Forgiveness Guards Against Grudges Becoming Glooms

The troubled fellow reluctantly went to see a psychologist. He wasn’t the sharpest tack in the drawer. Trying the pinpoint the cause of the man’s anger, the therapist asked, “Do you have a grudge?” To which the man replied, “Yeah. It’s big enough for two cars, but we use half of it for storage.” 

 

Lots of people have grudges (as well as garages). We park our sedans and SUVs in garages, but grudges seem to park themselves in our thoughts and hearts. They’re easy to justify in our minds: “He did this.” “She said that.” “My boss was unfair.” “I deserved a better grade.”

 

Do your grudges hold you prisoner,
like this old jail in Tullahoma, Tenn.?

The problem is, grudges hurt us as much as the persons we hold them against. Often they hurt us more, because the “grudgees” might not know about the hurting, the hard feelings we harbor toward them, or may not even care. It’s the equivalent of being mad at someone and punching ourselves in the face to spite them.

Beyond that, nursing grudges can have toxic affects on our attitudes and outlooks on life. The late devotional writer Selwyn Hughes observed, “we must determine to forgive everyone who hurts us and refuse to nurse a grudge. Grudges become glooms…. A grudge or a resentment is sand in the machinery of living.”

 

I like that analogy. Even non-mechanical folks like me know that to keep parts of machines meshing properly they need to be oiled or greased. Putting sand in them instead will wreck a perfectly good machine in no time.

 

In our defense we want to argue, “But you don’t know what they’ve done! You don’t know how much they’ve hurt me (or my family, or my friends). How can I forgive them? I don’t want to forgive them!”

 

While those complaints are understandable, they’re not helpful. Because holding onto grudges often results in a root of bitterness in our hearts, with its roots growing deeper every day. Grudges have turned many a once-pleasant and happy person into a miserable wretch.

 

The Scriptures have much to say about this issue and the problem of festering bitterness. Hebrews 12:15 admonishes, “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”

 

Here we find two very important phrases – the “grace of God,” and the “bitter root.” They are oxymorons – contradictions in terms. Because God’s grace allows absolutely no room for bitterness. If anyone had a right for bitterness, to withhold forgiveness, it was God. And yet we read, “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

 

No one has sinned against us nearly as much as we have sinned against the Lord. He had no obligation at all to forgive us for our many sins. Nevertheless, we have the assurance of the verse that’s so familiar we’re tempted to disregard it: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

 

Someone might respond, “Yes, I believe that and have received Jesus into my life. But I still can’t let go of the grudge I have toward [fill in the name].” That might sound reasonable, but it also indicates a lack of appreciation for the scope and magnitude of God’s forgiveness, that no one has wronged us even a tiny fraction of the degree we’ve wronged the Lord.

 

Consider Isaiah 53:5-6 which declares, “But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each one has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.”

 

We might be thinking, “Okay, I get it. God has forgiven me for more than anyone could possibly do to me. But I still can’t let loose of this grudge, the bitterness I feel toward that other person. I’m only human.”

 

More than we can ever comprehend, the Lord understands this. But He doesn’t ask us to forgive – to release whatever grudge we’re desperately hanging onto – in our own strength. If we have been saved by God’s redeeming grace, He has given us the capacity to extend the forgiveness that seems so impossible. 

 

We could cite many Bible passages, but here are just two to consider: “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:4-5). The Lord has given us spiritual rebirth, making us new and able to exhibit His divine nature.

 

The other verse, one of my favorites, is Galatians 2:20 which declares, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Whenever faced with a command from the Lord and my response is, “I can’t!”, He answers, “Yes, I know. But I can – and will do it through you, if you’ll let Me.”

 

So, I ask: Are you nursing a long-standing grudge, allowing a root of bitterness to poison your inner being? Are you withholding forgiveness – essentially allowing sand to bind up the machinery of your own life? Maybe today’s the day for you to release it. To use the cliché, “let go and let God.” Maybe the object of your anger doesn’t deserve forgiveness. Don’t do it for them – do it for yourself. Free yourself from the awful prison of bitterness and gloom.

