How Can I Know How To Forgive Someone Who Has Hurt Me?

I’m supposed to know a lot about forgiveness. I regularly preach about the subject to my congregation, I am interviewed about forgiveness in the national media, and I’ve written a best-selling book on the topic. I’m an expert on the subject of forgiveness until it comes to actually having to forgive someone.

Recently, I was forced to realize just how bad of a forgiver I really am. While sitting in my car in the parking lot of a supermarket and talking on my cell phone, I noticed a man in a Hummer weaving through the lot in search of a shortcut to the bank adjacent to the supermarket. As he attempted to navigate his oversized vehicle in the space between my car and one diagonal to mine, I gave a polite tap of the horn to alert him to the possibility of a collision. Suddenly, the Hummer stopped, and an oversized man bounded out of the driver’s seat, heading for my car. I have never seen anyone so angry. He began yelling and pounding on my window. “What’s wrong with you? Why did you honk your horn? Get out of the car now, you #%$^*.” 

A verse from the Bible popped into my mind: “A soft anger turns away wrath.” I thought this would be a good time to see if the verse really worked. So, without lowering the window (I wasn’t THAT sure it would remedy the situation), I calmly explained through the window why I honked the horn, smiling the whole time. As I kept talking, he kept pounding. Finally, he turned away (yes, it does work), got in his vehicle, and parked in front of the bank. I sat in my car and watched him get out of his Hummer and bend over as if someone had punched him in the stomach. He was STILL seething with anger while I was laughing with the person on the other end of my phone call. 

Yet, throughout the rest of the day, I kept replaying the incident in my mind and fantasizing about what I should have done. I’m ashamed to put this in print for posterity, but I actually created a mental scenario in which I suddenly put my car in reverse and, just as my would-be-assailant thought I was leaving, suddenly sped toward him and pinned him against the bumper of his car. But that wasn’t all. As he writhed in pain, I imagined putting my car in reverse and using it as a motorized battering ram, striking a second blow and a third, and … well, you get the idea.

My difficulty in letting go of that incident reminds me of C.S. Lewis’s observation that “Forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive.” I suspect there is someone in your past who has deeply hurt you. It may be an employer who wronged you, a friend who betrayed you, a parent who abused you, or a mate who deserted you. While your thoughts of revenge against that person may not be as violent as mine, you still have difficulty releasing the hurt you experienced. And honestly, you’re not sure if you should let go. After all, doesn’t your offender deserve to pay for what he has done to you?

In my experience as a pastor, no decision is more difficult or more crucial than choosing to forgive those who wrong us. Author David Augsburger observes, “Forgiveness is hard, it hurts, and it costs. But the decision not to forgive is even more costly.”

1. Why Forgiveness Matters

Until fairly recently, the subject of forgiveness was relegated to a Sunday School nicety that was as universally acknowledged and routinely ignored as Jesus’ admonition to “turn the other cheek.” Such reactions to mistreatment may work in a perfect world, but certainly not in my world, many of us conclude. Yet, over the last few decades, researchers have uncovered convincing evidence of the benefits of forgiveness.

• Physical Benefits of Forgiveness
• Emotional Benefits of Forgiveness
• Spiritual Benefits of Forgiveness (Matthew 6:14-15)

2. Misunderstandings About Forgiveness

Yet, in spite of the incalculable physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of releasing rather than holding on to the hurts of others, our first, far too often, final response to those offenses is unforgiveness. Given the corrosive effects of bitterness on our bodies and emotions, not to mention the spiritual hazards of unforgiveness, why are we so reluctant to forgive those who wrong us? I believe that the major reason people are reluctant to forgive other people is because they have a faulty understanding of what forgiveness is and what it is not. 

• Forgiveness Is Not Ignoring or Rationalizing Offenses

To forgive someone does not require us to engage in some mental fantasy, pretending the offense never happened. In fact, it is impossible to truly forgive an offense unless we first of all acknowledge the reality and the seriousness of the wrong committed. As someone has said, we can only forgive those who we are willing to blame. 

The problem with ignoring or rationalizing the offenses of others is that it short-circuits the process of forgiveness, which is vital to our physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. 

• Forgiveness Is Not Surrendering Our Desire for Justice  

The Bible warns us against avenging those who wrong us: “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). 

While we are to refuse to seek vengeance for hurting others for hurting us, we cannot and should not surrender our desire for justice. Since we are created in the image of a righteous God who hates evil and punishes evildoers, it is only natural that we would desire to see child abusers incarcerated and murderers executed. Justice is the payment of God or others’ demand from those who wrong us or other people. 

• Forgiveness Is Not Forgetting Offenses 

The bottom-line result of Christ’s death is that our “certificate of debt” and been has been marked “paid in full,” meaning that we never have to worry that God is going to come after us like an irate bill collector seeking payment for a debt that has already been fulfilled. God will no longer “take into account” our sin debt because it has already been paid.

• Forgiveness Is Not Reconciling with Our Offender 

One of the greatest misunderstandings about forgiveness is that truly letting go of an offense results in immediate reconciliation with the person who has hurt us. In fact, some people claim that you cannot truly forgive someone unless you are willing to be reunited with your offender, even at the risk of being wronged again. After all, didn’t Jesus demand that we be willing to forgive others “seventy times seven”? 

Reconciliation Requires:

1. Repentance 
2. Rehabilitation 
3. Restitution

3. Understanding Authentic Forgiveness

When I was growing up, I remember hearing my father and mother argue about money occasionally. “If you keep spending like this, we are going to end up in the poor house!” my dad would warn my mom. As a little boy, I had no idea what the “poor house” was, but I assumed it was not a place in which I wanted to spend any amount of time. My father’s warning was an allusion to the debtors’ prisons of another era. Centuries ago, if you could not pay your bills, you went to prison until your bills were repaid. However, the practice had one serious flaw: if you were in prison, how could you ever hope to repay your debt? The end result of this system of “justice” was that the debtor died, his families starved, and the debt-holder went unpaid. 

I think the king in Jesus’ parable, who was owed the money by his slave, understood the futility of debtors’ prison. Jesus identified the king’s compassion as his motivation for extending mercy to the slave. But the king’s compassion was most likely fueled by common sense. Seeing the slave prostrate before him, begging for mercy, and promising to repay the humongous debt caused the king to realize his options were limited. Incarcerating the slave would not reduce his debt by a single denarius. Releasing the servant from prison but insisting that he repay the debt on the installment plan was equally unrealistic.

If imprisonment was futile and repayment was unrealistic, then the only sensible choice was to forgive the debt, which is exactly what the king chose to do: “And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.” (Matthew 18:27). The king’s action toward his servant illustrates the three necessary steps for experiencing the benefits of this spiritual transaction called forgiveness.

1. Genuine Forgiveness Acknowledges the Offense
2. Genuine Forgiveness Calculates the Debt
3. Genuine Forgiveness Releases the Debtor to God 

By unconditionally forgiving someone, you are saying, “Although what you did to me was wrong, I am letting go of that wrong so that I can be free to get on with my life.” Forgiveness benefits us much more than it benefits our offender. As Lewis Smedes wrote, “When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover the prisoner we set free was us.”