A dear sister in the faith asked this question during a ladies’ Bible study: how do we love our neighbor, and is forgiveness a facet of that love? Another sister at the table struggled with forgiving people who commit atrocities in the lives of others, like Hitler or Putin. How are forgiveness and love connected? Must we forgive even evil people?
What Is Love?
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 is not a trite, overused saying: it’s God’s summary, given through Paul. Love is patient, kind, humble, gentle, considerate, good-natured, happy for others, willing to compromise, “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (vv.6-7). God is love. One cannot separate love from the Holy One, who embodies and enables us to love.
Helpful Greek Terms
The ESV translation of 1 Corinthians 13:5 uses the word “resentful” as in “love is not resentful,” which in the Greek is Logizomai.
Some translations say, “Does not keep a record of wrongs.” Bible Study Tools gives this definition for logizomai: “reckon, count, charge with; reason, decide, conclude; think, suppose.” Kakos, the Greek for “wrongs,” means “bad, evil.” Love does not keep a record of evil: love forgives.
Best Example of Love
Jesus perfectly encapsulated the meaning of love. He was generous, selfless, gentle, and patient, joyfully shared the truth about himself, and confronted lies.
When Jesus told his disciples that he was going to suffer, Peter rebuked him, but Jesus rebuked Peter: “get behind me Satan! You are a hindrance to me” (Matthew 16:23).
He loved without softening the facts. He confidently confronted lies while still making way for anyone to come to him if they believed the truth and turned to him. That included someone like Paul, a persecutor of Christians.
Jesus personally defined the greatest love this way: being willing to give your life for your friend (John 15:13). He also said, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” If we love him, we do as he has commanded. He made the way clear for the likes of Paul, who hated Jesus and hated Christians.
Friendship with God is made possible for anyone who chooses to call him “Savior” and “Lord,” and believers who are friends with God must love even those who seem impossible to love, not by permitting abuse, but by praying for them and telling them the truth about Jesus.
Yes, Jesus counseled his disciples that “if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town” (Matthew 10:14).
We will encounter resistance, even “kakos,” in response to our message because not everyone wants friendship with us or with the Lord.
We can’t force people to listen, and we can protect ourselves from hatred, but that doesn’t mean we are permitted to hold onto anger. Drawing up boundaries is loving towards others and good protection for ourselves. It’s reasonable.
What Is Forgiveness?
Sam Storms talks about what forgiveness is not (forgetting how we were hurt, letting someone hurt us again, pretending you don’t feel the pain of being wronged, etc.). Then he explains what it looks like for us to forgive: the best example of forgiveness is the cross itself.
We nailed Christ to the cross. We committed the sins that caused Jesus to give up his life; we, his friends whom he loves and who allegedly love him, although we sin daily.
This is not to say that forgiveness is easy. Jesus never says that it is. His death demonstrates the agony of forgiveness. We choose not to “throw the sin back into the face of the one who committed it [or] hold it over their head, using it to manipulate and shame them.”
We promise not to “bring it up to others in an attempt to justify ourselves or to undermine their reputation [or] bring it up to ourselves as grounds for self-pity or to justify our resentment of the person who hurt us.”
Forgiveness is a commitment; we might have to resolve to forgive someone over and over. Forgiveness is not moral blindness and blinkered trust. But we do have to, in some way, let it go.
It’s much harder to adhere to this message of forgiveness when we spend a lot of time remembering the offense, which is why forgiving others is part of the Lord’s prayer. We ask for forgiveness as we forgive others because we remember what our sin cost God.
God is not asking you to open yourself up to abuse. What he is asking you to do is to sacrifice your anger and resentment and the longing to be lifted up as the righteous one or shame the other person by clinging to offense.
Be satisfied that Jesus is enough. Be satisfied that your offender’s sins will be dealt with if they are not being dealt with here if he does not ask for forgiveness.
Be satisfied that the Lord’s forgiveness of you is reason enough to let go of resentment or any desire for revenge. Trust him — the consequences for an unrepentant sinner, in the long run, do not bear thinking about.
Forgiving Evil People
Corrie Ten Boom famously shared the story of a former Nazi prison guard who had served at Ravensbrück concentration camp. The Ten Booms suffered atrocities there. When the guard met her later in life, telling her that he had become a Christian, he asked for forgiveness.
Ten Boom remembered her sister Betsie’s horrible, slow death. This guard could not erase what he had done or the pain of that memory. But “I had to do it — I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us.”
Ten Boom had seen survivors of concentration camps emerge with disabilities: those who forgave their tormentors were able to live life again. Those who refused to forgive “remained invalids.”
She knew the spiritual reality and God’s command, so Ten Boom begged, “‘Jesus, help me!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’”
She did not feel forgiving, yet once she took the man’s outstretched hands, Jesus worked inside of Corrie Ten Boom. “The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’”
Every Christian, at one time or another, will have to reckon with this question: how do I forgive the person who hurt me?
The answer, says Ten Boom, is not that we summon the strength or reason ourselves into that posture: we say I can’t do it! But you, Christ, can cause my heart to grow in this way. You can make me say it and mean it. The only thing holding us back is our refusal to ask.
Connecting Forgiveness to Love
We forgive because we love Jesus. In every way, we want to be like the one who hung from the cross, dying a slow and agonizing death, yet who cried out, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
We love him, so we do as he says, and we do as he does. Nothing is more compelling. Withholding forgiveness is a prideful act, one which says, “I know better than God what this person deserves.”
How dare we presume to know best or to imagine that our unforgiveness leads to the powerful punishment which evil deserves or that we deserve something better than the sinner we’re pointing the finger at?
We only cut ourselves off from God this way, while a repentant prison guard can genuinely change (because God has that kind of power!) and be redeemed. Imagine trading places with the prison guard, for eternity, because of a hard heart.
Storms asserts that “true forgiveness is not satisfied with simply canceling the debt. It longs to love again.” Unforgiveness not only distorts our view of others, but it distorts our relationship with God.
What Does This Mean?
The connection between forgiveness and love is compelling. “The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Leviticus 34:6-7).
Ultimately, our ability to love our enemies comes down to this: we realize that we were God’s enemies; we do not love God as well as he loves us: but he does not hold that against us.
If God viewed us the way we view those who hurt us, we would be doomed. His love and forgiveness cannot be separated, so neither can ours.
For further reading:
6 Beautiful Psalms That Teach Us about Forgiveness
What Does it Mean for Christians to Forgive?
What Does 'God Is Love' Look Like Today?
Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/izusek
Candice Lucey is a freelance writer from British Columbia, Canada, where she lives with her family. Find out more about her here.