God: Rejecting forgiveness isn’t humility, Joshua. I forgive you.
Is rejecting my forgiveness humility? You accept that the punishment isn’t coming; but you reject any good.
Forgiveness is not merely saying “what you deserve, you aren’t getting”; but also “the good that you had, I’m not withholding”.
When you make a mistake, even when it isn’t sin, you withdraw.
Even if other people don’t withdraw, YOU DO. True forgiveness doesn’t just say “I’ll withhold punishment”; but “I will not withhold good”. When I commanded forgiving your brother seventy times seven, that wasn’t moving the relationship to that of a stranger—the brother was still a brother!
What did I do when the prodigal son returned? I accepted him back.
I could have simply stated “I forgive you; now go out and live life: you owe me nothing”.
But I didn’t. I did not withhold GOOD.
Joshua: I think I’m stuck on times I was told I was forgiven, or even the other side took responsibility, and then kept bringing up the same situation as a sign of my own failure.
God: (shakes head) You don’t understand.
The reason you don’t accept forgiveness is simple.
You weren’t accepting forgiveness even before the situation you are recalling. That isn’t the reason you struggle with accepting forgiveness.
Let me spell this out: you were taught that 1) you should always try to make things right, 2) the wages of sin is death, 3) all sin is equal. And that combined means… you owe everyone your life when you sin against them. Ruh-roh!
That’s an awful tonic. Let us be clear that in Leviticus, I did not treat all wrong the same.
The law wasn’t all the same to every type of wrong. Breaking the law is breaking the law. But there were different laws, and different responses.
“You should always try to make things right”… who defines that? I defined that in laws for the Jews, so that justice would be done AND SO THAT JUSTICE WOULD NOT BE OVER-DONE. There is such thing as “over-punishment”.
The wages of sin is death, but those are sin’s wages, NOT MINE. I’M not giving you death, SIN IS!
In other words, even with forgiveness, YOU CARRIED AN IMPOSSIBLE DEBT FOR EVERY WRONG. The best you could hope was that the other person would forget about it.
Rather than being concerned about connection, and seeking that, you would instead seek to avoid all need for FORGIVENESS.
To avoid all need for forgiveness, is to avoid all relationship. You’re a human being who is healing and learning. You’ll need forgiveness. Only reason you wouldn’t, is if you go dig yourself into a hole.
Expect to need forgiveness. I’m not saying to expect to fail; I’m not saying to expect to sin.
But expect to need forgiveness. It doesn’t make you BAD.
Joshua: God, I feel like as a dude… I should just take the fall for everything that goes wrong.
God: (shakes head) Who taught you that?
Joshua: Well, I was always told that I should take responsibility—
God: (shakes head) Take responsibility for what you’re responsible for. It isn’t good to take responsibility if it’s not what you’re responsible for—that is dishonest and even discouraging. Do you expect to be a leader without delegating? Delegating will include letting other people take responsibility.
If someone isn’t even being delegated something by you, there’s no way you can claim responsibility.
Let me be clear: it is one thing to pay the price for another.
What you are saying is if someone else breaks a lamp, you take the blame. Mercy and truth will acknowledge that you didn’t break the lamp, but you’ll pay for it.
I don’t claim that I did all sin. I cover yours. That is a VERY IMPORTANT DISTINCTION. You don’t have to find a way to make it all your fault. You desperately search for ways to say “I did it!” That is an unfortunate survival technique you picked up as a kid. You were told at times that to be “in”, you had to take the blame for how you felt, for what had happened…
You can take responsibility for your end.
But saying “there’s no way it could’ve been anyone but me” when it wasn’t you isn’t living in the light.
Also…
This is a sneaky way to avoid forgiveness. Because if you never acknowledge anything was anyone else’s fault… you’ll never have to forgive them.
Rather than practicing FORGIVENESS, you practice DENIAL and blame yourself. That isn’t forgiveness. Claiming it was your fault ISN’T FORGIVENESS.
Acknowledge your end. Acknowledge their end. Extend forgiveness to you and to them. And when you don’t feel strong enough…
…forgive yourself for that. And know you aren’t required to try making yourself strong enough to forgive. Walk with me. Lean into me.