What Forgiveness Requires

Poor Jesus he is going to be sentenced and condemned for a crime. Everyone had different opinions about him. Some of them wanted to arrest him and no one dared lay their hands on him. WHY? Some said “No man has ever spoken like this man.”

The Pharisees considered Jesus as someone who broke the law, someone who is accursed and deserving death.

But finally, FINALLY, someone speaks up and defends Jesus from the group of the Sanhedrin. Nicodemus! Says, hey, Jesus at least deserves a proper trial to defend himself! But then they silence Nicodemus but raising suspicion about his loyalty.

So Jesus steps forward in defense of himself and says, “I am the light of the world ; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Now these words follow some other words, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ ”

Now these two verses offer two verbs: believing and following.

We can believe that Jesus is true. But not follow where he leads us. I think that is the core of this Lenten season. It’s often saying to God: Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. But it’s also, Lord I’m divided. Lord I’m lost, teach me to follow you.

Today in Paul’s Letter we know to follow God, to bear the marks of a true Christian, it calls us to step out of the dark. It calls us to take out what is blocking this flow of living water.

One of these things is our anger and resentment.

St Paul is saying to the Romans. “If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all.” YUP that’s sometimes possible, but for us not so much. He also says, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves”

Don’t bite back. Don’t go on the pursuit of making someone else suffer what you suffered. Don’t ensure to make them feel what you felt. WHY?

That’s not your job. We can trust that God will come through as he promised and said “Vengeance is mine” and he will repay. Better than we do.

So sometimes it’s forgiveness that stands in between.

Forgiveness is I’m not going to bite you back with the poison you bit me with. Why? A few reasons.

Because I want to be forgiven by God. I know I need to release it to make space for God’s mercy and love to pour out upon me.

We forgive not because the other person deserves it. Jesus forgave the one’s who put him on the cross before they asked for forgiveness.

We forgive not because the other person has apologized. If that was the case, we would sometimes be waiting until Christ comes again.

Forgiveness would be impossible. We can forgive because apologies and even if apologies never happen—that’s what Jesus did.

For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him.

Our forgiveness doesn’t mean we return to the relationship the same as before. Sometimes forgiveness means I release the poison, but create a distance and boundary to not continue the hurt. We don’t forgive because we would never do what they did to us. We forgive because we know we could be just as bad. We have the capacity to sin as they did. And if we haven’t it’s because God has preserved me.

We can see countless examples of this being possible—only with God’s help. It begins with prayer. Prayer for yourself and for the other person you may have hurt or for the person who has hurt you. This is the greatest force to move people into Christianity and toward Jesus.

After all, as St Augustine says, “The Church owes St Paul to the prayer of St Stephen.” The person who was casting stones to this innocent Christian, was forgiven and prayed for.

For many of us, for us to be living in the light, for these streams of living water to flow from us, we need to spit out this evil we have been dealt with and remember these words of Jesus: “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.”