Total Forgiveness: Achieving God's Greatest Challenge

by R T Kendall Ministries Inc.

‘You must totally forgive them.’ ‘I can’t,’ I replied. ‘You can and you must,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve just remembered. There is more. What I didn’t tell you . . .’ ‘R.T.,’ he interrupted, ‘you must totally forgive them. Release them and you will be set free.’

When we are bitter we delude ourselves into thinking that those who hurt us are more likely to be punished as long as we are set on revenge. We are afraid to let go of the feelings of revenge. After all, if we don’t make plans to see that justice is done, how will justice be done? We make ourselves believe that it is up to us to step in. This is a lie – the devil’s lie: ‘Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord’ (Rom. 12:19). We only hurt ourselves when we dwell on what has happened to us and fantasise about what it will be like when ‘they’ get punished. Most of all, we grieve the Holy Spirit of God. This is why we lose that inner peace.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4:30–2)

I made a decision for inner peace, but I found that I had to carry out that decision by a daily commitment to forgive those who had hurt me, and to forgive them totally. I therefore let them utterly off the hook and resigned myself to the knowledge that: (1) they wouldn’t get caught or found out; (2) nobody would ever know what they did; and (3) they would prosper and be blessed as though they had done no wrong. What is more, I actually willed this! I prayed for this! I asked God to forgive them. But I have had to do it every day in order to keep the peace within my heart. Having been on both sides, I can tell you: the peace is better. The bitterness isn’t worth it.

‘If you collected every theological book about person-to-person forgiveness [as opposed to divine-human forgiveness], you could hold them all in one hand.’ If this is true, although it doesn’t excuse me, it would help to explain my own lack of awareness of this theme – and the reason I wasn’t truly taught it.

the first person who gains from forgiveness is the person who does the forgiving.

I have chosen to speak of ‘total’ forgiveness (if only because that is the expression my friend Josif Tson used with me), but this book is also about total forgiveness even when there is not a restoration of a relationship. One must totally forgive those who will not be reconciled. This therefore refers to what we do in our hearts. If there is no reconciliation, then there can still be total forgiveness. This therefore applies even to someone who must still totally forgive those who are not now alive. It must happen in the heart. If it happens there, peace emerges – with or without a complete restoration in the relationship. What matters is that the Holy Spirit dwells in us ungrieved.

We all have a story to tell. You who read these lines may think it is impossible to forgive an unfaithful husband or wife. You may feel you cannot forgive the abusive parent. You may feel you cannot forgive something that has been done to your son or daughter. How can we forgive the church leader who took advantage of his position? What about the person who lied to us or about us, only to be believed by many? There is the rapist out there. The child abuser. The relative who abused. The racist. The thief. The former close friend who is now an enemy. The list is endless.

It is often easier, then, it seems to me, to forgive what is done to us personally than what is done to those close to us. But it is still very, very hard to forgive those who have hurt us directly, especially when they feel not the slightest twinge of conscience. When we can see they are sorry it makes it a lot easier. But no one seemed very sorry at the cross of Jesus. There was no justice at his ‘trial’ – if you could call it that. There was glee in the faces of the people who got what they wanted: ‘ “Crucify him!” they shouted’ (Mark 15:13). Furthermore, ‘Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” ’ (Mark 15:29–30.) They shouted, ‘Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe’ (Mark 15:32). And what was Jesus’ response? ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34). It must be our response as well.

The ultimate proof of total forgiveness is when we sincerely petition the Father to let off the hook those who have hurt us – even if they have hurt those close to us.

But what I really wanted to know was what actually won him over: ‘What argument did they use? What line of reasoning persuaded you to turn from Islam to Christianity?’ He replied: ‘It wasn’t what they said; it was them.’ This really challenged me. It made me see the folly of imagining we are only going to win people over by superior arguments, or by great preaching. What impresses the world most, I have to say, is changed lives – for which there is no natural explanation.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged” ’ (Matt. 7:1).

I still struggle in this area and think – just maybe – I have totally forgiven this person. I have asked the Lord to bless this person and let them off the hook, but it hasn’t been easy. Totally forgiving somebody doesn’t necessarily mean we will want to go on holiday with them.

Our mandate is to forgive as we have been forgiven: ‘Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you’ (Eph. 4:32); ‘Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you’ (Col. 3:13).

I therefore ask, how has the Lord forgiven me? Answer: my sins, which are many, will never be held against me and nobody will know what I have done. ‘As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us’ (Ps. 103:12). It therefore follows that I will not hold people responsible for what they have done to me. I will hold nothing against them and I will tell nobody what they have done.

You might reply: ‘But you told everything to Josif Tson.’ True – and I’m so glad that I did. But I wasn’t planning to start a smear campaign against anybody. Certainly my attitude was not perfect – I wanted a lot of sympathy, but I was mercifully put in my place by Josif. Had it not been this way, I am not sure how long I would have kept quiet...

May you be blessed for your good judgment and for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands. Otherwise, as surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, who has kept me from harming you, if you had not come quickly to meet me, not one male belonging to Nabal would have been left alive by daybreak’ (1 Sam. 25:32–4)

If you must tell another person what someone did to you – because you can’t contain the pain – then tell only one person, someone who won’t repeat it.

