What Is the Difference Between Forgiveness and Reconciliation?
I want to turn to Ephesians 4 26. It says, “In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.” You know, I used to read this verse and think in your anger, do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down while you’re still having an argument.
So, you better go to that person up all night and say, “We’re not going to bed until we settle this, right?” But it actually doesn’t talk about the other person at all. It says, “In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.” You know, Joel and I spent over a thousand hours studying forgiveness in the Bible.
And we poured over every passage just about and and not only where the word forgiveness was, but where forgiveness was pictured as well in the Bible. And before you think I’m just here shining my halo over the number of hours that we studied this in the Bible, I want to be honest and I want to say about 75% of that time at the beginning was spent me looking for a loophole because it I felt like surely surely God does not intend that we’re to forgive everything.
M and what I discovered is that forgiveness is an absolute command by God. And remember, forgiveness is God’s prescription for the hurting human heart to heal. It can have very little to do with the other person. Um now, if you’re in a relationship with that other person, it can be a great thing to repair the relationship and have good conversations around forgiveness.
But if you’re no longer in a relationship with that person, then that’s important to remember. But while forgiveness is a command by God, reconciliation is very conditional. That’s right. Over a lot of things. And so when Jesus taught forgive 70* 7, I don’t think that Jesus meant stay in close proximity so that that person can keep hurting you over and over and over and you just have to forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive and that would give the impression of perpetuating some kind of abuse, right? I think what Jesus was saying is create enough distance
between you and that other person that if they never change, you can forgive 70* 7 without getting destroyed in the process. Look, Jesus laid down his life, right? And and he commanded us to lay down our life. But I want to point out something so important. Jesus laid down his life to accomplish a high and holy purpose.
He did not lay down his life to enable bad behavior to continue. So forgiveness should never be in the context of enabling another person to just keep hurting and hurting and hurting without any kind of consequence. May I say add to that and you and certainly the good doctor over there will correct me and you know we we prepare for these.
We prepared all day yesterday. One of the beauties of this is we’re also live. We rarely edit anything here. So, we’re not scripting what I’m about to say. Little disclaimer there. The idea of holding uh resentments toward people, which that’s just, you know, you drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick. That’s resentment based and and that could be unforgiveness.
