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Conditional Forgiveness - The Only True Forgivenes

"Forgiveness is obtained through apologizing."

"The best thing you can do is forgive and forget."

"You aren't forgiven until you feel forgiven."

"Even if someone hasn't asked to be forgiven, you can still forgive them."

“It is your responsibility to forgive everyone who wrongs you.”

These statements represent popular misconceptions about what it means to forgive. Our culture, both secular and Christian, has deeply drank of unbiblical pop psychology and Rogerian notions about forgiveness. Because our relationships are not built upon genuine love, truth, and reconciliation, they too often devolve into something superficial in nature, marked by denial and avoidance and consistently promoting carnality in wrongdoers and unresolved pain and injustice in the innocent party. All of this is avoidable if we are willing to commit to a Biblical view and practice of forgiveness.

God’s Forgiveness

God is, of course, our pattern for all of human behavior. We are to be perfect just as God the Father is perfect (Matt. 5:48). We are to imitate the Lord Jesus Christ, so rigidly our example that we are to “follow His steps” (I Pet. 2:21) and the whole process of sanctification is equated with being “conformed to His image” (Rom. 8:29-30). Even in the matter of extending forgiveness to others, the forgiveness of God is held up as that which we are to imitate. We are told that we are to forgive others “even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32). We are specifically told to imitate the forgiveness of Christ (Col. 3:13).

God’s forgiveness of us is characterized as loosing something – letting it go, or completely eliminating a debt (Matt. 18:27, 32, Luke 7:41-50). When man is forgiven, his sin is completely covered and is therefore no longer viewable by God (Ps. 32:1, Ps. 85:2, Isa. 44:22). God puts so much psychological, spiritual and cosmic space between us and the sins that we are forgiven of that it can be likened to the endless distance between east and west (Ps. 103:10-13). God’s forgiveness is unlimited in scope, as well, covering all sins (Ps. 103:3, I Jn. 1:9, but see the exception, Matt. 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-30, Luke 12:10), and equally available to all men (II Pet. 3:9).

The goal of this forgiveness is not merely the psychological health of the forgiver, as it is often presented among progenitors of pop psychology today, nor is it the rehabilitation of the wrongdoer. Rather, the goal of God’s forgiveness of man is the reconciliation of man to him, the restoration of the relationship marred by man’s sin (Act. 26:18, Eph. 1:7-11, Col. 1:13-22, II Pet. 3:9). Further, this reconciliation does not take place within the context of a mere psychological trick by which God simply awakens one day and decides to ignore the mass of offenses committed by man (Ex. 34:7, Num. 14:18), but rather God’s restoration of man takes place within the context of both mercy and justice. God does not overlook sin based merely on man’s desire to have his sins forgiven. Instead, God fully and completely judges sin, and based on the demonstration of wrath and purging of guilt which took place in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross (called propitiation in Rom. 3:24-26), both mercy and judgment are possible. God’s economy that sin must be judged is preserved while God’s mercy is given an avenue through which to operate because Jesus paid for sin on the cross. In a very real sense, it can be said that God’s justice and mercy kissed at the cross.

All genuine forgiveness is based on the fact that sin has already been judged in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ (Matt. 26:28, Acts 2:38, Acts 10:43, Acts 13:38, Eph. 1:7, Heb. 9:22, I Jn. 2:12). However, though Christ is the ground of all forgiveness of sin, and such forgiveness is said to be “freely” given, there are conditions to receiving this forgiveness, such as faith (Rom. 3:24-26).

This is an important principle: while God’s love is unconditional, His forgiveness of sin is conditional. God’s love is constant and universal in that He is good toward all men, regardless of their moral character (Matt. 5:45, Luke 6:35), He desires and has made it possible for all men to be saved (II Pet. 3:9), and He is always “ready to forgive” (Ps. 86:5). But God’s forgiveness, while certainly conceptually related to and motivated by His love, is not extended universally as His love is.

