By: J.O. Lawal
Series: Youth for Jesus
Number: Vol. 9, No. 8
“The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.” (2 Cor 2:6-8NIV)
Among the things we are shown in our opening text is that God is not only interested in our forgiving those who have hurt or offended us; He is also interested in the process we follow in forgiving them. Why? The reason is that it is the process that will determine whether the forgiveness we have given restores the person receiving it to right living or not.
For example, in forgiving Peter, our Lord Jesus did not merely forgive him with words of mouth; He also sought him out after His resurrection to comfort and restore Him. How? First, He sent an angel to tell the women that came to His tomb on the resurrection morning to tell Peter to come with the other disciples to see Him in Galilee (Mark 16:7).
Second, when He appeared to all of them, including Peter, He did not say a word about what the man had done. He did not tell him how much what he had done pained Him. He just would not say anything about it. Why? The reason was that Peter was already sorrowful enough about the matter. So, talking about it again would only make him more sorrowful. And that could totally drive him away from the Lord. Therefore, the Lord would not say anything about the case.
Third, the Lord gave Peter a new assignment. He specifically told him to take care of His sheep for Him. He, in fact, also went on to give him a revelation about his death in the future. Why? It was to comfort him, to reassure him of His love for him and to let him know that He had forgiven him and forgotten about the matter concerning his denial of Him. (Cf. John 21:15-19)
You can, then, see why Peter would go on and serve the Lord faithfully for the remaining years of his life. The forgiveness he received worked. The forgiveness he received brought about his complete restoration. And that was because of the way it was given to him by the Lord.
In the same vein, if we too want the forgiveness we give to people to work in their lives to change them and to set them right, we must pay attention to how we give it. We must do it as we are shown in our opening text and as illustrated or modelled for us by our Lord Jesus Christ in Peter’s case. How?
First, we must know when we don’t need to punish at all and when the punishment needs to end where we have to punish. We don’t need to punish at all or again when the guilty person has already admitted their error, are sorrowful about it and are desirous of our forgiveness.
Second, forgiveness must be accompanied with acts that will comfort and reaffirm our love for the person involved. If the person involved will not sincerely admit their error and apologise for it, then, that is a different issue. And where that is the case, we just need to forgive them in obedience to God and move on. God will deal with them according to His wisdom.
But where the person has already shown that they are sincerely unhappy about hurting us, then, we may have to do more than merely telling them that we forgive them with words of mouth. We may also have to look for them ourselves, if they are too shy to do so, in order to comfort them and to reaffirm our love for them. We may even have to embrace them, pray for them or do something with them just to assure them of the forgiveness we have given to them. That is what will produce true repentance, change their lives and heal our relationship with them.
Now remember that God had to treat all of us in this manner in order to bring us to Himself, change our lives and make our fellowship with Him beautiful. We too have to be willing to do the same for others that are in need of our forgiveness. Otherwise, the forgiveness we give may end up changing nothing about the lives of those receiving it or about our fellowship with them. How miserable will that kind of forgiveness be, then?
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