Forgiveness: A Gift that God Gives Himself
“Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.”
Have you ever heard that saying? I can’t tell where it comes from. I’m also not clear on what it means.
Does it mean that I should forgive myself when I’ve done something wrong? If so, it is both true and false.
The true aspect is that I should forgive myself if I am sorry for what I’ve done, if I have done my best to make confession and restitution to the person I’ve harmed, and if I have a plan for how to avoid similar wrongs in the future.
But if any of the big IFS mentioned above are not true, then I’m most certainly not in a position to forgive myself.
But the way I’ve always taken this saying is that, when someone else wrongs me, if I forgive that person, I am giving myself a gift. It is an expensive gift, and I seldom am willing to lay out the emotional capital to purchase such a gift.
I hang on to past hurts. I remember them. I think about them. I talk about them. I do not forgive easily. I don’t know many people who do forgive easily.
However, what if I thought of my resentments as being emotional garbage that I have to drag around with me everywhere I go? It is heavy, it stinks, there are flies buzzing around, it is loaded with maggots.
I think I’m going to stop there. I’m making myself sick. I’m probably making you sick, too. (Please forgive me!)
Furthermore, every new wrong against me—real or perceived—is added daily to the mess I am carrying. I become a mobile city dump.
But there is good news: God, in Christ, has already forgiven the other person, me, the whole world.
This morning, it occurred to me that forgiveness of all of us sinners is a gift God gives to Himself. Think about it: God loves us more than anyone does or can. Therefore, God is the one who is most offended when I do wrong to anyone, or when anyone does wrong to me. What if God carried around all those wrongs, and let Himself be embittered by them? An infinitely bitter, resentful God: now there’s a picture! But it isn’t a pretty picture.
Here is what God’s Word says: “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25). It would seem that God blots out the sins of His people for God’s own sake! (I looked it up in Hebrew, and it is very clear. That is what the verse says.)
So, forgiveness of our sins is a gift that God gives to Himself. Perhaps I should think about bestowing a similar gift on myself. It isn’t every day that I get to give myself a gift that is not only fit for a king, but one that is fit for The King.
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