What about the rapist? The child abuser? Should not the authorities know? What about church discipline? Can one totally forgive and report a malady or crime at the same time as totally forgiving? Yes – I will say more about this below, but I must say now that total forgiveness does not mean closing our eyes to those who will continue to harm others. The apostle Paul ordered that the incestuous man in Corinth be put out of the church lest the entire church become corrupted (1 Cor. 5:5). The rapist therefore should be apprehended. Child abusers should be reported to the police before they reoffend.

What total forgiveness is not

1 Approval of what they did

Forgiving people does not mean approval of their evil. We forgive what we don’t approve of because that is the way God is with each of us.

2 Excusing what they did

We do not cover up for them. We do not point to circumstances that explain away their behaviour. It is true that ‘every person is worth understanding’, as Dr Clyde N...

3 Justifying what they did

To justify means to make right or just. The Oxford Dictionary says it means ‘to show (a person or statement or act, etc.) to be right or just or reasonable’. There is no way that evil can be justified; God never justified evil and does not require us to do so.

when we are required to forgive we are not required to make what is wrong look right.

4 Pardoning what they did

A pardon is a legal transaction which releases an offender from the consequences of an action, such as a penalty. This is why we do not ask that the guilty rapist be exempt from punishment. He needs to pay his debt to so...

She was told that this rapist could be sent back to his country and that that might mean his execution. She turned to me, and I advised her to testify against this man. She had already forgiven him – and did not want to get him into trouble for vindictive reasons. But had she not come forward, he would likely have raped again. By the time she testified she had no bitterness, but merely described what happened. The man was sent back to his own country; we will probably never know what happened to him after that.

5 Reconciliation

Forgiveness and reconciliation are not always the same. Reconciliation takes two people, and the person you forgive may not want to see you. They may even be dead. Moreover, you may not wa...

Reconciliation means a restoration of friendship after a quarrel. When a husband and wife totally forgive each other it will usually mean a reconciliation – but not always. The bitterness and the desire to punish may be gone, but the wish to have things as they were may not necessarily be so strong. If one’s spouse is unfaithful and sleeps with one’s best friend, that friendship will probably never be the same again, although the bitterness and desire for revenge need to go. An injured person can forgive an offender without reconciliation. It is wonderful indeed should reconciliation fo...

God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor. 5:19). But we still implore people on Christ’s behalf: ‘Be reconciled to God’ (2 Cor. 5:20). Why? The reconciliation...

6 Denying what ...

Total forgiveness is not achieved by repressing what has happened. It is only true and total forgiveness when we come to terms with reality – ‘this person actually did or said this’ – and then forgiving them.

7 Blindness to what happened

In some cases the same person who meant to forgive explodes one day – all because they were not being true to themselves – and everybody is shocked. It is not total forgiveness until you admit to seeing what they did – and then you set them free.

Paul said that love keeps no record of wrongs (1 Cor. 13:5), but he did not mean that you are blind to those wrongs. Some think that a way of forgiving is to pretend that no wrong is there. The Greek word logizetai means to ‘reckon’ or ‘impute’. It means essentially that ‘love does not store a wrong’, – that is, the wrong doesn’t go into our ‘mental computer’ to be reckoned with later on. We would say today: love doesn’t allow a wrong to be computed. But that there is wrong staring you in the face is not to be denied. In fact, the Greek word translated ‘wrong’ is kakon: evil. The wrong – the evil – is acknowledged; we are not blind to it; we are not required to pretend it didn’t happen. This is not what total forgiveness means.

Love is never blind to the hurt. If the person who hurt us is an authority figure or, let us say, known to be very ‘godly’, we say to ourselves, ‘I didn’t see this. I didn’t hear this. This could not have happened; therefore it didn’t.’ The truth is, sometimes the people we admire most can be ver...

8 Forg...

Love doesn’t erase our memories. Furthermore, it is a demonstration of great grace when we are fully aware of what they did – and still choose to forgive totally.

Even God doesn’t literally forget our sins: he chooses to overlook them. He knows full well what we have done and what he has forgiven us of – every sordid detail. But he chooses not to remember, so that he doesn’t hold them against us (Heb. 8:12). That is precisely what we are to do, choosing not to remember while maybe not forgetting.

9 Refusing to take the wrong seriously

We cannot truly forgive until we see the actual thing we are forgiving, ...

Some may think they are to dismiss a wrong out of hand, or pass it off as inconsequential or insignificant. They may even think this is forgiving the offence, but that is only avoiding the problem – possibly trying to make forgiveness easier. The greater victory for the one who does the forgiving is to face up to the seri...

This is what God does: there is no sin too great for God to forgive. But he equally knows exactly what it is we’ve done and what it is he is forgiving. He doesn’t say, ‘Come now, my dear, that’s not too bad. I can easily wash this sin away.’ No. He knows what we have done, which is why he sent his Son to die...

10 Pretending we are...

It is ridiculous to think that we should have to keep that stiff upper lip – when we have been betrayed, molested, unjustly criticised, or injured by a spouse’s infidelity. God let David know how grieved he was over the king’s adultery and murder: God did not pretend not to be hurt. David was a man after God’s own heart (1 Sa...

What total forgiveness is