In the Old Testament, Joshua makes clear that not just anyone can obtain God’s forgiveness of sins. Because God is holy and jealous, those who forsake Him or serve idols are not the recipients of His forgiveness (Jos. 24:19-21). Repentance, or “returning from one’s evil way,” is further presented as a prerequisite for obtaining forgiveness (Jer. 36:3, cf. Ps. 51, esp. vv. 3, 16-17). The New Testament data agrees. The woman who received forgiveness consequent to her anointing and kissing the Lord’s feet is stated to have exercised faith in him, and her sins are forgiven (Luke 7:40-50). But it is also apparent that she was motivated by godly sorrow for her own sins (Luke 7:44-47), which Paul in another place says motivates one to repentance (II Cor. 7:9-10). Repentance and forgiveness of sins are linked likewise in Peter’s sermons (Acts 2:38, Acts 5:31, Acts 8:22). So repentance, though precept and example, are considered to be a prerequisite, or condition, of receiving forgiveness from God in both testaments.

This principle is seen most clearly in Biblical data which indicates that the reception of forgiveness from God is never a one-sided affair. As stated above, God does not merely awaken and decide to arbitrarily forgive – rather, there is some attitude of man which provokes God’s forgiveness (whether this attitude is, itself, a work of God is beyond the scope of this article). In his prayer of dedication for the temple, Solomon prays numerous times that, if Israel “supplicates,” “turns again to thee,” “turns from its sin,” that God would “hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy people” (I Kings 8:30-40, II Chron. 6:21-39). David, rejoicing in the forgiveness which he received from God, nevertheless noted that he had already acknowledged his sin and confessed his transgressions (Ps. 32:5). In the New Testament, John the Baptist’s ministry was characterized as preaching a baptism “of repentance” for the forgiveness of sin (Mark 1:4, Luke 3:3). The Great Commission, according to Luke, is that the disciples would busy themselves preaching “repentance and remission of sins… among all nations” (Luke 24:47). Christ’s commissioning of Paul inextricably links repentance and forgiveness: when Paul’s hearers are turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God” they are also said to receive God’s forgiveness (Acts 26:18, cf. Acts 5:31). While it is God’s will that all men be saved, nevertheless only those who actually “come to repentance” will not perish (II Pet. 3:9). Finally, forgiveness from God is directly conditioned upon confession of sin to him, where the conditional clause, “If we confess our sins” is logically prior to forgiveness in I John 1:9. This data plainly shows that forgiveness is available from God, but it is not a unilateral affair. Forgiveness is extended by God to those who ask for forgiveness, confess their sins, repent of their sins, or mentally change the direction of their lives. Forgiveness is conditional, then, as a bare minimum, on acknowledgement of wrongdoing and a change of orientation away from that sin.

Man’s Forgiveness

Since Christ is our example, and we are to mimic the Father in moral character, there are large swaths of the above data that present absolutely no problem for the believer, and would likely not generate any controversy among sincere believers. Like God’s forgiveness of man, our forgiveness of each other is based on the healing and redeeming work of Jesus Christ (II Cor. 2:10). Like God’s forgiveness, our forgiveness should be universally extended to all men, for any sin, and a potentially innumerable number of times (Matt. 18:21-22, Luke 17:4).

However, there is much dissension in the current culture as to whether forgiveness is conditional or unconditional, and what its purposes are. On the Oprah Winfrey website, “spiritual counselor” Gary Zukav maintains,

“When You Don't Forgive… [i]t's like wearing dark sunglasses that distort everything you see. You also want everyone else to see through these glasses. Forgiveness is taking those glasses off. Not forgiving is like carrying heavy suitcases full of books through an airport. Forgiving is putting the suitcases down and walking away without them. It is lightening up. It is being able to enjoy your life, laugh again, and see the beauty in others. When you cannot forgive yourself, you cannot forgive others. When you cannot forgive others, you cannot forgive yourself.”

Forgiveness, then, is primarily a matter of personal psychological health and self-fulfillment.

“In his book, Five Steps to Forgiveness, clinical psychologist Everett Worthington Jr. offers a five-step process he calls REACH. First, recall the hurt. Then empathize and try to understand the act from the perpetrator's point of view. Be altruistic by recalling a time in your life when you were forgiven. Commit to putting your forgiveness into words. You can do this either in a letter to the person you're forgiving or in your journal. Finally, try to hold on to the forgiveness. Don't dwell on your anger, hurt, and desire for vengeance.”

