Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Matthew 18:15

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

Many of us prefer to pretend there isn’t a problem. We can refuse to face the facts, swallow our anger or resentment, paper over the cracks, and carry on as it everything is normal while seething with rage inside. Or we can simply avoid and ignore the other person or group, and pretend they don’t exist (34).

Many Christians have taken the paper-over-the-cracks option, believing that this is what “forgiveness” means—pretending that everything is all right, that the other person hasn’t really done anything wrong. That simply won’t do. If someone else—another Christians in particular!—has been offensive, aggressive, bullying, dishonest, or immoral, nothing whatever is gained by trying to create “reconciliation” without confronting the real evil that’s been done. Forgiveness doesn’t mean saying “it didn’t really happen” or “it didn’t really matter.” . . . Forgiveness is when it did happen, and it did matter, and you’re going to deal with it and end up loving and accepting one another again anyway (35).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

My brother's burden which I must bear is not only his outward lot . . . but quite literally his sin. And the only way to bear that sin is by forgiving it in the power of the cross in which I now share. Thus the call to Christ always means a call to share the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which is the Christian's duty to bear (90).

A. Orendorff

All sin (i.e., wrongdoing) creates a debt. This can be seen easily in sins of a financial or physical nature, but it is just as true in relational sins as well. Forgiveness, therefore, means absorbing the debt created by another person’s wrongs, whatever the nature of those wrongs might have been. Justice means taking payments on that debt; forgiveness mean making the payments ourselves.