I often get asked what the hardest thing is about being a Christian. It's a pretty common question and there are no shortage of “typical” answers. Over the years I have been asked this question numerous times and have asked it of others twice as many. I have heard answers relating to doubt and predestination and science and self control and sexuality. I have read selections from the libraries of books on the topics of suffering and love and historicity. I have heard countless sermons on the nature of God and grace. A lot of the time these things are raised by people as the things they wrestle with as Christians. I have a confession, these things are not the top of my list of struggles as a Christian, they are certainly not the hardest part of Christianity for me.
For me the single most challenging thing about walking with Jesus is forgiveness. This is a massive concept that challenges me on multiple fronts. First of all I constantly wrestle with the idea that after everything I have done that I could even be forgiven. I am fully aware of my sin and my unworthiness of such forgiveness. The second area I struggle with is possibly even more challenging, and that is the call to forgive others. I’m not great at this, just ask my friends. I’m prone to being petty and vindictive, I’ve been known to hold grudges and nurse my resentment or frustration until it becomes a torrent of wrath and anger. Obviously this isn’t a particularly good thing.
Let me break this down and address these two things separately because while they have some crossover they have distinct nuances which make the whole topic of forgiveness confusing to discuss as a whole. The ordering is deliberate, it is damn near impossible for a Christian to cultivate a forgiving nature without first comprehending their own forgiveness. The more judged someone feels the more they tend to judge, we all fall into that trap from time to time. We so often respond to judgment with judgement, human nature, it’s funny that way.
Problem the First: Personal Forgiveness.
I am not a good person. I know this, you know this. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think I’m a terrible person, but I’m not great. I don’t need to list all the various and creative ways I have been a jerk or done the wrong thing over the years, we all already know that human beings have a tendency towards immoral or unwise actions. We know what we should do and yet somehow we always seem to prefer to not do what we’re told.
Now, I fervently hope that after 21 years I would know myself better than anyone reading this post. For me it is this inside knowledge that makes it so difficult to wrap my head around the idea that God would forgive me at all, let alone by dying for me. I’m prone to being my own harshest critic, I look at my life and my history and know what goes on inside my head and I wonder “how could God who is perfect and righteous ever be able to forgive this…?”.
Turns out the idea of grace is also something I struggle with.
What a question to ask though!! I can confidently stand up in a room full of people and declare to them that their sins can be forgiven, just like that, and yet I struggle to comprehend my own forgiveness.
In the end there’s one verse I always come back to and that’s Romans 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. It reminds me that in spite of all that I am and all that I have done there is absolutely nothing that can separate a Christian from our God, and if nothing can separate us from Him then we can be assured that nothing can separate us from the forgiveness He gave at such great cost either. I know this, I cling to it dearly, and yet my mind is fickle. The words of the song, Come Thou Fount, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it” often come to mind, these words ring so true for so many of us and so even as my heart stands confident my mind plagues me with doubts. Just as Satan asks Eve in the Garden of Eden “Did God really say…” so too my mind asks my heart “Did God who is good and righteous and perfect really say he would forgive even that?”.
As Christians we are assured that through His death on the cross Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sins, that when God looks on us on that last day He will see us as holy and blameless, forgiven through Christ. It defies human reason for Him to do so. Lucky for us God isn’t human. Given the price paid to open the doors of Heaven and make forgiveness possible, who are we to presume to tell God that we aren’t forgivable
Honestly though, we all get to that point at some stage don’t we? We all hit a point where we are confronted by our sin and we go to pray and seek forgiveness and our internal monologue starts scoffing at us, laughing at our knowledge that after acting so thoroughly against God we would get any benefit from prayer.
This is a serious problem!! When we are confronted with our sin and the need for forgiveness is when we most need to draw near to our forgiver. When we allow ourselves to believe that God has or could give up on us we open the doors for the deceiver to slip in and chip away at our faith. Left unchecked this attitude destroys faith. Just ask anyone in ministry, they see it happen all the time. I have been caught in this snare several times and it’s not until someone confronts me and blatantly tells me to tell Satan to get out of my head that I even realise how far I’ve allowed myself to drift. This isn’t to say that Satan has the power to take away our faith, he can use our sinfulness to draw us to despair but he cannot in and of himself destroy his faith. The first step in a Christian’s descent to spiritual despair is allowing him to deceive us into thinking that our sinfulness is somehow unforgivable or more deserving of divine punishment than it actually is.
