FORGIVENESS

When we utter the Lord’s Prayer we loose from our lips a daunting proposition:  “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Perhaps proposition is not the best word for this.  We are not trying to make a bargain with God.  The second half of this petition is not our “quid” for His “quo” of the first half.  We can trust God to give us His grace unconditionally.  Therefore, the forgiveness we commit to extending to others is an acknowledgment of what we must do to make His grace effective.

But how do we forgive those as God forgives us?  Proposition or not, this is a daunting task.  Right?  I’ll go further and say that it is an impossible task if Christian forgiveness is equated to mercy, as it commonly is.  This is not because we are incapable of mercy.  We can be merciful, but not always.  Because of our fallen nature, we will often be too petty to be so.  However, even if we overcome our pettiness, mercy can offend our sense of justice.  And it should when mercy is inappropriate.

How is that so?  When I am merciful I excuse the one who has wronged me from the consequences of his trespass.  In other words, I release him of my temporal claims upon him.  Mercy is appropriate if I have truly forgiven the wrongdoer, he is remorseful, and holding him to restitution for his wrongdoing would only impede his redemption.  In the absence of any of these conditions, mercy would not only be inappropriate, but unjust.  The fact is, often a malefactor will right himself only by suffering the consequences of his trespass.  Indeed, this is the only Christian rationale for capital punishment.  For some evil-doers, nothing short of imminent prospect of execution will focus the mind upon the truth.

This brings us back to what is forgiveness.  What is the proper Christian concept of forgiveness that makes possible the petition “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”?  Let’s go to the Oxford English Dictionary which defines forgive as “to give up, cease to harbor (resentment, wrath)”.  Precisely.  When I forgive, I give up the foulness which corrupts my judgment.  By cleansing myself of resentment, I approximate the perfection of God and so possess the clarity of mind to do justice to my malefactor.  I do not let his trespass against me poison my soul, which if unchecked by forgiveness can metastasize the venality of resentment into the vice of wrath.

With forgiveness I bleed from me the venom of wrath.  Without it the desire for vengeance will harden my heart against hope and charity – i.e., the hope that my malefactor is redeemable and the charity to do justice by him to that end.  That justice may be mercy.  More likely, it will mean accepting his restitution, his temporal punishment, for the wrong he has done.  It is in this way we can emulate God and forgive those who trespass against us.