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blogging, faith, forgiveness, insanitybytes, love, opinion, repentance
A debate I keep bumping into in various places, “is repentance necessary for forgiveness?” Is it a requirement, a pre-requisite? Wintery Knight has a post that provides much food for thought and while I am not completely disagreeing, I am not fully on board either. Clearly repentance is required in order to come to Christ, one cannot very well receive grace without recognizing one’s own sins and the need for grace in the first place.
I am thinking more in terms of our relationships with each other. First off, I believe Christians are called to discern, to judge even, to be angry sometimes. To everything there is a season and a time and a purpose, but being a Christian does not mean checking your brains at the door and lying there like a pile of mush in a perpetual state of forgiveness of others no matter what they do.
However, unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, is like lugging around a bag of rocks. We do not want those things in our hearts for very long, because than there is room for little else. If one is in a personal relationship with Christ, than one must set their burdens down and make room for well, Christ. Unforgiveness corrupts our own hearts.
It is not that we forgive so much for the benefit of the other person, but for our own selves. This is not the same thing as condoning their behavior or agreeing with their sin, it is freeing our own selves from the harm that was done there. If our own ability to forgive must be conditional on someone else’s repentance, than we may well be waiting a very long time to free ourselves from the harm that was done. Those wounds will only fester and grow.
Also, I am reminded that I am not the one in charge of doling out mercy, grace, and redemption. That is Christ’s job. In the grand scheme of things my forgiveness means nothing beyond freeing my own heart. If someone repents there is the possibility of reconciliation there…or not. One may forgive a violent criminal, to come to understand and forgive, but that does not necessarily indicate a desire to have tea with them.
The idea that I am not in charge of mercy, grace, forgiveness is a tough lesson to learn, but it is the truth. God judges, not I, and He may well see into the hearts of those I deem unworthy. I may actually be the one at fault there, one never fully knows. Or perhaps God set someone in my path so I would learn to empathize or to forgive or to gain some humility? I have no way of knowing, but if I do not seek that path, I can never gain those fruits. To refuse to forgive is a bit like walling yourself off from the Holy Spirit who may wish to do some work within you.
Ultimately if we refuse to forgive until somebody has repented we are handing them all the power. Christ did not go to the cross because we were all repentant and worthy of His sacrifice. Even in the midst of His torment He called out, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” That is “Father forgive them,” not us forgive them. Who does the doling out of forgiveness ultimately belong to? We are not the ones with the Authority there.
Somebody smart said, “nobody gets under your skin unless you want them there.” That is so very true. When we hang onto something it is always because there is something unfinished within us that will not let us go.
This is such a huge issue, one might even call it Christianity 101. We do not speak of forgiveness nearly as much as we should and it is the very first step! Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. Luke 7:47 It is not so much the sins of others we are supposed to be seeking repentance for, but rather our own.
All in good humor here, but solipsism, this idea that it really is all about you, it really is all about you! That is why we say, Lord search my heart, Lord wash me clean. If we do not do that, then we tend to try to create God in our own image. A harsh, judgmental, ostracizing God, is a false projection from a soul walking in its own judgment and condemnation.
terrence said:
I was thinking along the same lines today. I even wrote a bit about it on facebook. ha!
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ha! Isn’t it funny how people will be thinking along the same lines, all at the same time? 😉
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terrence said:
Lol yup! It’s a small world, and we have the same Spirit. It’s bound to happen!
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Salvageable said:
This is one of the mysteries I address in the book I wrote this summer. Here’s a preview. Jesus commanded that we repent and believe the gospel. So repentance is necessary. He also commanded a paralyzed man to rise, pick up his stretcher, and walk; and he commanded a dead man named Lazarus to come out of his tomb. In all four cases, when Jesus commands, he also gives the ability to obey. Lazarus gets no credit for leaving the grave; Jesus worked the miracle that made Lazarus able to obey. We take no credit for repenting or for believing; the power of the Word of Jesus moves us to repent and to believe. J.
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insanitybytes22 said:
“We take no credit for repenting or for believing; the power of the Word of Jesus moves us to repent and to believe..”
Oh, so well said! Yes, that’s how I see it too.
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Salvageable said:
On the subject of forgiving others–which is mostly what you address in this post–we do not forgive out of the goodness of our hearts, but we pass along the forgiveness of Christ. “While we were yet sinners, he died for us.” On the one hand, to refuse to offer forgiveness is wrong because we are commanded to forgive. On the other, the forgiveness of Christ (and therefore our forgiveness) may not be received by the unrepentant heart. Our forgiveness does not require us to be continual victims. Somewhere Paul says something to the effect of “warn them twice, and then stay away from them.” From our hearts, we forgive every time (but that is God’s forgiveness flowing through us); in our lives, we still protect ourselves from those who would hurt us (and, in so doing, hurt themselves) by their sins. J.