The other challenge I find in accepting that I have been forgiven is simple. Arrogance. I screw up and decide I’m not good worthy of God. As though I somehow have the power, right or authority to tell God who is and isn’t worthy of His forgiveness. Jesus died on the cross for me and here I am telling God “I made a boo boo, Jesus blood can’t cover this, thanks for sending him, you tried, points for effort, better luck making me forgiven next time you send a saviour”. I mean seriously firstly it’s petulant and secondly I am patently not God. This is a good thing! How arrogant and prideful mankind is to presume that our forgiveness or relationship with God is hinged on how we think we’re going. The ENTIRE Old Testament is one long example of God’s persistence and a wonderful illustration that on our own we have absolutely no chance of being “good enough” for God. Somehow in spite of this we still seem to end up thinking that how we feel about ourselves or what we’ve done matters more to God than what He has done.
Problem the Second: Other People
The Bible and therefore God is pretty big on the whole forgiveness thing. Not just forgiveness for us but forgiveness of others by us. Examples of this include Matthew 6:14, Ephesians 4:31-32 and Colossians 13:3 which all speak of the need for Christians to forgive both each other and those outside the faith. Many of the statements on forgiveness are pretty blanket in their application.
Again and again Scripture commands us to forgive, The Lord’s Prayer specifically speaks about not just our forgiveness and need for forgiveness by God but our need to be forgiving of each other. In fact it draws some pretty tight links between the two. We tend to overlook this in our eagerness to hold grudges and find fault but it’s SO important.
For Christians, a driving factor in our forgiveness of wrongs against us is the knowledge and understanding that we have done just as bad if not worse things, that we deserve a worse fate than we are busily wishing on those we feel wronged by and yet are spared and forgiven by God. The more we understand this the easier it is to develop a forgiving nature. The more insecure about our forgiveness the harder it is for us to be forgiving. The more judged we feel the more judging we are.
Forgiveness is hard. Our pride, anger sense of moral superiority and ego all get in the way, as does our tendency to overreact to situations. So many factors make forgiving people hard and yet that’s what God calls us to do. Jesus goes so far as to say in the famous Sermon on the Mount “You have heard it said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist the evil man [who injures you]; but if anyone strikes you on the right jaw or cheek, turn to him the other on too. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your undershirt (tunic), let him have your coat also. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two [miles]” (Matthew 5:38-41)
This clearly goes beyond mere grudging acceptance of an apology. Jesus commands us to be gracious and generous to those who wrong us, not to merely forgive but to show them love. This is so important that Jesus commands elsewhere in the New Testament that if someone comes before God to make an offering and has resentment or anger towards a brother they should leave their offering and go seek reconciliation then make their offering. Jesus seems to be saying that being forgiving is more important than the offering.
Rather than responding to ill will or wrong actions against us with resistance and violence jesus commands us to peacefully submit to those who would do us wrong. Why? Because in doing so we show people the reality of the God whose servants would act in such a way. The clearest example of this is Christ himself praying for God’s forgiveness of his crucifiers as they jeer, mock, abuse and kill him on the Cross.
What does this all mean?
It means that as much as we might want to hold a grudge against someone, we are called to surrender our pride, anger and hurt to God. As much as we might want to hold a grudge against ourselves we are called to hand our self pity and arrogance over to God. We are called to forgive those who have wronged us even if they do not ask for it. We are called to accept our own forgiveness even when we feel undeserving.
It’s a hard thing to so. It’s a hard thing for me to do.
It’s the hardest part about being a Christian for me, my biggest struggle.
But...Far out it’s important
Love as you have been loved.
Forgive as you have been forgiven.
“Never return evil for evil or insult for insult (scolding, tongue-lashing, berating), but on the contrary blessing [praying for their welfare, happiness and protection, and truly pitying and loving them]. For know that to this you have been called, that you may yourselves inherit a blessing [from God- that you may obtain a blessing as heirs, bringing welfare and happiness and protection].”
1 Peter 3:9
