Struggling to Forgive

By Cec Murphey

“Those who tell you they don’t struggle with forgiving are lying to you or they’re lying to themselves.”

I was a young Christian when Pastor Webb made that statement. At the time I thought he overstated the issue; now I believe he was correct.

I’ve learned through experience that forgiveness doesn’t always come easily. This is especially true when pain rips through our hearts. Whether we feel betrayed or rejected, whether deceived or someone has smeared our reputation, whether they’ve lied about us or taken advantage of us, the suffering persists. Sometimes well-meaning friends imply the issue is trivial by urging, “Just get over it.” If we’ve been deeply wounded, it’s not trivial to us.

What those friends don’t grasp is that it’s not the seriousness of the offense, but our reaction that makes the agony intense. The deeper we feel wounded, the harder for us to release the pain and pardon the offender.

What Happens When We’re Offended

Once we understand what happens when someone hurts us, we’re ready to move toward forgiveness. If the injury cuts deeply, we wonder if we’ll ever get over the emotional devastation. Sometimes distress so overwhelms our lives that we either don’t function or we go through our tasks on autopilot.

We react in a variety of ways. One of them is to deny we’ve been hurt. We stuff the pain inside and lie to ourselves. What tends to happen is that the pain builds up below our consciousness. Later we may boil over in rage about what many would call a slight issue.

Another reaction is to retaliate. We’ve been crushed and we want to punish the offender for hurting us. We want to strike back and want that cruel person to feel worse than we do. Our revenge may be to speak against the one who offended us to anyone who will listen.

A third way is to wallow in our pain, and most of us do that for a while. We keep reminding ourselves that we don’t deserve such treatment. We’ve been hurt too badly to push away our injury. Consequently, we relive and rehearse what happened and can’t let go of it. Whenever the offender’s name comes into our minds, we groan and suffer afresh.

We intensify our pain because we continuously recreate the situation in our mind and focus on what we might have said instead of how we actually behaved. It’s as if by trying to think of the right words (usually an insult) or making a preemptive strike, reality will change. However, no matter how hard we struggle, we can’t remake the past.

A common response is to justify our outrage by crying out:

“Why did she do that to me?”
“I’ve always stood up for him and now he does this to me.”
“I’ve been a faithful wife. He plays around, but I’ve kept my vows to God.”

Such reactions may be normal, and as long as we focus on our agony, feel sorry for ourselves, and reel from our sorrow, we’ll never take the first step toward reconciliation.

Why We Forgive

First, we choose to forgive because it pleases God. Instead of asking, “Why should I forgive? It’s his sin, not mine,” we realize we want to be free of our pain because God commands us to forgive. We may not be able to release our pain immediately, and it may take much soul-searching before we’re ready. Ultimately, however, we forgive because it is the godly thing to do.

For example, Paul exhorts, “All bitterness, anger and wrath, insult and slander must be removed from you, along with all wickedness. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgive one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ” (Ephesians 4:31-32 CSB).

In the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to forgive our sins in the same way we forgive others. Jesus then added, “For if you forgive people their wrongdoing, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive people, your Father will not forgive your wrongdoing” (Matthew 6:14-15 CSB).

Second, we forgive because it’s for our own good. As long as we refuse to let go of our hurt, we’ve tied that other person to ourselves. We have no inner peace. One person said, “We’re giving that person free rent inside our heads.” We need to consider the cost in not forgiving—how much energy and emotion we give to that hurt throughout the day or how much sleep we lose.

Third, we let go because we have experienced divine pardon for our sins. We have received God’s grace—forgiveness— that we didn’t deserve. No matter how wickedly we behaved in the past, God’s grace wiped away every wrongdoing. The practical aspect is that our perception of God’s grace shapes the way we treat others. That is, if we grasp the depth of our own failure and how little we merit cleansing of our offenses against God, we more readily release others.

Jesus taught this lesson when he visited Simon the leper. The host didn’t offer him the common courtesy of having someone wash his feet. However, a prostitute came into the room, washed his feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, then kissed his feet and put perfume on them. (See Luke 7:36-50.) The woman understood something that Simon did not. She knew how grossly she had sinned and how generously God had forgiven her. To make the lesson clear, Jesus says to Simon, “A creditor had two debtors. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Since they could not pay it back, he graciously forgave them both. So, which of them will love him more?” (vss. 41-42 CSB).

The answer was obvious. Jesus then pointed to the woman and said, “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; that’s why she loved much. But the one who is forgiven little, loves little” (v. 47).

