On one level this question is almost too basic. The weakest,
newest Christians have heard “Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you.” Even raw pagans know we Christians believe that.
Thus if we try to deal with the question as written, the
correct answer is a single word: love. That doesn’t make for much of a
blog post.
How Does Love Behave?
The question underlying the question may be something more
like this: How should Christlike love express itself to people who have done me
injury? What does that kind of love look like in action?
For the purpose of the question, I’m going to use the word
“saved” here as shorthand to describe anyone who claims to be a disciple of Jesus Christ; anyone who calls
themselves Christian. Of course we know some who claim this are not real
believers, but for the purpose of discussing how we ought to behave toward them,
that does not really matter. If they are lying or self-deceived, God will sort
that out eventually. Our obligation is to give them the benefit of the doubt in
the meantime. We are not to act as judges of anyone’s eternal destiny,
though sometimes there are strong hints one way or another.
How love behaves depends very much on who it is you are
showing it to. Two questions are relevant here: Does this person claim to be a follower of Christ? and Is this person asking you for forgiveness?
The answer is going to be a little different depending on the circumstances.
It’s all love, but the way love may be appropriately expressed does not simply
depend on you. The other party has a say in it, just as God gives us a say in
how we respond to his love to us.
I can think of four possible scenarios:
1. The Person Who Hurt You is Both Unsaved and Unrepentant
If you are able to empathize at all with a person who is
destined for hell, who has no solid guiding principles in this world and who
has no hope beyond it, this should be one of the easier situations to deal with.
Unsaved people can be very hurtful, but a resolution is not always possible. It
may be that you and the person who hurt you do not even share a common standard
of acceptable behavior to which you can appeal. This is especially common in
multicultural societies. It is also not impossible you have offended him in some way
of which you are entirely unaware.
Ultimately, you cannot forgive someone who refuses to
acknowledge he has done anything wrong. God doesn’t, and he doesn’t expect us
to. You can pray for him and try to let go of any bitterness you have toward
him. That’s part of loving our enemies.
What is far, far more important than hurt feelings is the
salvation of the person who has offended you. Ask yourself this: Which would
make me a better testimony to this person: trying to achieve satisfaction for
my injury, or overlooking it? Or to put it another way, could pursuing my
grievance with this person furnish him with even the smallest excuse to dismiss
the claims of Christ?
If you are not sure, it’s better to overlook it.
1 Corinthians 13 teaches that love “bears” and “endures”. This may be one of those occasions on which love is best expressed by not doing
anything at all.
2. The Person Who Hurt You is Saved But Unrepentant
This is the Matthew 18 scenario. In the passage, the “brother
who offends you” refers to a fellow Jew, but I think we can reasonably
apply its principles to relationships between believers. The important thing is
that you and this person both claim to be subject to a standard of behavior
outside your own set of personal preferences. That gives you a way to solve the
problem.
Begin, as the Lord instructed, by telling the person he has offended you. “Go and tell him his fault.” This is not as silly as it sounds. He really may not know, and when he finds
out, he may well be eager to put it right. I can’t count the number of
times I’ve listened to a person complain about what someone else has done to
her only to discover this first step has never been taken. There
are people who genuinely prefer trumpeting a grievance to resolving a
problem. Being abused gets them attention, where fixing the problem doesn’t.
Matthew 18 provides a set of instructions for escalating the
situation if the sinning brother does not repent. The final remedy is to treat
the offending brother as a first century Jew would commonly have treated a
Gentile and a tax collector, which is to say, have nothing to do with such a person.
Sometimes we show love by what we will put up with, and sometimes
we show love by what we will not.
3. The Person Who Hurt You is Unsaved But Repentant
The unequivocal teaching of scripture is that when a person asks
for forgiveness, we forgive. It does not matter if we don’t believe them. It does not matter if we don’t
trust them. It does not matter if they did it before and will surely do it
again. We forgive as God has forgiven us. If this principle applies to my
brother, from whom I should surely expect a better standard of behavior
than an unsaved man, then it certainly applies to forgiving an individual who
does not know the Lord.
It may be that modeling forgiveness to an unsaved person who
asks for it can point them to seeking forgiveness from the One they have truly
offended. That’s love in action.
4. The Person Who Hurt You is Saved and Repentant
The very same principle applies with Christians: whenever
someone expresses repentance, we ought to forgive him. In Greek, the word
“forgive” is aphiÄ“mi,
which means to “let go” or “leave alone”. There is nothing remotely emotional
about the term. It is used of
legal transactions,
departures, and
electing to allow something undesirable to occur. Feelings like compassion may certainly
accompany forgiveness,
but they are not the same thing at all.
Biblical forgiveness is the declaration that a debt or
obligation has been satisfactorily discharged. It announces that the injured
party will not longer seek recompense for the injury done, either through
personal revenge, the court system, shunning, gossip, or any other method.
Forgiveness is an act of love, whether or not it makes you
feel better. Feelings, frankly, don’t enter into it. You may or may not get
a sense of closure. You may or may not be able to work up affection for the
person after the fact.
This and other misconceptions about Christian forgiveness
are discussed here, if you are interested in pursuing the question further.
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