Mother Theresa said, “If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.” I hope that challenges you as it challenges me. God’s top two clearly stated priorities are for us to love Him with all we are and have and to love others as our self (Luke 10:27), so it would seem paramount to focus on what can qualify (or disqualify) us for loving.
When I experience offense, and that’s pretty often as my work takes me into high-conflict arenas, I’m sometimes not feeling so much like Mother Theresa. More like the Tasmanian devil, I think. So I find that I have to abide and keep on abiding in Him and ask the Lord to let me see that offender as He does. But the subject verse (Prov. 25:21-22) is dripping with grace for me and for you in those times of hanging onto the vine.
God has a lot to say about forgiveness in the Bible. That’s not surprising since as C.S. Lewis says, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” But here, in particular, I believe God is speaking to His children in the time when they’re struggling most to be ambassadors of His grace. Rather than reminding you of who your offender is to Him, which requires abiding, or how much He’s forgiven in you or me (which he does often elsewhere, e.g., Matt. 18), in this passage, He gives us a construct for thinking about forgiving that even a Tasmanian Devil can grasp onto. It’s as if He’d say to us, do what you should, and I’ll take care of the rest. He reminds us here that He takes care of what your offender and mine deserves and what we deserve, too.
The grace here reminds me of what He says about divorce: it was given through Moses not because God likes divorce. He hates it. Divorce was permitted because of people’s hard hearts (Matt 19:7-8). In other words, God made a provision even for something He hates knowing His children would sometimes not love others as He intended and desires. Similarly, although He desires that we love our enemies and those who offend us as He has loved us – unconditionally, He makes a way for us to think about loving our enemies that we can stomach while we’re in Tasmanian Devil mode. He lets me say: I’m going to love that person so much that the term ‘hot head’ will have new meaning to my offender!
God’s desire is that I neither give nor take offense, that none shall perish, that all reconcile to Him. That’s His plan from Genesis to Revelation, but He knows His dust and bone-made people fail to stay focused or committed to His priorities. We fail to love well in our hot head moments. If you’re struggling to forgive an offense (large or small), I pray this passage will give you a stepping stone of grace to start down or stay on the path to His priorities.
-Andrea Kim
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