By little, Jesus means our perception of our sin. As long as we think we are morally superior to those who have wronged us, we’ll have trouble erasing the pain. Once we perceive deep within that we are sinners, we realize there isn’t much difference between us and the one who hurt us. The Bible is also quite clear to spell out that: “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10b CSB).

How We Forgive

1. We confront our hurt. Even if the offense is small, we don’t ignore it or deny our pain. If we try, bitterness can begin to grow within us. We need to deal with the hurt as soon as we feel it. We don’t suffer in silence and tell ourselves that we have forgiven. Until we confront our pain, it stays hidden in some subterranean part of our soul. In fact, it probably begins to fester. In the church, too often we deny how crushed we have been by another’s actions. We force smiles on our faces and deny we’ve been offended.
Forgiveness begins when we admit, “I have been hurt, but I want to be free from this agony.”

2. We ask God to heal our wounds. This doesn’t happen automatically. Sometimes we have to pray for extended periods. We know God wants us to let go, but the deeper the pain, the longer it takes to be willing to release the offense.

3. We need to allow ourselves time to heal. We don’t have to rush into forgiving. As long as the offense fills our hearts with grief, we’re not ready. I liken this to the death of someone we love. We know it takes time for the grief to subside. We need to learn to be kind to ourselves and not push ourselves before we’re ready.

4. We need to ask God to give us a clean heart. We pray for cleansing and ask God to remove any desire to hurt the other or to yearn for the other person to suffer. If we scrutinize ourselves, we’re forced to admit how weak we are. How many times have we hurt or belittled others? Even though we tend to classify sins as small, large, or all-but-unforgivable, the Bible never makes that distinction. In God’s eyes, sin is sin. The prayer of David, after his adulterous affair, makes the strong point that all sins are ultimately sins against God. “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4 NIV).

5. We realize we no longer need the other person to be wrong. This is difficult for many of us to admit, but once we perceive God’s grace in our own lives, we also can acknowledge that we may have had some level of culpability. That doesn’t justify another’s sin or cruelty, but it does remind us of a powerful truth: Our sins may be different, but they are still rebellion against God. Once we can think objectively about our injury, we ask ourselves, “What if God rewarded me according to my deeds? What if God punished me for every wrong thing I did?”

6. We need to pray for the person who hurt us. Instead of crying out, “Repay them for their sins,” we need to pray for their well-being and for divine blessings on their lives. The more deeply hurt we are, the more difficult this will be to pray, but it’s an important step. If we refuse to pray this way, it says we have set ourselves up as judges and have the right to decide what others deserve.

7. We need to ask ourselves why this hurt so badly. The answer may seem obvious. He committed adultery. She lied about me. This may be true, but when we scrutinize our emotions and attitudes more fully, we may have to face the reality that part of the hurt is because of our failure. This is not to excuse or overlook the offense, but it is to search our own hearts and ask God to help us see if we have any responsibility in what happened.

This isn’t to diminish the wrongdoing of another. It is to challenge us to look at ourselves. Was I a silent contributor to this? Had I failed the other person—perhaps in a different way? Do I agonize over this because I don’t want to face the evil in myself? If I can see myself as good then I can see the one who hurt me as evil.

For example, a friend once crushed me by accusing me of lying and turning people against him, and he called me terrible names. Although it took several weeks, I finally admitted to myself that I had been silent when others spoke against him. I had added a few judgmental comments about him in conversation and even repeated gossip. As long as I focused on his actions, I didn’t have to examine my own heart. Until I admitted culpability, I couldn’t understand the depth of my aching heart. I hurt because he was close to the truth about me.

My friend had, in effect, held up a mirror for me to stare at my careless words, minor hurts that I had kept hidden, and little resentments that had built up. When something evokes strong emotional reaction—good or bad—our response says more about us than it does about the other person or the event.
8. We need to relinquish the offense. Someone hurt us, but ultimately, the other sinned against God. This is God’s issue and not ours.

Two biblical examples stand out. First, Joseph’s brothers had hated him, conspired against him, thrown him into a pit, and sold him into slavery. After the death of their father Jacob, the brothers feared Joseph would retaliate. He said, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good…” (Genesis 50:19- 20a NIV).

Second, Jesus, in the midst of his own physical torture, cried out, “Father, forgive them.” (See Luke 23:34.) He set the example for us to follow.

To follow Jesus’ example may not be easy—and often it isn’t. Despite how hard or long we have to struggle to forgive, we remind ourselves that as the people of God, we will and must forgive if we are to live in fellowship.