Additional note on “On repentance”

I make the point that my forgiveness does not depend on my repentance.

The root of this idea is that nothing I do can bind God. He is completely free to do whatever he wants, and whatever God does is always good. So, if forgiveness depends on repentance, then that gives me a degree of power over God – even though it’s the power to hurt myself by not repenting.

This principle is actually very important for us too, for if we are not able to forgive till a person who hurt us repents, then this leaves us wounded by someone who – potentially – is a thoroughly obnoxious person, evil in intent and action, who hurt us willingly and maliciously and has not a scrap of remorse, nor any intent of ever saying sorry. It would be appalling for someone so hurtful to retain power over us for the rest of our lives, if it really was the case that there is nothing we can do to forgive, until they repent.

Of course, we do not have to forgive – but that will get us into a lengthy aside to consider that. What we can say immediately is that forgiveness does not mean changing our judgement that a person’s actions were evil, nor that they are a despicable person. If their actions warrant that judgement, then it is a fair judgement, and forgiveness does not mean saying “Well, I suppose it wasn’t that bad really”.

The importance of us having the power to forgive is that it restores to us the power to heal, to bless, and to make progress, in joy and peace. We are free to forgive as an extremely powerful way of drinking an antidote to the poison of the other person’s actions in our lives. If the hurt of that was weighing us down, piercing us to the heart, a source of sorrow and anguish, then our forgiveness of the perpetrator is an enormously powerful, healing action because it brings grace into a situation of evil. Our forgiveness sets us free. In our forgiveness, we express the truth that the hurt done to us has healed over; it has lost its power over us. Remember the importance of scars – a scar shows us where we have been wounded, but also where that wound has healed. We are not pretending that we were not hurt, but we are declaring that we are not hurting now. We acknowledge our scars – but their message to us now is not that we were wounded, but that we are now healed. The reason we are not hurting is that, through the gracious love of God, the wound we received has become an occasion for God to be at work in our lives. As God renews us in spirit, then we acquire the ability to repay good for evil. This is a crucial principle. Overcoming evil is a primary goal for humankind, but even this great goal must not be achieved by paying back evil for evil. The true achievement is to overcome evil with goodness.

Thus, our forgiveness is a declaration of the triumph of the goodness of God. We are in charge of that situation. It would be wonderful if the evil perpetrator who harmed us did repent, and we could then even be reconciled, but that is not within our control. And judgement for everybody’s actions belongs to God. However, we are in charge of whom we forgive and that restores us to being in charge of our lives, in freedom and peace.

That was quite a long aside, to move from thinking about God’s forgiveness of us, to our forgiveness of others, but I think it is a crucial point. Returning to God, we could think of it in terms of a gift. God forgives us as his gift to us – freely given, not dependent on our actions – such as repenting. However, in practice, God is like a loved one, who has already got us a gift, and has it, as it were, behind his back and – for our benefit – it is helpful for us if he waits until we ask for it. That is, the moment we ask for forgiveness, God says, “Of course, I have it here ready for you”. Thus, we acquire the great spiritual benefit of asking for forgiveness as we repent, as well as the wonderful gift of being forgiven. God, as I say, can do whatever he wants, and, using the imagery above, we can imagine that a stubborn, recalcitrant person meets with God, but refuses to repent, only to find that, after their conversation has finished, the person discovers that God has left the gift of forgiveness for them anyway. In this scenario, we hope that the person would then immediately repent, overwhelmed by the gracious, loving kindness of God.

I think we’re saying that God’s forgiveness is given before we repent – that is, God has already prepared his forgiveness, because he has freedom to forgive whenever he wants, but we do not receive the forgiveness until we repent. So, our deeper reflection does after all reinforce the insight that forgiveness is received as we repent – for it is only as we repent that we are ready to open our hearts to the goodness of God. In the illustration above, if the recalcitrant person “discovered” the gift of forgiveness that God had left for them, but angrily threw it away, then God has given them forgiveness, but they have not received it.

So, on reflection, I think it is a true insight that we receive forgiveness as we repent, but our forgiveness is not dependent on our repentance, but on God’s grace. If we return to our own instances of forgiving others, this reinforces the point that we are free to forgive, and thereby to set ourselves free from the ongoing harm done to us by the person who hurt us. If they refuse to accept that forgiveness because they refuse to accept that they ever did anything wrong, then they miss out on a wonderful gift of grace, which our forgiveness represents. I think this might also be helpful as we sometimes revisit painful events in our own lives, where we have no way of contacting the person who hurt us. We are still in charge of the situation with freedom to forgive, which we offer up to God, because we cannot speak to the perpetrator of harm. Perhaps they are as cruel and thoughtless as when we knew them – in which case, the gift of our forgiveness does them no good, because they have refused to receive it – and this is true despite there being no actual contact between us. However, perhaps they have had a change of heart and a change of character, in which case, through the good agency of God, our forgiveness will reach them and be a blessing to them. Likewise, if we have painful memories of hurting other people in the past, with no physical means to put that right, we can also offer our repentance to God, and he will receive it, on behalf of the person we cannot reach, and by the means of God’s goodness, we will be set free from the harm that we have caused, but now repent of.