Forgiveness

I am half-ashamed to admit this but I have recently discovered that I, the one whose faith revolves around God's forgiveness of sin, had no idea what forgiveness actually meant. Until yesterday.

I was asked to forgive someone for something that hurt me a lot. Other than knowing that somewhere in the Bible, I am told to forgive even a recurring offense, I felt at a loss as to what that actually meant. What did they want me to do?

Jesus, dying on the cross, said "Father, forgive them." People say "oh, I forgive you." However important words are, they are just words. There has to be an action or an attitude that goes along with it. Luckily, I work in a bookstore. I have a wealth of books in arm's reach, and luckily, some were all about forgiveness. Here is what I discovered:

One author used an analogy of scales. When one person commits a sin against another person, the scales of justice are tipped. The offender now owes something to that person in order for the scales to come back into balance. By forgiving the offender, the other person is basically canceling the debt that is owed, or saying "I forfeit my right to see retribution."

As I sat there, figuring all this out for myself, I was amazed at the depth of it, that I had never grasped before. In case you were wondering, I did forgive. But forgiveness doesn't mean no consequences. A little kid can disobey his mother and walk into a street, and she can forgive him for the disobedience but he's still going to have consequences if he gets hit by a car. Please pray for me and the other person. Consequences suck.