On Forgiveness and Trust

To express the heartache that I’ve gone through on this subject alone, could be another mini series in this journey of writing for me.

I have waged war against my own brain to try and figure out why it always rubbed me the wrong way when someone would tell me that I just needed to forgive more. My mind would apparently settle more, if I forgave more. I needed to “Let go and let God.”

I would mentally beat myself up because I carried so much shame for why my marriage still wasn’t working after I forgave. After over a decade of counseling on and off.

I felt like I needed to forget the hurt. But I couldn’t. I felt like less of a Christian to not be able to “Forgive and forget.”

What was I not doing right, that I felt so unable to jump back into a happy life where we could get along? Talk about life and be vulnerable? Laugh and have fun, but also be there emotionally when things were difficult and life became unbearable. What was is that was holding me back?

After many years of counseling, I started to recognize a pattern. The more years of repeated hurt and sin that happened, the deeper I would climb into the cave of self protection. I would hide there until the danger, or the threat of it, would pass.

I had forgiven him, but I didn’t trust him.

I was operating in the mindset that forgiveness means I don’t ever bring this up again. Forgiveness means that consequences are avoided. Forgiveness means that I need to forget the effect that his actions had.

But, is that humanly possible?

Is it even biblical?

I started reading about the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11. Jesus forgives her and tells her to, “Go and sin no more.”

Galatians 5:16-26 talks about the way a believer in Christ ought to live. It describes an old, selfish, twisted way of living before then describing how a new life in the Spirit should be characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

A shift in how we live. A noticeable effort to those around us. Imperfect, albeit, but a striving to love others more than we love ourselves. A restraint to our natural tendency to please ourselves without thinking of the impact it has on those around us.

In other words, living a life where we are not continually running back to the actions we find comfortable, but rather surrendering our will to a God that has the ability to transform our very nature to reflect him better. And remove the shackles of selfishness.

Even God himself communicates that our life in him should be one of transformation and action. Because we have been forgiven, we are alive and free to love others around us as he does.

Now, before you think I’m getting all soft on you, hear this: God disciplines those he loves. It says so explicitly in Hebrews 12:6, but it’s referred to all throughout scripture.

Just like a parent gives consequences to a child when they have disobeyed because they love them and want the best for their life, God also gives consequences to those who choose to continue in their sin.

Does that mean he hasn’t forgiven us? Absolutely not! He’s forgiven us AND he expects our lives to now reflect the joy of that forgiveness. He calls us to live better, by his Spirit that’s within us. A changed life requires a changed perspective.

A life that is changed internally is revealed through actions externally.

Living out what we say we believe. God expects this change, because we are the living testimony to his grace and salvation. If we are not being transformed, we continue to live our own way, and have no care to testify to the goodness of our God, be prepared to be corrected! Forgiveness does not mean that God forgets the sinful actions we’ve been a part of. After all, he’s a God that knows everything. And a God that knows everything wouldn’t be able to forget anything!

What it does mean, is that if we confess it to him and repent of it, he will not hold it against us, but instead, mold and shape us into a more beautiful vessel for living out his plan for our lives.

But what it also means, is even if we confess it, but don’t repent of it (meaning we try our very best with his help to never do that again), we will be disciplined because he loves us and wants the best for us. All while working toward the goal of molding and shaping us into a more beautiful vessel for living out his plan for our lives.

He also wants us to represent him well. We cannot do that by continuing to live selfishly.

So, what I had to eventually learn, is the reason it rubbed me the wrong way when I would hear someone tell me that I just needed to forgive more, was because really what they were describing was trust, not forgiveness.

They were asking me to trust him again after he’d hurt me….again. And I was to keep trusting him, even though he was living an untrustworthy life.

I’m here to tell you, that is one of the most ungodly pieces of advice that a person could ever give. To ask someone to trust an untrustworthy person is not only enabling sin and welcoming danger of all sorts onto that person, it is taking glory away from the cross. It becomes a mockery to God requiring us to repent. It waters down the potent power of redemption. Of buying back our access to God with Jesus’s very blood.

We don’t get to just confess that we’ve done something wrong, and then continue to do those wrong things and think that our Holy God will stand back and shrug his shoulders in forgiveness.

No! If we are in Him, we are to live trustworthy lives. And when we hurt others, apologize, and then make sure we are moving away from that lifestyle. Because let’s be real, it’s not just people we are hurting. It’s the heart of God that we grieve when we live in hypocrisy. When we testify to his goodness with our mouths, but then destroy people with the way we live. Why would anyone want Jesus, if what they see of his people are individuals living in habitual sin, but claim to be forgiven of it? What a mockery!

If we are wanting people to trust us, then we need to be trustworthy! Don’t use the spiritual abuse way out by asking for more forgiveness. The problem is our behavior.

Luke 16:10 explains this concept better than I can.

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”

God will not be mocked, as it says in Galatians 6:7. He will discipline those he loves (Hebrews 12:6). And sometimes when we’ve been repeatedly hurt by others who are not willing to repent, we have to walk away and let God work on them. That’s part of his discipline.

God commands us to love others. He commands us to forgive them. He commands us to respect them. But he never asks us to trust someone who is not trustworthy. Remember that.