 

Unforgiveness – Sentence to Self-Imprisonment

“I just can’t forgive.” Have you ever heard someone say this? Maybe you’ve said it yourself – or at least thought those words? If so, you’re not alone. In one way or another, we’ve all suffered pain inflicted by others that seems beyond our capacity to forgive.

 

There are wrongs that have been committed on a grand scale, things such as slavery, not only here in the United States but also in many parts of the world. There’s the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed millions of Jews all in the name of an insane ideology. Many of us will never forget the heinous terrorist acts on Sept. 11, 2001, which took the lives of more than 3,000 people and destroyed the iconic Twin Towers at New York City’s World Trade Center. Who could forgive such atrocities?

 

On a more individual level, each of us has experienced mental, emotional or physical injury, often inflicted by people we loved. Sometimes the wrongdoing was cumulative, occurring over a span of time. Or it might have resulted in a single moment of betrayal, anger, recklessness or abuse. Either way, haunted by experiences of being deeply hurt, it’s understandable for someone to adamantly insist, “I just can’t forgive.”

 

The truth is, however, it’s not that we can’t forgive. It’s that we don’t want to forgive. We could offer a variety of reasons for this: Memories of the pain inflicted are too vivid. We refuse to let the offending person (or persons) off the hook and act as if what they did never happened. We insist on justice being exacted for the wrongs we’ve suffered. 

 

Each of those reasons – and others – seems justifiable. How can we forgive and move forward as if everything’s okay when it’s not? 

 

And yet in reality, failure or refusal to forgive many times results in more and prolonged pain for the one unwilling to forgive. We hold onto the grudge, grinding the axe of persistent pain. Sadly, that’s tantamount to pouring out poison for the other person and then drinking it ourselves.

 

That’s not to discount or minimize the consequences we’ve endured from someone else’s wrongdoing. It’s just that after a while, unforgiveness affects us more than the object of our bitterness. Sometimes the offenders are unaware of the pain they’ve caused, don’t realize it still lingers, or just don’t care. I’ve heard of folks refusing to forgive people who have passed from this life. What’s their unforgiveness accomplishing then, other than sentencing themselves to an emotional prison?

 

In the Scriptures we find the subject of forgiveness discussed a lot. When Jesus introduced what we know as “the Lord’s prayer,” He included these words: “Forgive us our debts [trespasses] as we also have forgiven our debtors [those who trespass against us]” (Matthew 6:12). Then He added, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).

 

These are hard words to hear – and to apply – but the Lord is saying that if we as broken, fallible human beings aren’t willing to forgive the wrongdoings of others, why should we expect the perfect, infallible God to forgive us?

 

While meeting with His closest disciples, Jesus presented His guidelines for confronting a believing brother or sister who had sinned against them. Pursuing the subject further, Peter challenged Jesus: “‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times’”(Matthew 18:15-22). Some translations say, “seventy times seven.”

 

Jesus wasn’t instructing His followers to keep an exact count – “Aha! You’ve sinned against me 78 times – no more forgiveness for you!” He was asserting that just as we expect God in His grace to offer unlimited, unconditional forgiveness for our own sins, how can we not extend the same grace to those who sin against us?

 

“But that’s so hard!” we complain. And it is. “A price must be paid!” we want to argue. We desire retribution. Apart from Christ, such forgiveness may indeed be impossible. However, think of the example of Jesus Himself on the cross when He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Especially since the Roman soldiers and Jewish leaders thought they knew exactly what they were doing.

 

Writing to believers in ancient Colossae, the apostle Paul admonished them, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13).

 

This doesn’t mean offering forgiveness for grievous sins is easy for us to do. But nowhere in the Bible does it say the Christian life is supposed to be easy. In fact, struggle and suffering for Christ followers are presented as more the norm than the exception. 

All we can do is cling to the assurance Paul offered in Philippians 4:13, “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength” – including forgiving the seeming unforgiveable.