Forgiveness and Reconciliation Are Not The Same

I don’t want to go to my grave with a bitter heart toward anyone. As far as it depends on me, I want to live at peace with everyone. I cannot do so without God, so I must ask Him to supply me with what it takes. 

Some definitions: 

Forgiveness: releasing your offender to God and mortifying your desire to control, change, punish them, or settle the score. Burying the offense and walking away from it rather than carrying it around like a worry stone in your pocket. Recognizing that the offender is not accountable to you; they are accountable to God. Understanding that you are NOT perfectly just, but God IS, so you leave it to Him to handle the offense. He saw it. He knows. 

Forgiveness requires me and God. It requires nothing from my offender - not apology, remorse, or even acknowledgement of the offense.

My own need for forgiveness drives me to forgive others, because forgiveness flows from God. He is its source. You don’t drum up some warm fuzzies and dispense them as you please; you recognize your own sinfulness, go to the source, and pass on forgiveness because He has filled you with His forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not approval, dismissal, or pretending it didn’t happen. It’s not a feeling or sensation; it’s a decision. An intention to stop allowing that offense to rule your thoughts and behavior and leave it to God.

Bitterness: what you’re left with when you do not forgive - hanging onto the offense, replaying it, stewing over it, resenting the offender and harboring ill will towards them. Keeps you fixated on the offense and stuck in that moment.

Continuing in bitterness requires me, my flesh, and the devil, who wants to keep me dwelling on the offense. If I am asking God’s help with the situation, He will not permit me to remain bitter. 

Consequences: the natural, pragmatic, logical results of one’s behavior. Sometimes physical (a skinned knee), sometimes emotional (loss of trust in a relationship marred by offense), sometimes spiritual (a sense of guilt before God over sin). 

Repentance: the remorseful recognition of wrongdoing coupled with the intention to turn from it. Genuine, Spirit-inspired repentance results in inward change of mind and character and visible change of behavior. 

Repentance, like forgiveness, requires me and God. It doesn’t depend on my offender’s attitude or action.

Reconciliation: restoration of broken relationship, most importantly between God and humanity by the atonement of Christ, and secondarily between people who are at odds. 

Reconciliation requires me, God, and my offender. I cannot accomplish genuine reconciliation without all three participating. 

Putting it all together:

In my natural, selfish state, all my best intentions are stained with sin. So #1: forgiveness and reconciliation are 100% the work of God in me, not my own efforts.

He produces the fruit:

I intend to forgive as I have been forgiven, so I go to the Lord and plead His help and strength to put down that offense and leave any and all results to Him. 

I turn from bitterness and set my intentions for the good of my offender. 

I see the unpleasant consequences of my offender’s actions but I do not take pleasure in them, nor do I try to impose punitive or vengeful consequences upon them. 

I search my heart and repent of any sin against my offender, and I pray that the Holy Spirit would lead my offender to the same. 

I pray for and desire reconciliation between God, my offender, and myself. It is through reconciliation with Him that reconciliation between my offender and me will become possible. 

If my offender and I have both sincerely forgiven and repented, reconciliation will result. 

Some principles: 

Matthew 5:44 Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (“Love” here is not an emotion, but a decision and intention for the person’s good.)

Romans 12:14 Bless, do not curse, those who persecute you.

Romans 12:17-19 Do not repay evil for evil; be at peace and don’t take your own revenge. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Proverbs 24:17 Do not rejoice when your enemy falls or desire their demise. Set your intentions for their good. 

Matthew 23:18ff A parable in which a master forgives the massive debt of his servant, but that servant refuses to forgive a much smaller debt of a friend. Don’t be that servant. Whatever offenses I must forgive, He has forgiven me far more. 

Betrayal

There’s good reason Dante put the traitors in the deepest part of Hell. There is nothing that I have ever experienced that hurts as badly as when someone whom I loved dearly turned on me - loudly, cruelly, intentionally, and publicly, in an epic blow-up.

It takes two to make or break a relationship, and I hold myself to that same standard. I am not without blame over the years. When the epic blow-up occurred, I was so gobsmacked that I responded defensively when I should have just walked away. 

It happened a few years ago, and it left me reeling for months.  I questioned everything I thought I knew about the person, myself, and our relationship. In hindsight, I started recognizing patterns of behavior that, in my naïveté, I had missed or explained away because I believed this person felt the same way about me as I did about her. And that was my longstanding mistake. 

But the past makes so much more sense when viewed through a lens of truth. The blowup tore me to shreds at the time, but now I recognize it as a necessary revelation. The truth came bursting out and pummeled me until I believed it. 

An act of harsh disloyalty is INFORMATIVE. It brings CLARITY. 

I SEE you. You did what you did; you said what you said. You made yourself abundantly clear. There’s nowhere to go from here. The beans have been spilled. The toothpaste is out of the tube. There’s no going back. 

So I will simply move out of your way. Betrayal itself is CLOSURE. I’m done. 

As a Christian, I believe in forgiveness, and I desire to live at peace with everyone. The Lord has been hard at work in me to help me understand and live what I profess: I am a sinner who has received forgiveness, and I may not withhold grace when I have received so much. I can only deal with myself, though. I am not the Holy Spirit. 

It’s not beyond His ability to bring about repentance and restoration. 

It’s just beyond mine.