Why Do Love and Forgiveness Have to Go Hand-in-Hand?
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A dear sister in the faith asked this question during a ladies’ Bible study: how do we love our neighbor, and is forgiveness a facet of that love? Another sister at the table struggled with forgiving people who commit atrocities in the lives of others, like Hitler or Putin. How are forgiveness and love connected? Must we forgive even evil people?
Corrie Ten Boom famously shared the story of a former Nazi prison guard who had served at Ravensbrück concentration camp. The Ten Booms suffered atrocities there. When the guard met her later in life, telling her that he had become a Christian, he asked for forgiveness.
Ten Boom remembered her sister Betsie’s horrible, slow death. This guard could not erase what he had done or the pain of that memory. But “I had to do it — I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us.”
Ten Boom had seen survivors of concentration camps emerge with disabilities: those who forgave their tormentors were able to live life again. Those who refused to forgive “remained invalids.”
She knew the spiritual reality and God’s command, so Ten Boom begged, “‘Jesus, help me!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’”
She did not feel forgiving, yet once she took the man’s outstretched hands, Jesus worked inside of Corrie Ten Boom. “The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’”
Every Christian, at one time or another, will have to reckon with this question: how do I forgive the person who hurt me?
The answer, says Ten Boom, is not that we summon the strength or reason ourselves into that posture: we say I can’t do it! But you, Christ, can cause my heart to grow in this way. You can make me say it and mean it. The only thing holding us back is our refusal to ask.
We forgive because we love Jesus. In every way, we want to be like the one who hung from the cross, dying a slow and agonizing death, yet who cried out, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
We love him, so we do as he says, and we do as he does. Nothing is more compelling. Withholding forgiveness is a prideful act, one which says, “I know better than God what this person deserves.”
How dare we presume to know best or to imagine that our unforgiveness leads to the powerful punishment which evil deserves or that we deserve something better than the sinner we’re pointing the finger at?
We only cut ourselves off from God this way, while a repentant prison guard can genuinely change (because God has that kind of power!) and be redeemed. Imagine trading places with the prison guard, for eternity, because of a hard heart.
Storms asserts that “true forgiveness is not satisfied with simply canceling the debt. It longs to love again.” Unforgiveness not only distorts our view of others, but it distorts our relationship with God.
The connection between forgiveness and love is compelling. “The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Leviticus 34:6-7).
Ultimately, our ability to love our enemies comes down to this: we realize that we were God’s enemies; we do not love God as well as he loves us: but he does not hold that against us.
If God viewed us the way we view those who hurt us, we would be doomed. His love and forgiveness cannot be separated, so neither can ours.
For further reading:
6 Beautiful Psalms That Teach Us about Forgiveness
What Does it Mean for Christians to Forgive?
What Does 'God Is Love' Look Like Today?
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