The Gift Of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a gift, which is why more than half of the word forgive is made up by the word give. Forgiveness is not something that we can earn or barter or bargain for. When we have been wronged, there is no way for the person who hurt us to ever fully pay us back. When we have wronged someone else, there is no way for us to ever fully pay them back. There is no exchange rate between good deeds and bad. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and a good deed doesn’t cancel out a bad deed. Forgiveness does not mean that we have to forget what happened. Forgiveness does not mean we need to bottle down our resentment and ignore our wounds until they fester and go septic. To forgive someone means that as much as we hate the sin, we are trying our very best to love the sinner even more. To forgive someone means we are giving them a gift that they do not deserve and that they could never through their own merits earn. When forgiveness is offered in the true spirit of gift-giving, the only appropriate response is for us to accept such a gift with a spirit of humility and gratitude, knowing full well that we do not deserve such a gift, and that this is not something that we would ever be able to pay back. Christ suffered an infinite amount and laid down His life so that He could give each of us the gift of forgiveness. We don’t deserve it and we can’t earn it, but to refuse it would be to cheapen and set at nought Christ’s great and last sacrifice. We may think that our Savior’s requirement that we repent is some kind of price we must pay to earn His forgiveness, but this is not so. Our repentance is not our way of bartering or bargaining or convincing Christ to forgive us. Repentance is how we banish the doubts and the fears and the resentments and the feelings that we might or might not deserve our Savior’s grace and mercy. Repentance is unclenching our fists and opening our hands and our hearts to receive the gift that our Savior has already extended. All He asks is that we receive this gift without any deceit or delusions in our heart that we have somehow earned this great gift. When we can do that, we can follow His example and give the gift of forgiveness to others, not expecting them to earn our forgiveness, only hoping that they will accept the gift and honor it, just as we honor the gift that Christ has given us.