The Unconditional Obligation of Forgiveness

If there is one thing that the Gospel makes abundantly clear, it is our obligation to forgive others. Christ warns us plainly in the Sermon on the Mount, "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matt. 6:14-15), and "Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven" (Luke 6:37). Christians are to be people who, in the spirit of Christ, "turn the other cheek" (Matt. 5:39), remembering that Christ, even as He was being crucified, called out, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).

We are warned sternly that failure to forgive will result in our own condemnation, as the parable says,  "Then his lord summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' (Matt. 18:32-33). Our own forgiveness is entirely contingent upon our own willingness to forgive, and this is directly related to our Lord's own munificence in forgiving us. "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us" says the Lord's Prayer. St. Paul, too, says, "Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive" (Col. 3:13). In the parable of the wicked servant, after the hard-hearted servant is cast into jail, Jesus says, "So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart" (Matt. 18:35)

This is incredibly fundamental, such that I am actually unaware of any Christian sect that does not affirm the obligation of Christians to forgive those who sin against them. It is, therefore, shocking to me the number of times that I have seen Christians blatantly refuse to forgive. How many times in my life I have sincerely and contritely told someone "I'm sorry" only to hear them say, "Okay." How many times I see people nurturing grudges and going out of their way to keep them hot; how many times I have heard Christians plainly tell me, "I can't forgive him." It should be appalling to anyone with Christian sensibilities.

When someone comes to you and says they are sorry, the appropriate response is, "I forgive you." If someone abases themself even further and says, "Will you forgive me?" the only correct answer is yes. And this is where the issue gets tricky, because people sometimes think the obligation to forgive is conditional—that is, they will say, "I will forgive such-and-such when they are truly sorry." They make their own exercise of forgiveness contingent upon the contrition of the one who has offended them. This essentially shifts the burden of forgiveness to the offender; "I would forgive you if you were sufficiently contrite." Besides being unbiblical (nowhere do we see the Gospel tether forgiveness to the actions of the penitent), this approach is too subjective. How do we decide when the offender is sufficiently sorry? What if he apologizes to the best of his ability and strives to make amends but we, in the hardness of our hearts, are still unsatisfied? What level of abasement and sorrow is sufficient? By this criteria, we could justify ourselves withholding forgiveness forever just because we don't judge the offender penitent enough. It is akin to saying, "I will forgive you when I feel like it." But the simplest argument against this point is simply this: we are to forgive as Christ forgave us, and Christ died for us and forgave us while we were yet sinners (cf. Rom. 5:8, Luke 23:34). We are to do no less.

Another objection people make against forgiving has to do with the sincerity of the act itself. We are obligated to forgive one another "from the heart" (cf. Matt. 18:35). That is, the act of forgiveness must be sincere, not an empty formality done under religious pretext. As C.S. Lewis says in The Four Loves,  "To say to one who expects a renewal of Affection, Friendship, or Eros, ‘I forgive you as a Christian’ is merely a way of continuing the quarrel. Those who say it are of course lying." [1] Forgiveness must be entirely sincere.

All well and good, but this presents us with a dilemma: what if we find ourselves unable to forgive "from the heart"? If forgiveness must be from the heart, then it cannot simply be turned on and off like a lightswitch. It is not as simple as saying yes or no; it is an entire volitional movement that has complex emotions behind it. Generally it takes time to process the act of forgiveness, at least if we intend it to be sincere. Our timeline for forgiveness may not align with the offender's penitence. We thus have situations where one who has offended comes to us penitent and apologetic, but we feel like we are not at a place where forgiveness can be proferred. This is not due to any hardness of heart, but simply to the fact that we do not feel we have forgiven them and hence we worry that our forgiveness may not be sincere—that it has not come "from the heart." And therefore we withhold granting forgiveness, in the thought that we will forgive them later when we are more emotionally invested in the act.

While I do understand and sympathize with this concern, I still believe it to be an incorrect approach. We misunderstand the declaration of forgiveness if we consider it only as a profession of a fact, of something already completed. While this might have been the case for our Divine Lord when He declared His forgivenes from the cross, such is seldom the case with concupiscent men. With us, our declaring something is often an imperfect act. It is something that must be worked for. Speaking our forgiveness is an integral part of this. The same act by which we declare it is so gives us the impetus to make it so. 

To use an example: in the Gospel, the father of the demoniac says to Jesus, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24). On its face, this is quite an extraordinary statement. The man professes belief while simultaneously admitting he lacks it. Are not these two phrases contradictory? Certainly not, for belief—like forgiveness and many other human acts—can be more or less perfect. "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief" means, "Lord, I have the kernel of belief, but grant that I may believe more devoutly. I know I should trust you, but my trust is imperfect; grant that it may be perfected. I know in my mind that you can do all things; help that I may not only know it in my mind but be convinced of it in my heart." 

Such statements as these are not only declarative but performative. They declare what exists in a very imperfect way, while simultaneously professing our desire that it should be perfected. When we repeat our baptismal vows and say, "I reject Satan," we do not mean that we have definitively repudiated sin in the past and have no need of any further repudiation; rather, we are reaffirming our commitment to a continual process. We declare what we intend, and by doing so, solidify our resolution to that effect with the help of God's grace. 

Understanding this, we can see why it would be foolish to, for example, refuse to recite the Creed on Sunday because our faith is wavering—or refuse to renew our baptismal vows because we have not perfectly rejected sin, or refuse to say "I love you" because our love is marred by struggle. Similarly, it would be wrong to refuse a declaration of forgiveness because we aren't sure if we "really mean it." Merely speaking the words is performative; the words help bring into being what we desire. If we don't truly feel forgiving, saying the words is the first step towards attaining that goal. Like the man who says, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief," our, "I forgive you" often means, "I choose the path of forgiveness—even if it is imperfect, even if I am still angry, even if I still have work to do, I choose to forgive. And that path begins today, right here."

And that is sincerity. That is from the heart.

So, I beg of you, forgive freely, forgive generously, and forgive quickly. 

NOTES

[1] C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Harper Collins: San Francisco, 2017), 168-69