Living Beyond Offense: 7 Days Exploring Forgivenessಮಾದರಿ

Forgiveness Is Not a Feeling

As someone who registers as a high feeler on almost every personality test on the market, when I encountered Jesus’s command to forgive from the heart, I felt doomed to fail. If forgiving was a matter of changing my feelings, this was bad news for me. Historically, emotions often sit on the judge’s bench of my heart, setting the direction for my decision-making. Logic is hardly given an opportunity to sway my feelings toward considering more evidence. Past experiences aren’t readily invited to present opposing arguments to round out my feelings. And sometimes, even the truth doesn’t get an opportunity to take the stand. What I feel is the truth, and you would be hard-pressed to convince me otherwise.

Jesus, Our Example

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus had some big feelings. He is in pain, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. In Mark 14:33-34, Jesus is described as “greatly distressed” and “troubled” (ESV). He even confesses to Peter, James, and John that His “soul is very sorrowful” (ESV). Though He came into the world to die for sinners and has even prophesied of His certain death, now that His hour has come, He prays for an alternate route. In agony, with “sweat like great drops of blood falling down to the ground,” He cries out: “My Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:41-44 ESV).

This picture of Jesus in utter emotional, physical, and spiritual pain as He counts up the cost of humanity’s forgiveness gives us more clarity on what Jesus means when He instructs His disciples to forgive from the heart (Matthew 18:35 ). It can’t mean waiting for your feelings to blossom into a desire to obey. It can’t mean feeling your way to obedience. Why? Because even though Jesus’s soul is “greatly distressed” and “troubled,” at the coming of His certain death, He chooses to not surrender to the will of His feelings and instead surrenders Himself to the will of God. Even though His soul was “very sorrowful,” He forfeits His desire for comfort and safety and decisively commits to drinking the cup of suffering and death for your forgiveness and mine. He goes against the grain of what He feels in service of God’s greater good—our salvation.

Now to be clear, Jesus doesn’t resist the pull of His feelings by ignoring them. In Mark 14:34, He confesses to His disciples, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (ESV). And as we’ve already seen, He doesn’t hold His feelings back or restrain His tears in any way during His time of prayer before God. He honestly acknowledges His feelings; He just doesn’t obey them. He doesn’t allow His feelings to sit on the judge’s bench of His heart, dictating His decision-making. When the time comes for Him to stop praying for a different answer and to surrender His body to the Father’s will, He gets up and says to His disciples: “See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand” (Matthew 26:45-46 ESV). He decisively commits.

You don’t have to wait for your feelings to catch up to follow Jesus's command to forgive. Instead, when feelings are lacking, you can, as an exercise of your God-given free will, decisively commit.