In this advice, forgiveness is not only initiated by the forgiver, but is also completed merely by the offended party’s expression of it. Yet note that it is anticipated that an attempt to forgive in such a way might be difficult to “hold on to.” And such erroneous notions of forgiveness are not limited to secular thinking, but are manifested in professing Christians as well. Denise George, writing for christianitytoday.com, says

“You've acknowledged the hurt and rightly blamed the offender. Now you're ready to make the willful decision to "cancel the debt" your offender owes you. Find a quiet place to be alone and ask the Lord's help in forgiving the person who hurt you…. After you've prayed and while you're still alone, speak aloud your decision to forgive: ‘(Name of offender), I've chosen to forgive you for hurting me; I've decided to cancel the debt you owe me.’ You've now embarked on the process of forgiving the person who hurt you.”

Note how these conceptions of what it means for us to forgive one another differ from the forgiveness offered to man by God. The “forgiveness” offered in the above passages 1) is offered irrespective of the offender asking for it, 2) is offered for the psychological health of the offended, with no necessary connection to the restoration of a marred relationship, and 3) is a unilateral religious or emotional exercise that does not require effective communication or admission of wrongdoing by another person.

Is this a scriptural view of forgiveness? To say the least, it is not. To say the most, it is merely so much pop psychology. Forgiveness is not something that we do for ourselves, in order to foster psychological health or to contribute to a positive self-image. It has absolutely nothing to do with “lightening up” or “enjoying life and laughing again.” Forgiveness, from a Biblical perspective, is still intended to be a means of reconciliation between two persons whose relationship has been marred (Matt. 18:15-18, Luke 17:3-4). We are to “rebuke” our brother for his wrongdoing (Luke 17:3-4), but only so that we might “gain [our] brother” again (Matt. 18:15-18). So important is reconciliation with other people, in fact, that it takes precedence over acts of worship in the ethical hierarchy presented in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:23-24). In fact, so important is it for us to maintain healthy relationships with others that Christ constantly states that our reception of forgiveness from God is in some way contingent or coordinate with the forgiveness that we extend to others (Matt. 6:12-15, Mark 11:25-26, Luke 6:37, Luke 11:4).

Perhaps the most stark instance in which a Biblical view of human forgiveness departs from that which has become dominant in both the secular and Christian cultures today, however, is that in order for Biblical forgiveness to be complete, it must be two-sided. Another example of the idea that forgiveness can be unilateral is appropriate here, if only to indicate how pervasive is the idea.

“Forgiveness… means that we change old patterns of beliefs and actions that are driven by our bitterness. As we let go of grudges, we’ll no longer define our lives by how we’ve been hurt…. Forgiveness can be very challenging. It may be particularly hard to forgive someone who doesn’t admit wrong or doesn’t speak of their sorrow. Keep in mind that the key benefits of forgiveness are for you.”

Note that here, forgiveness is merely a change of attitude in the one doing the forgiving, and its primary purpose is psychological. There is no need to have repentance on the part of the wrongdoer, because “the key benefits of forgiveness are for you.”

Nothing could be further from the Biblical model. There must be both a human confessor and a human forgiver in order for forgiveness to be complete. Human forgiveness, then, is conditional, just as is Divine forgiveness. In the same way that God does not indiscriminately forgive those who do not ask for His forgiveness, the process of forgiveness for humans is necessarily frustrated and incomplete without repentance (directed at the offended, not at God) on the part of the wrongdoer.

The primary passages on one human’s forgiveness of another in the New Testament all occur in the Gospels, and all are couched in the words of Jesus Christ himself. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus demonstrates that true righteousness goes far beyond merely restraining one’s self from killing and rather demands that one neither be angry without cause nor unnecessarily deprecate his brother (Matt. 5:21-22). Flowing from these principles, Jesus demands that if we come to worship (“bring thy gift to the altar”) and prior to presenting our gift, realize that there is some matter of offense (the Greek term is tij, literally “anything” great or small) that is unresolved between ourselves and our brother (a matter caused by us, making us the offender, or guilty party), that we are to leave the act of worship and seek to be immediately reconciled to our brother (Matt. 5:23-24). In this instance, reconciliation with our brother is placed on a higher religious plane (not merely ethical) than even the worship of the Almighty.

