In part 6 we were not quite finished with explaining what jubilee forgiveness is NOT. We pick up the discussion with the last two.
9. Jubilee forgiveness is not refusing to take the wrong seriously.
We do take the wrong seriously even while we fully forgive. If you have been seriously wounded and offended, and on this occasion, the offender is repentant and remorseful and offers a sincere apology to you, I am warning you it is the wrong thing to do—and I know many of us have done, myself included—it is the wrong thing to do to simply say: “Well, that’s okay; I know you didn’t mean it.”
No! It is not okay! We should not ameliorate the offense. We should not try to soften the evil, or consider the sin as inconsequential or meaningless. Sin does have consequences. It hurts people. It offends God. We do no favors to anyone, not to ourselves nor to the offender when we trivialize the offense.
Doing so will also tend to make it more difficult to attain the highest level of forgiveness because we will have this inner conflict knowing deep inside that it hurts like the dickens and yet our words have declared that “it’s okay.”
God does not trivialize any sins. Sin was serious enough to God that if only one tiny sin had ever been committed, it still would have required God the Father to send his Son to die on the cross, for without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.
So jubilee forgiveness is not refusing to take the wrong seriously. All sin is serious and we should never treat it as though it were of no consequence. Number ten is closely related.
10. Jubilee forgiveness does not mean that we pretend we are not hurt.
If your wife ran off with another man, or your husband with another woman, it is foolishness to kid yourself that you’re tough and you’re not going to allow that infidelity to hurt you. Of course, it hurts. Betrayal always hurts, whether it is betrayal in marriage, betrayal in friendship, in business, in politics, betrayal always hurts.
Have you been lied about? Your name dragged in the mud? Falsely accused, slandered? Libeled? Gossiped about? We have all experienced most of those things numerous times in our lives. How do you handle them? We will look at the positive side shortly.
For now, simply realize that to be a jubilee forgiver does not mean that you ignore your pain. We learn through our trials, or at least we should be. And so again, as in number nine, we do not refuse to face reality. The reality is that the pain is there and jubilee forgiveness is how to deal with it.
Now that we have examined what jubilee forgiveness is not, let us proceed to the positive side. Let us define on a practical level what jubilee forgiveness entails.
Some of these, of course, will correlate as the polar opposites of the negative aspects. So jubilee forgiveness is:
1. Being aware of what someone has done and still forgiving them.
Obviously, this has reference to what we discussed previously on the negative side—the denial coping mechanism that many people choose to use to deal with serious emotional wounding.
We deceive ourselves when we think that we are really forgiving people when in fact we are refusing to face the reality of what they did. But when we can fully acknowledge the extent of the wound and still forgive the offender entirely and completely, then we have entered the Christ-like dimension of forgiveness.
2. Jubilee forgiveness is choosing to keep no records of wrongs.
Where does it say that in the Bible? Please turn to 1 Corinthians 13. It is not readily visible in the King James version, but we need to analyze this a little deeper. This is Paul’s great treatise on true Christian love, agape love, the highest level of love. We could also equate it with jubilee love.
We have a somewhat different meaning today of the old English word charity and thus the modern versions correctly use the word love instead of charity in this passage, so make that substitution in your mind as we read the following.
1 Corinthians 13:4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
What does that last phrase mean? Love thinks no evil? It seems rather elliptical, meaning that something is left out, that it needs more to complete the thought. Other translations have recognized this and have translated it with slight variations on the idea that love keeps no record of wrongs.
Because this is so vitally important to us in this matter of forgiveness, I spent considerable time looking at the Greek and comparing what others have had to say about this.
Even going so far back as Calvin’s commentaries, I found an editor’s footnote (apparently made in the 1850s) which mentions what it calls a beautiful rendering that love does not “enter it into a notebook for future revenge.”
