What’s the key relational issue in the Bible?
That’s easy: It’s forgiveness.
Apart from the willingness and the ability to forgive, human relationships simply hit the wall.
But how do we forgive monsters – the people who have ravaged our memories, our reputations, our bodies, and our souls?
Here is where we stand helpless apart from the power of God.
Just two years after she survived the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp, a Dutch citizen named Corrie ten Boom was asked to speak to a group of Germans about the power of forgiveness.
That evening she said, as she often put it, that God hurls our sins into the deepest sea and then declares, “No fishing allowed.”
Corrie tells us what happened after she finished her presentation:
“The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a cap with skull and crossbones.
“It came back with a rush – the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were! That place was Ravensbruck, and the man who was making his way forward had been a guard – one of the most cruel guards.
“Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message, Fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’
“And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course – how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?
“But I remembered him. I was face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
“’You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,’ he was saying. “I was a guard there.’ No, he did not remember me. ‘But since that time,’ he went on, ‘I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein’ – again the hand came out – ‘will you forgive me?’
“And I stood there – I whose sins had again and again to be forgiven – and could not forgive.
“Betsie had died in that place. Could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could have been many seconds that he stood there – hand held out – but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
“For I had to do it – I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us… And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart.
“But forgiveness is not an emotion – I knew that, too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘Jesus, help me!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’
“And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust out my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“’I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’ For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then.
“But even then, I realized it was not my love. I had tried, and did not have the power. It was the power of the Holy Spirit.”
There is a power available to us all that comes from the heart of the One who prayed concerning his enemies, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing.”
And very often we find that in the act of releasing another person, the prisoner who is really set free is the one who forgives.
Comments