenged themselves, they have really practiced forgiveness. All intention or wish to resent an injury, in any way, is or must be entirely banished from the mind, if we really forgive.

So neither must we desire that others or that God would take up our cause and revenge the injury. Some will say they forgive, and yet secretly wish that though not inflicted by themselves, some evil may be done by others to an offender. "I forgive him," say they, "and leave him to God." For what purpose? To be pardoned or to be punished? Alas, how often does it mean the latter—butwe never forgive until we can pray to God to forgive our enemy, and to bestow upon him good, rather than evil.

Forgiveness implies that we endeavor to FORGET the offence. We have a beautiful instance of this in God's language to the Jews—"I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and will not remember your sins." And how impressive is that language of the prophet Micah, "Who is a God like You, removing iniquity and passing over rebellion for the remnant of His inheritance? He does not hold on to His anger forever, because He delights in faithful love. He will again have compassion on us; He will vanquish our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea." Wonderful language! This is one of the finest images to represent the completeness of God's pardoning mercy to be found in all the Bible. He casts our sins not into a brook nor a river where they might be found again, no, nor into the sea near the shore where the tide might cast them up again, but like a stone into the depths of the sea, where they can never be fished up again, but lie forever buried and forgotten at the bottom of the ocean! This is divine forgiveness, casting all our sins into oblivion!

Yes, and this is human forgiveness too, where it is genuine. "I will forgive," say some, "but I cannot forget." This means that they really do not forgive at all, for they do not wish or intend to forget the evil but to cherish a remembrance of it. They write it down in their memory, preserve it there with care, often read it, and always with feelings of ill-will towards the offender. Absolute oblivion is impossible. To determine actually and absolutely to forget anything which has once been known to us is a thing beyond our power; and there may be cases in which, in order to govern our behavior towards the offender in future, it may be desirable and proper to retain an accurate recollection of the offence. But the remembrance which true forgiveness prevents, is that which is cherished for the mere purpose of perpetuating a sense of the injury received. This we must endeavor as far as possible to forget, and not imitate Darius the Persian, who when the Athenians had plundered Sardis, resolved to remember the evil and revenge it, and commanded one of his servants, that every day at the royal supper, he should thrice repeat, "Let us remember the Athenians." "The devil," says Jeremy Taylor, "is ever ready to do this office for any man; and he that keeps in mind an injury will need no other tempter to uncharitableness than his own memory."

Forgiveness requires that we do not UPBRAID the offender with his sin after we have pardoned it. It seals our lips, as well as ties our arms from injury. To reproach one for his offence after we have professed to pardon it, proves that our profession was insincere. Except that if he repeats the injury, it may then be mentioned as aggravating the new offence; for it is a great enormity to renew again the transgression we had generously forgiven. And as we do not upbraid the offender himself with the offence, so we must not repeat it to others for them to upbraid him with it. To go round from individual to individual with the tale of a transgression which we profess to have forgiven can be only to do him who has committed it an injury, or to magnify our own 'false charity' in passing it by—the first of which is unkindness to him, and the other a contemptible vanity of our own.

Forgiveness is not genuine unless we are prepared to do the offending party all the good in our power. Merely to abstain from evil is not enough, for we must be willing to do him good. To do actual evil is positive revenge; and to abstain from doing good is negative revenge. A beautiful incident occurs in the life of Lycurgus the Spartan legislator. In a tumult raised against him by some of the citizens he lost an eye. The people resenting the injury gave the man who did it into the prince's power, and he most worthily used it; for he kept the assailant in his house a whole year, where he taught him virtue, and then brought him forth a worthy citizen. Yet Lycurgus was a pagan. What Christian could have done more? How few Christians do as much! But we have higher examples than this, even the conduct of our God in Christ, who not only forgives all our sins, but "blesses us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Our mode of dealing with offenders must in this particular resemble God's.

He that really forgives must, except in certain extreme cases, restore a person to the same relations to himself as he occupied before the offence. There are I have said exceptions to this rule. The offence may have been of such a nature, and containing such a development of character, or the confession and repentance may be of so equivocal a character, that to take the offender back again as entirely into our confidence, or our esteem, or our love, as he was before, is more than can be expected, or even required. In other cases restoration should follow reconciliation, and the latter is not complete without the former. The man who has offended me, but who has acknowledged to me his offence, (with all the sorrow that the act called for, and with all the alteration of his behavior which the sincerity of that sorrow demands for its proof,) gives evidence of a degree of excellence which should restore him to a place in my regard at least as high as that he held before. If that were all he did to injure me, his humiliation and reformation are a more convincing demonstration of a radically good character, than the offence was of a bad one. When a man says to me with obvious and undoubted sincerity and sorrow, "Sir, I have wronged you; forgive me," that man rises more by his penitence than he sunk by his transgression. To withhold from him my love, to keep him at a distance, and to treat him with coldness and suspicion, is still to punish and not to pardon him. It is useless to say to him, "I forgive you," for he feels that you have not done so.

It is not thus God deals with us. God has so pardoned us that He has not only averted from us the punishment which our sins have deserved, but He has received us back to His favor, and He treats us with all the love He would have borne towards us, if we had never offended Him. A repulsive method of meeting a returning offender; a cold, distant, suspicious line of conduct to him, has often, like a frost, nipped the opening bud of his penitence and reformation; while kind, generous, warm-hearted confidence like the sun, will bring on and develop it, and ripen it into the beauty and the fragrance of the full-blown flower.

Such then is true forgiveness; and let any one looking back upon the description, say, if such a disposition is not much more rare than many people are ready to imagine. If all this be included in this beautiful branch of a Christian's duty, (and is it not?) then how few of us have made any great attainment in this evangelical virtue, and how much do we all need to be stirred up again and again to enquire into its nature, and our own advancement in it.

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