The acrimony between spouses during a divorce can bring some of the most profound anguish a man or woman can experience. But I know the antidote for that anguish. It’s called forgiveness.
Forgiving everyone responsible for a failed marriage, including yourself, may not restore your relationship with your former spouse to what it was. It is unlikely to ease your financial situation. And it won’t change the way people respond to you as a newly single man or woman. But it will give you the peace of God, which passes understanding. Even if it weren’t a biblical command, that would be reason enough to forgive.
And as you may know, forgiveness is a biblical command. The Lord Jesus Christ thought enough of it to include it in a model prayer as part of his first public teaching, which we call the Sermon on the Mount:
And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they thinkthat they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us fromevil (Matthew 6:7-13, emphasis added).
Part of the problem with memorizing Scripture, as many of us have done with the Lord’s Prayer is that the meaning of God’s Word can be skimmed over in our minds. Jesus gave us a model for prayer, and it prominently includes forgiveness! Therefore, it’s worth our time to understand what that’s all about.
I can almost see hands going up all across the hillside as Jesus spoke those words. “Uh, rabbi? Do you really mean to say that God will only forgive us to the extent that we forgive others? Seriously?! Do you have any idea what I’ve been through, this week alone? I might be able to pray that some of the time, but right now I’m just not feeling it.”
As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what Jesus meant, and he emphasized it in his very next breath: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).
You read that right. God’s forgiveness of us is conditional upon our forgiveness of others. I’ve looked, and there’s no wiggle room there! Jesus stays on the theme of forgiveness in this passage from Matthew 18:
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me,and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, "I do not say to youseven times, but seventy times seven.
Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settleaccounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him t"he debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owehim a hundred denarii and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, 'Pay what you owe.' So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I willpay you.' He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and theywent and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart" (Matthew 18:21-35).
We don’t see in Scripture any place where Peter attempted to catch Jesus in a religious contradiction as the Pharisees did, but he might have felt a little smug as he approached Jesus with his initial question. Jewish teaching at the time held that an individual was required to forgive another three times for a specific offense, but no more. Peter might have thought that forgiving seven times was above and beyond the call of duty. But Jesus tells him to forgive not seven times, but 490.
I don’t know if Jesus meant 490 offenses literally. Can you imagine Peter getting out a notebook and saying, “Sorry, Murray, but that’s the 491st time I have caught you sinning against me, and I no longer have to forgive you? Prepare for the wrath of my retribution!” No, the idea seems to be that when someone offends you, you are to forgive him or her, no questions asked, always. And that can be a frustrating truth for someone who has been through a divorce.
Then Jesus tells a story that compares our debt to God with the debts we owe to each other. The servant owed the king 10,000 talents—an unimaginable amount of money, especially in relation to a servant’s income. The servant begged for the ability to pay the master back, which would have been an impossible task, and the king forgave the debt entirely.
I have seen people dance before the Lord in front of a church full of people because they have had debts of a few hundred dollars forgiven. Can you imagine the servant’s joy at being released from his debt? It was more than he could have possibly repaid the king.
But the servant in Jesus’s parable didn’t maintain his joyful attitude for long. He saw a fellow servant who owed him 100 days’ pay—a significant amount of money, but a tiny debt in comparison to the one the servant had just been forgiven. And yet the servant’s heart was hardened. He had his debtor jailed. The king’s response was swift and harsh because the servant hadn’t learned that when you are forgiven much, you are expected to be forgiving to others.
Beloved, you and I have been forgiven much. We deserve a lifetime of separation from God. But instead, we are given the promise of a lifetime with Him when we pass from this world, simply by exchanging our life for His. How can we not forgive others for their sins against us?
The obvious answer is, we can’t. Refusing to forgive others sullies our witness, and it can cause bitterness to rise up in us, causing actual physical symptoms. It’s just not worth it! It’s more than likely you have some experience in forgiving others—perhaps more than you would like—and you want to know whether something that can be so difficult can be so necessary.
I am not here to tell you forgiveness is easy. It’s not. Specifically, depending on what has happened in your marriage, forgiving your former spouse can be the hardest thing you’ll ever do. It almost certainly will be something you don’t want to do. You may need to maintain an ongoing relationship with your former spouse, the children you have together, your former in-laws or someone else. If that’s the case you’ll have constant reminders of your former marriage; it won’t be something you can ever really move past.
But I am here to tell you: the Bible teaches that forgiveness is required in every circumstance if you want God to forgive your sin. So we’d better understand how to do it. I want to dispel some popular myths about forgiveness:
Forgiving someone doesn’t mean that what happened to you was OK. It wasn’t, and isn’t.