Later in the same Gospel, Jesus makes plain that reconciliation is so important that one church member’s failure to be reconciled to his brother (in this instance, it is the failure of the offended, theoretically innocent, party to be reconciled), it is sufficient grounds for removing him from the local church and treating him as “a heathen man and a publican.” Reconciliation of broken or marred relationships between believers is of such high ethical importance that it cannot merely be a matter left to the two parties to sort out – if in an instance an attempt at reconciliation does not seem to “work,” the elders of the church and eventually the church itself should be involved (Matt. 18:16-17). Notice that in this process, there is no indication that forgiveness and reconciliation is something that is unilateral. One person cannot accomplish this alone by simply releasing negative feelings or “changing old beliefs and patterns and actions that are driven by our bitterness.”

Following this mandate, the Apostles indicate that they understood him to be referring to the process of forgiveness in Matt. 18:15-19 by asking, “How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” (Matt. 18:21) Jesus indicates that our forgiveness of one another must be universal in scope (“seventy times seven times”, v. 22) and illustrates the matter with a parable. A king, having a servant indebted to him, demanded his pay, and when the servant was unable to make right his debt, demanded that he, his family, and all of his possessions be sold against the debt. The servant falls to his knees and begs for mercy – and the king responds by extending full forgiveness of the debt. Later, this same servant spotted a fellowservant who owed him money and demanded that it be paid in full. The fellowservant, having nothing to pay, also fell down and begged for mercy. The servant whose great debt had been forgiven by the king, hearing nothing of it, had his fellowservant imprisoned till the full debt was paid. The king, later finding out about this transaction, had the original servant delivered to torturers, illustrating the principle that if we do not forgive our fellowman, God Himself will not forgive us (Matt. 18:23-35).

Finally, in Luke 17:3-4, Jesus plainly says that if someone trespasses (the Greek term is ‘amartanw, the most generic New Testament word for “sin”) against us, we are to approach him personally and “rebuke” him for his sin. We are to do so in an attempt to offer forgiveness to him, but we are told to forgive him conditionally, only if he repents (v. 3). And if he continues to offend, we are to forgive him, but again with the condition – only if he repents (v. 4).

Note that in each of the above situations, forgiveness is to be readily and universally extended. However, in each instance there is the need for a personal confrontation between the two principals – the offender and the offended – prior to the extending of forgiveness. Now, one must ask, if forgiveness is intended to merely foster personal psychological wellbeing or if it may be accomplished by simply releasing bitterness or other negative feelings, why in the world does Christ demand, by both precept and principle, that we confront the brother?
In Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus says, “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault… [and] if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.” Notice the logical progress: offense is followed by confrontation, and reconciliation is conditional upon if my brother hears me. In Matthew 18:21-35, one servant fell down and begged “have patience with me,” after which forgiveness was extended. Then the fellowservant falls down and begs “have patience with me,” given which, the king scolds the original servant with “Shouldest thou not also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?” The logical progression is, once again: offense followed by confrontation, and reconciliation extended upon a request for mercy.

In Matthew 5:23-24, I realize that I have harmed my brother in anything, and Jesus tells me that reconciliation with him takes precedence over any act of worship. I am to “Leave there my gift before the altar, and go… be reconciled to my brother,” and only then return to worship. The logical progression is repeated: offense is followed by confession (since I am the one who offended), and reconciliation is to follow this confession. Finally, in Luke 17:3-4, should my brother sin against me, I am to personally rebuke him and then be reconciled. Once again, the process of forgiveness is that following an offense is a confrontation, but reconciliation is to follow the confrontation.

The snake oil of modern pop psychology’s “forgiveness” ultimately condones and coddles sin while leaving relationships forever marred. As in the judgment of our own sin on the cross, human wrongs can only be fully dealt with when mercy and justice are each satisfied. Therefore, confrontation of the offender prior to forgiveness is a necessary aspect of accurately imitating the divine forgiveness of which we are the recipients. Conditional forgiveness leads to the achievement of full spiritual maturity in both the offender and the offended. The offender knows that his sin has not been ignored, but rather has been judged. He has the opportunity to participate in the judgment of his own wrong, which is a necessary part of avoiding God’s greater chastisement of our sin (I Cor. 11:31-32). He is also motivated to turn away from destructive personal behavior patterns that he now must face as being not only wrong, but hurtful to others and shameful to himself. That true forgiveness is conditional also motivates both parties to always be willing to reconcile, leading to the dominance of both love and peace in the church.