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Etienne d'Orn said:
Salvageable, I agree with most of what you said, but in one point you have missed the mark. Yes, Christians forgive by sharing Christ’s forgiveness and not out of the goodness of their own hearts. Yes, the power of the Word of God brings about repentance and faith–neither the repenting/forgiving sinner nor the rebuking/forgiving Christian can take credit for the change. But you have forgotten that three times (Matthew 16:19, Matthew 18:18, and John 20:23) Jesus gives his followers the power to forgive or to withhold forgiveness. Forgiveness is not withheld arbitrarily. It is withheld from the sinner who will not repent. Bringing the grace of God to an unrepentant sinner is “casting pearls before swine” (Matthew 7:6). That’s why Paul told Titus to warn a person causing division in the church to warn that person once, then twice, and afterward have nothing to do with that person (Titus 3:10).
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insanitybytes22 said:
“Forgiveness is not withheld arbitrarily. It is withheld from the sinner who will not repent.”
One problem we have today is that forgiveness really is being withheld arbitrarily. So, if someone has ever been divorced, come from the wrong side of the tracks, is from the wrong denomination, is lacking wealth, is a new Christian, is a single parent, Catholic, not Catholic, doesn’t believe in gay marriage, does believe in gay marriage, etc, etc, they are being judged, ostracized, and bullied. The problem being, the church’s hands are not always clean, so when an unclean church demands repentance from someone it creates a whole lot of harm in the world. Nearly every decoversion story I’ve ever read begins with people seeing the hypocrisy within a church. People have a responsibility to serve Christ, to answer to Christ and not to men, so they are without excuse themselves.
Since blogging, I have been totally condemned by other Christians multiple times, something that has really surprised me and also lead me to empathize with those who rather justifiably point fingers at the relentless shaming that goes on within the churchian community.
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Salvageable said:
I stand corrected. But let’s keep this straight: the purpose of Christian rebuke is to lead to repentance with the goal of sharing grace. Rebuking sinners for any other purpose is against his will–we are not to judge or to seek revenge. In Matthew 18 Jesus offers three chances (not just two) before the sinner is treated, how? “Like a tax collector.” How did Jesus treat tax collectors? Here’s a clue: this passage is recorded only in the Gospel according to Matthew. J.
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bluebird of bitterness said:
Have you seen this?
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thank you! I think I’ll post that, it’s wonderful 😉
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brianbalke said:
This is a great look at forgiveness as a human process. What it fails to encompass is the pity or compassion that the person of faith feels for a transgressor that fails to realize how they hurt themselves by separating themselves from divine love. Divine love is perfect in that it cannot serve to empower acts of harm. It sees the future, and works inexorably to guide us into reunification with the source, and so abandons those that work against that goal.
I perceive this program in the very design of this reality (at a level beneath that covered by extant theories of physics). When asked to articulate the perspective of the Cosmic mind, I articulated the duality this way: “Infinitely enamored of the potentiality of living things (to free themselves to return). And inexorably destructive of selfish personalities.” To fail to forgive is to say “My current circumstances (my “living self”) matter more than the future of eternal love that awaits me (my eternal soul).” It is a form of selfishness. To forgive is to bring love into the world, thereby facilitating our prodigal reunion.
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brianbalke said:
I should elaborate on one point: The reason the transgressor hurts us is because they lack the power of divine love. As indicated in the video, if we fail to forgive (or “release”) the transgression, they take up occupancy of our minds and suck out of us the energy that we are given. To forgive is to recognize the transgressor’s pitiable weakness, and to infect them with the pattern of loving that will bring them strength.
This is what Jesus meant when he said “carry your cross.” An act of transgression is a two-way spiritual street. The fundamental precept of Christianity is that love conquers all.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Well said, Brian. They take up occupancy in our minds, also known as “living in our heads rent free.” 😉
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brianbalke said:
Well, I certainly hope that the psychologist in the video also understands that there’s a transfer of psychic energy going on, not just a waste of our physical energy. I have long hoped that the discipline would recognize explicitly the spiritual aspect of the syndrome. My sense is that they reason they don’t is because then they’d have to give some credit to religion, which they often characterize as an outdated artifact, but which (in this video as elsewhere) they often merely dress up in modern terms, while leaving out the essential revelation (the healing resource of the Divine Presence).
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insanitybytes22 said:
I think your point about psychic energy is a good one. One thing I used to speak about was how people would just keep repeating the same pattern in relationship after relationship. I often call it a psychic bond. It is as if someone’s eyes will meet across a crowded room….and they will walk right back into the same thing they just fled from. What are the odds of someone meeting the one loser within 100 miles who is going to confirm your own biases? They’re pretty slim and yet if you observe human behavior that is exactly what we do. We draw people towards us that are going to confirm our own biases, often negative ones. To forgive, to free oneself, to let go, then takes on the added dimension of cutting those psychic ties. These things become like scripts we unconsciously follow because there is energy there we have not yet let go of.
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Tricia said:
What’s that saying again? Holding on to resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. That pretty much sums up not being able to forgive, been there, done that, don’t care to go back. Like you said it doesn’t mean we condone or accept bad actions, just forgive the undeserving as Christ did for us.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thank you, these are such simple words, but profoundly powerful, “just forgive the undeserving as Christ did for us.”
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Bret Hogston said:
bookmarked!!, I really like your blog!|
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