I could spend a half an hour getting into the technicalities of the Greek word logizomai (translated as “thinketh” in verse 5 in the KJV) to prove to you that the idea that love keeps no record of wrongs is correct, but I will refrain from doing that. In Strong’s Lexicon it is #G3049 logizomai {log-id'-zom-ahee}.
You should know, however, that it is the same word translated impute and its various forms. It appears 40 times in the New Testament. Friberg’s Greek Lexicon gives this among its varied meanings: (1) as an objective reckoning; (a) as keeping a mental record take into account, keep in mind, count (up) (1C 13.5); and then they offer this verse (1C 13.5) as an example of that usage.
Here are some other versions of that verse. Ferrar Fenton renders it “brooding over injury.” Bullinger has a footnote that gives this explanation: “reckons not the evil done to it.”
NIV 1 Corinthians 13:5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
NAU 1 Corinthians 13:5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
Finally, the Amplified Bible is sometimes rendered very beautifully. But sometimes they miss the mark. Here is verse 5 from the Amplified.
Love “is not conceited—arrogant and inflated with pride; it is not rude (unmannerly), and does not act unbecomingly. Love [God’s love in us] does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it—pays no attention to a suffered wrong.”
Read out loud those last two phrases again and notice the significant difference between them. We give grace to the translators who probably thought they were just re-phrasing the same idea. They said:[love] takes no account of the evil done to it—pays no attention to a suffered wrong.”
Well, we noted previously and strongly that jubilee forgiveness does not ignore or excuse or make light of a suffered wrong. Reality must be faced. So the phrase “pays no attention to a suffered wrong” is not valid.
But the other part captures the idea in that when we truly forgive someone, we do not keep a mental record or account of the wrongs done to us, because that means we are looking to even the score, to have revenge, and that is missing the mark completely when it comes to agape love and jubilee forgiveness.
Why did I keep a mental scorecard all those years that I hated my father? Because in my spiritually immature way of thinking, he had hurt me in numerous ways. And I remembered every one of them.
They were all written down indelibly in my mental accounting book. When I was 14, dad did this to me—big negative on that line in the book. When I was 15, dad did this to me—big negative. When I was 16, he did this—big negative. And so forth.
Why do we keep those mental record books? Why do we keep a record of wrongs? To sometime later throw all his offenses against me in his face and demand that he make up for them somehow. Or to prove to myself how superior to him I am in my own mind. Or to have them ready at a moment’s notice in case of an argument.
I have been using the real-life example of my dad and me, but obviously this applies to any people in any relationship. It happens so frequently between husband and wife.
We have this mental index-card filing system, where we have every single offense all recorded and catalogued—big offenses, little offenses, all offenses, there in the mind, ready at a moment’s notice to be brought center-stage if my husband or wife dares to criticize me about x, y or z.
A wife gets offended and she yells at her husband “I’ll remember that,” or “I’ll never forget what you did.” And you know what? She doesn’t forget. But what happens when we keep that record of wrongs, when we maintain that mental index-card system?
The initial hurt breeds anger and resentment, and it is retained and more is added to it as another hurt is felt, and there is more and more resentment, which sooner or later turns to bitterness. From there it can only get worse.
How many marriages could be healed very quickly if only both spouses would quit pointing the finger at the other and tear up those records of wrongs? Dump those mental index cards into the fire of love by coming to deal with wounds through total forgiveness, jubilee forgiveness—agape love.
But, you say, I don’t know if I could ever forgive him or her because I don’t feel like forgiving him. Well, if you are waiting to feel like forgiving, it will probably never happen. Forgiving is a choice, not a feeling.
It is a conscious mental decision to change your mind and attitude about someone or some painful event. It takes a will to do, and it requires the enabling grace of God to will to do it over and above our feelings. Do it.
Decide to forgive and the feelings will change, perhaps immediately, in an overwhelming sense of relief and a great burden lifted. Or perhaps the feelings will only change gradually over time. The point is, forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling. Just ask God to lead you to do it.
(To be continued.)
~END~