Forgiving someone doesn’t mean that your relationship must be restored to what it was before you were harmed. That does happen, but it’s rare in my experience. Far more often, for your own mental and emotional health, you’re better off not having further relationships with the offender. Know, however, that if you and your former spouse have children together, you owe it to your kids to deal with your ex civilly where they are concerned.
Granting forgiveness doesn’t absolve the offender of consequences for the offense. The damage that your offense caused is still yours to make right after you’re forgiven for the offense. Don’t ever suppose that because you’ve said you’re sorry for what you’ve done, you’ll escape whatever punishment is appropriate.
Forgiving someone isn’t your gift to them, something to withhold or hold over their heads as an emotional weapon. The people who have harmed you may not deserve that gift in the first place. And they may tell you, out of a sense of false bravado, that they don’t want your forgiveness anyway, on the pretense that they’ve done nothing wrong. Make no mistake, forgiveness is something you do for yourself, regardless of any acknowledged impact it has on your offender or offenders.
Withholding forgiveness is a form of punishment you can extract against the person who offended you. If it is, it would be just about the least effective form of punishment I can think of. You might have noticed that offenders often are blissfully unaware of their offenses. So your forgiveness means nothing to them.
Forgiveness is for you. It keeps you in line with God’s Word. And, because it does, it brings you the benefit of truly moving on from what happened to you, so you can handle only today’s challenges (which, let’s be honest, are often plenty for you to manage without also dealing with the past). What trips us up is unforgiveness—the unscriptural refusal to release someone for an offense against us.
It’s often said that failing to forgive someone is like letting them live in your head rent-free. Only forgiveness evicts an offender from your thought life. So why wouldn’t you do that? I don’t know what has been done to you, and I won’t pretend that it will be easy to forgive. What I will tell you is that you will be mentally and emotionally free of what has been done to you when you forgive everyone involved in your divorce. That includes your former spouse, his or her attorney, the friends who didn’t stand with you, in-laws, parents and just about anyone who has offended you.
Would you believe that forgiveness can also hold the key to your physical and emotional healing? I do because I’ve seen it manifested in the life of a good friend of mine, who shares his story at conferences and other meetings. Greg and I are about the same age, and we became acquainted advocating for moral values in our home state of Ohio. (He now has a similar job on the East Coast.)
There are two things you need to know about Greg: he lived as a homosexual for about twenty years, and he had a terrible relationship with his father growing up.
Professionally trained as a nurse, he worked for an agency that provided home hospice care. Many of his patients were friends and acquaintances who were dying of AIDS. He also spent much of that part of his life becoming an advocate for the homosexual agenda in state legislatures throughout the Midwest.
At some point, while living as a homosexual, Greg encountered some members of a prominent Pentecostal congregation in southwest Ohio called Solid Rock Church. They met him where he was and presented the Gospel to him. Greg eventually asked the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive him for his sins.
Then came the hard part. Because while Greg became convinced that sex outside of a covenant marriage was sinful, and he was no longer living as a homosexual, he still experienced a same-sex attraction that he no longer wanted.
About this same time, Greg’s father fell ill, and it fell to my friend to care for his dad in his last days. It was a chance for him to show God’s love to someone who most assuredly didn’t love him back. The people who had led Greg to the Lord were still part of his life, discipling him, and they struck up a relationship with Greg’s father. They visited him when Greg was present and when he was not. One night, when Greg was in another part of the state caring for another client, the Solid Rock Church group led Greg's father to faith in Jesus. Shortly before his father died, Greg and his father reconciled and said “I love you” to each other for the first time.
His friends from church stayed in Greg’s life to help him grieve his loss, but eventually, they told him something that startled him: that he needed to forgive his father. Greg said something like, “You’re kidding, right?” I suppose that, in part, he didn’t see the point in forgiving a dead man. He also carried the hurt of a relationship with far more bad than good in it. But eventually, he agreed to a plan his friends suggested.
Greg agreed to write a list of all the offenses his father had committed against him. He would take the items one at a time, and cross an item off the list once he had truly forgiven his father of it. The list, Greg tells audiences now, went on for pages. But he kept at it, and after a period of months, he crossed the last item off the list. And Greg will tell you that when he finished forgiving his father, his same-sex attraction left him and has not returned.
What an amazing story of healing, and of the power of forgiveness! And while my friend’s story is especially dramatic in its details, I want you to know that you can write a story of forgiveness that is no less incredible. When you make the affirmative decision to be no longer bound by what anyone has done to you, you achieve ultimate victory over those who would harm you.
