Forgiveness Always Costs

For years I took forgiveness for granted. Not that I didn’t appreciate it, not that I wasn’t thankful, but I never understood that forgiveness always comes with a cost. I know that may sound strange to some of us, especially those of us who grew up in church hearing about the “free gift of salvation”.

On one hand we know that sin created a debt we couldn’t pay and we know that Christ satisfied that debt by His own death so in that sense its obvious that forgiveness came at a cost, but it still seems a little hard to wrap my head around from that sense.

Okay, I earned a sentence and Jesus paid it. But the wrong I caused was against God right? So can’t He just let it go? I mean, isn’t THAT forgiveness, just let it go right? I mean, kind of but like I said, forgiveness always costs. Its not about canceling a cost, its about who pays it.

The Balancing

I have an heavy background in accounting and it wasn’t until I got into the jungle of debits and credits until I realized that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” doesn’t just apply to physics, it applies to everything.

Let me eplain. So say you go to the store and make a purchase for $10. You give the cashier the money, take your product and leave, but that $10 has to be accounted for on the books. It debits cash but it has to credit sales.

Ok that probably doesn’t make much sense so lets make it more personal.. your friend is in a really bad position so you loan your friend $10,000. So your bank account is now short $10,000 but you have an IOU of $10,000 so your net worth is unchanged. You may not have $10,000 in the bank but you do have an asset (the loan you are due) of $10,000.

So now lets look at forgiveness. Your friend gets sick and can’t pay it back. You’re basically a saint so you tell them not to worry about it, you just want them to get well and it’s a “free gift”. But is it free?

Now you no longer have that loan due back to you. You have to pay for it out of your own pocket and while you’ve already taken the money from your account in order to satisfy that debt that you didn’t owe you have to take a hit to your net worth.

It hurt, it was no easy thing to do, but just like the friend in the situation we can either take that debt forgiveness and be freed or we can refuse it. We refuse the deposit into our account and claim we owe nothing, but eventually the debt collector will come and what is due will be taken.

How do we forgive?

This isn’t just a salvation issue though, its also a people issue. You can forgive and still hurt, you can forgive and still be upset, you can forgive and still be upset, but you can’t forgive and still seek to collect.

When a someone hurts you forgiveness means you satisfy that debt yourself. You take that pain or anger, and you eat that suffering, the hit to your pride ego or whatever it entails and accept their debt as paid.

Be angry, be sad, but true forgiveness doesn’t seek to retaliate or get even. You ARE even.

I don’t think that’s something humans are capable of, I know I’m not. So then how do we forgive? Through building a relationship with Christ and being filled with the Holy Spirit.

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32

Galatians 5:22-23 tells us that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” Among these love is the first mentioned, but what is love? 1 Corintians 13 tells us that it is the greatest gift, it says that “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

If that doesn’t describe what it takes to forgive, I’m not sure what does.

Go and Forgive

Remember when you forgive its more than just something you say, its wiping their debt clean. They owe you nothing now as you now have no sin debt to God because of Jesus death on the cross and your acceptance of that sacrifice as a covering of your debt.