When a woman marries, she may have only an inkling about forgiveness, aside from a few "that's okays" casually tossed in the direction of the "I'm sorrys" that come from small offenses. Misdemeanors often go unnoticed, sentence served, case dismissed. 
Medium-sized transgressions might let us stick to "no harm done" reactions, but both sizes can build to an invisible invader called "resentment." Carry a grudge around with you long enough, unspoken and boxing it up with others of its kind, and that's what you get. To conquer it requires breaking it down into parts; your job comes in deciding which pieces need to be dealt with in forgiveness or understood in loving forgetfulness.
Large-sized wrongs, on the other hand, provide very large hurts, therefore, reasons for offering big forgiveness. The bad stuff. Shocking, horrible, beyond-belief wrongs that two people in a marriage never thought possible. The things people quit trying to overcome and bandage with divorce papers. When a couple takes this route, suffering succeeds only in hiding love and people build fortresses of regret and resentment to further block the small deeds that make love real. And so, they stop "feeling" it. Forgiveness can conquer any of these sins.
We always have the option to forgive. We always have the ability to forgive. We do not always have the grace to forgive, nor the strength, desire or decency to offer it. Worse, we want what is ours, so to speak. We want to have the wrong erased ... sometimes along with the wrong-doer. We want to have the wrong-doer feel our pain, and to never cease feeling sorry for it -- our own, self-prescribed restitution.
At this point, at the place we stand and wish for destruction of our enemy or for him to feel the pain of his erroneous ways toward us, we make our biggest mistake: trying to devise proper punishment.
Paul writes in Colossians 3:13
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (emphasis added)
As the Lord forgave you. As the Lord forgave YOU.
A person offering forgiveness should:
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
Completely.
Without reservation.
Without asking restitution.
Without charging a fee.
Without doubt.
With no grudges or resentment.
With love and trust.
Without remembering, rehearsing or reliving the wrong to remind you of it, just to keep you on the right path.
With God's help, guidance, direction, grace, power, sustenance, love, and desire for righteousness.
In other words, forgive with the completeness of God, to the best of our ability.
Imagine the lines above coming from God, but in reverse. Imagine taking God's forgiveness while he holds reservation about it ... doesn't trust you to do better and go on from here having learned something. Think about forgiveness at a price -- a dollar amount, a physical trade, a mental toeing the line. Consider taking it while knowing He resents giving it, or has a list of wrongs against you that you don't know and can't understand. Imagine asking His forgiveness and having Him remember and remind you about your sin daily or weekly or EVER ... just to keep you in line. Imagine Him offering forgiveness, but doing it without help, guidance, direction, grace, power, sustenance, and love ... and expecting righteousness without fail. These are the things humans do to each other to exact punishment in exchange for forgiveness -- a sad, second-rate rendition of forgiveness. We attach strings.
To forgive without punishing we need to:
Not punish a person by reminding him of his sin and how/how much it hurt.
Not advertise his bad choices to others.
Not throw a person's sin in his face to vindicate your status as victim.
Not withhold loving action until he straightens up and flies right. We need to always love.
Not expect perfect behavior. We don't offer it, how can anyone else?
Be prepared to continue offering forgiveness. People make mistakes.
Pray for everything we need to uphold forgiveness. God is our rock, our fortress, our deliverer, our strength, our all.
I can easily understand what forgiveness feels like it when I receive it even if I have difficulty accepting it. Conversely, I cannot easily feel the goodness and completeness of giving it. I often prefer to wallow in self-pity a while and would like for the person who sinned against me to suffer consequences. Dire consequences, please. Turn up the pain and suffering dial to "Super-Boil". I have trouble not playing the martyr and not suffering at length. I can see forgiveness as something the other person should somehow deserve -- whether earned or bought -- when I want to see it that way. All of that = WRONG.
The desire to punish and the lack of timely forgiving action oppose God. They have no worth, other than to harm, and I have to -- have to -- work at seeing through God's perspective rather than my own damaged and warped view. My human view. This includes seeing myself as insufficiently capable of that kind of godliness and Christlikeness, unless I enlist God's help to sustain my weakness and, truth be told, inability to learn from my own mistakes. The number one mistake? Not offering forgiveness as soon as possible.
I need forgiveness from God as I prepare to offer forgiveness. I need forgiveness for harboring hurtful thoughts, for thinking in a dastardly way about someone, for feeling dislike and hate as they bubble to the surface ... the byproducts of feeling wronged. When I ask forgiveness, I also need to ask for guidance, strength and humility in giving His brand of forgiveness -- the kind that ignores the effect on me and lets me work past it and on to something better.
When we sin against God, he forgives us when we ask, and then picks right up and continues with his plan -- maybe around what we have done or maybe pushing right through it and He uses the situation for good.
We, in our own offering of forgiveness, need to come to the same place -- to forgive without punishing, and to continue forward toward the good. When we stop looking back to the place of pain, the forgiveness will come easier, and the view into the future brightens. If we continually look back into the darkness of the past (hurt and pain), we will succeed only in dimming the light ahead of us and have to work harder to feel the warmth and goodness of clarity that comes from forgiveness.
To forgive and not punish really takes the extra work out of it for us. Is it not harder to hang onto the snarling, many-toothed desire to bite down and not let go, like an animal hanging onto its prey, than it is to not bite down and hang on at all?
Easier said than done? Of course. Yet, God provides the tools and we can do it, with practice, determination, and a willing heart.
Other Articles in This Series:
- Ten Ways to Love: An Introduction
- Ten Ways to Love: Answer without Arguing
- Ten Ways to Love: Enjoy without Complaint
- Ten Ways to Love: Give without Sparing
- Ten Ways to Love: Listen without Interrupting
- Ten Ways to Love: Share without Pretending
- Ten Ways to Love: Speak without Accusing
- Ten Ways to Love: Forgive without Punishing
- Ten Ways to Love: Pray without Ceasing
- Ten Ways to Love: Trust without Wavering
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