I mentioned earlier that one of the people you may need to forgive is yourself. You made mistakes in your marriage – mistakes that may or may not be the reason you have experienced divorce. Even if you divorced because your former spouse abandoned you or was guilty of fornication, you sinned in your relationship with your former spouse. And those sins were not only against him or her but also against God. That’s the unvarnished reality of your situation.
But guess what? We serve a God who forgives sins. No matter what you did to cause your divorce or to wound your former spouse, God has forgiven you for it. And He has also forgiven any sin you have committed or will commit in your new relationship or marriage. That’s one of the wonderful, inexplicable things about God that we celebrate in our private and corporate times of worship. God forgives us! And that knowledge means you can forgive yourself.
Forgiving yourself does not reduce the damage your sin may have caused others, and it does not release you from the obligation to make things right with those who have been hurt by your actions. But it does let you begin again. You may have treated your former spouse horribly. But when you forgive yourself for that behavior, you seize the opportunity to start anew with the man or woman God has brought into your life, and to break a cycle of sinful behavior.
Forgive those who have hurt you, and be freed from their hurt forever.
Professionally trained as a nurse, he worked for an agency that provided home hospice care. Many of his patients were friends and acquaintances who were dying of AIDS. He also spent much of that part of his life becoming an advocate for the homosexual agenda in state legislatures throughout the Midwest.
At some point, while living as a homosexual, Greg encountered some members of a prominent Pentecostal congregation in southwest Ohio called Solid Rock Church. They met him where he was and presented the Gospel to him. Greg eventually asked the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive him for his sins.
Then came the hard part. Because while Greg became convinced that sex outside of a covenant marriage was sinful, and he was no longer living as a homosexual, he still experienced a same-sex attraction that he no longer wanted.
About this same time, Greg’s father fell ill, and it fell to my friend to care for his dad in his last days. It was a chance for him to show God’s love to someone who most assuredly didn’t love him back. The people who had led Greg to the Lord were still part of his life, discipling him, and they struck up a relationship with Greg’s father. They visited him when Greg was present and when he was not. One night, when Greg was in another part of the state caring for another client, the Solid Rock Church group led Greg's father to faith in Jesus. Shortly before his father died, Greg and his father reconciled and said “I love you” to each other for the first time.
His friends from church stayed in Greg’s life to help him grieve his loss, but eventually, they told him something that startled him: that he needed to forgive his father. Greg said something like, “You’re kidding, right?” I suppose that, in part, he didn’t see the point in forgiving a dead man. He also carried the hurt of a relationship with far more bad than good in it. But eventually, he agreed to a plan his friends suggested.
Greg agreed to write a list of all the offenses his father had committed against him. He would take the items one at a time, and cross an item off the list once he had truly forgiven his father of it. The list, Greg tells audiences now, went on for pages. But he kept at it, and after a period of months, he crossed the last item off the list. And Greg will tell you that when he finished forgiving his father, his same-sex attraction left him and has not returned.
What an amazing story of healing, and of the power of forgiveness! And while my friend’s story is especially dramatic in its details, I want you to know that you can write a story of forgiveness that is no less incredible. When you make the affirmative decision to be no longer bound by what anyone has done to you, you achieve ultimate victory over those who would harm you.
I mentioned earlier that one of the people you may need to forgive is yourself. You made mistakes in your marriage – mistakes that may or may not be the reason you have experienced divorce. Even if you divorced because your former spouse abandoned you or was guilty of fornication, you sinned in your relationship with your former spouse. And those sins were not only against him or her but also against God. That’s the unvarnished reality of your situation.
But guess what? We serve a God who forgives sins. No matter what you did to cause your divorce or to wound your former spouse, God has forgiven you for it. And He has also forgiven any sin you have committed or will commit in your new relationship or marriage. That’s one of the wonderful, inexplicable things about God that we celebrate in our private and corporate times of worship. God forgives us! And that knowledge means you can forgive yourself.
Forgiving yourself does not reduce the damage your sin may have caused others, and it does not release you from the obligation to make things right with those who have been hurt by your actions. But it does let you begin again. You may have treated your former spouse horribly. But when you forgive yourself for that behavior, you seize the opportunity to start anew with the man or woman God has brought into your life, and to break a cycle of sinful behavior.
Forgive those who have hurt you, and be freed from their hurt forever.
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| Professor Mark Youngkin |
MARK YOUNGKIN is a believer, husband, father, professor of leadership and communication at Valor Christian College in Columbus, Ohio, a staff minister at World Harvest Church in Columbus and writer who blogs at thesycamoreproject.wordpress.com. This article is excerpted from his book, "Make Like Lazarus: A Biblical Perspective on Divorce and Remarriage."
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