Learning to Be Forgiven
When it comes to forgiveness my church taught two things repeatedly:
1 - Jesus forgives you
2 - Forgive others (even if it sucks)
Grace isn’t logical. Forgiveness is hard. But (after MUCH prayer) I find giving forgiveness fairly simple. Giving forgiveness, as you probably have heard it preached, is liberating. It isn’t an admission of guilt, but rather this chance to wipe the slate clean in that relationship.
On the flip side there is being forgiven.
When it comes to love languages my giving and receiving are very different. My giving love language is gift-giving. I love to pick up little things when I’m out shopping for friends “just because.” I make cards, write little notes, leave stickies on my co-workers desks or on the mirror for my old roommate. But I hate, with a passion, receiving gifts!
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Being forgiven is the first step of Discipleship with Christ. We must admit our guilt and receive His grace.
I remember being at a small church service in college. The speaker was talking about Jesus hanging on the cross. Then she asked us to close our eyes and really think about him hanging there. She read Romans 3:24, where Paul writes that Jesus has deemed us “not guilty.”
Not Guilty.
As I sat and reflected on the cross, all I could feel was guilt, itself. And I uttered four words to God, “It should’ve been me.”
Yes, it “should” have been us on the cross. It “should” have been our death sentence. It “should” have been our execution. But it wasn’t.
Grace hung on our cross for forgiveness. Grace took our death sentence for forgiveness. Grace was executed for forgiveness.
Romans 8 declares that nothing can change that. Nothing can change the Love it took to give that kind of Grace.
So how do we receive that Grace? Honestly, how do we receive any kind of grace?
Most of my life I’ve said “sorry” and walked away from a friend forgiving me feeling that same guilt. They told me it was okay, that there were no hard feelings or they “didn’t take it that way.” Yet there is guilt - maybe stronger than BEFORE I apologized.
This is the side of forgiveness we never talk about.
We know we are forgiven, and because of that we must forgive others. But how do we receive grace? How do we cope with being forgiven?
Grace isn’t logical - to give or receive.
I think that my reluctance to receive grace comes from 2 places.
The first place is fear of repeated failure.
I fear failure, in general. When I fail at work or in life, I beat myself up. When the situation arises again, I taunt myself saying, “Don’t mess up. Don’t do what you did before.”
Grace wipes the slate clean. God hopes we learn from our repentance, but offers grace if we fall again. And the truth is: we will. But for me that fear of repeated failure creeps up and lies to me about the power of Grace and the “conditions” of Grace, when Grace is powerful and unconditional.
The second place is comes from the lies of the first: doubting my eligibility.
Rewind back to the guilt of thinking about Jesus on the cross and the guilt of saying “sorry”. The guilt consumes me.
I don’t deserve His grace. I don’t deserve grace from a friend. I’m not worthy of that Grace.
Ann Voskamp convicts those lies when she writes this:
Isn’t the fear that I am not enough really the lie that God isn’t enough? If every belittling of self is a belittling of God, a kind of blaspheming of God’s sufficiency and enoughness, then maybe...maybe we don’t really have faith until we have faith that God loves us right now more than we could ever dream of loving ourselves.
This all takes us back to step one:
Being forgiven is the first step of Discipleship with Christ. We must admit our guilt and receive His grace.
Step one takes faith. And faith leads us into Discipleship, then faith is how we learn to be forgiven.
It’s not a step-by-step how-to guide to being forgiven, but God isn’t really into that anyways. All it takes is faith that you are worthy enough to be forgiven - by both God and people.
