Forgiveness: the Great Exchange

The following article is the heart of a message I shared at our large, multi-generational, bi-annual family reunion during the evening banquet in August 2010.
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Edwin Hubbel Chapin, a 19th Century American minister once said, "Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive injury."

I posit to you that a family that is rooted and grounded in love; a family that practices unity, is a family that exercises one of the greatest exchanges humankind has ever known: forgiveness.

By inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul writes to those who believe on the name of Jesus in his letter to the Ephesians, "Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, [along] with malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you" (4:31-32). Jesus commanded His disciples to forgive, and by extension commands us to do the same, in the Gospel according to Luke, "Watch yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. Even if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times returns to you saying, 'I repent,' you must forgive him." And His disciples said to the Lord, "Increase our faith." So the Lord said, "If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,' and it would obey you" (Luke 17:3-6). No matter how small the faith, God has given us the power to forgive. It is in the forgiving of those who have offended us that we begin the process of healing.

Esau forgave. Joseph forgave. Jesus forgives. The healing of wounded relationships also involve humility on the part of the offender. Jacob humbled himself before Esau, though he tricked him into forsaking his birthright. The children of Israel humbled themselves before Joseph, though they sold him into slavery and considered him dead. And we must humble ourselves before Jesus, though we were still sinners, the sinless Christ having died in our places. For the penalty of sin is death.

Finally, the exchange happens when in humility we are ready to forgive others' offenses; prepared to seek out forgiveness, to admit wrongs, and to confess our own offenses; and ready to accept and provide love, grace, and mercy.

Someone once posited that "time heals all wounds." I declare to you that time alone heals nothing. Some wounds cut deep, leaving the offended damaged, maimed, disabled, even dead: lacking trust, bearing trauma, emotionally shipwrecked.

Rose Kennedy, the matron of the famed Kennedy political dynasty and mother of both John F. And Robert Kennedy, did not agree either. Knowing the pain of losing three sons, she once said, "The wounds remain. In time, the mind, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens. But it is never gone."

Our family is not the church, for the church is the body of Christ. We are members one to another if Christ dwells in us, members of a new family with brothers and sisters whose sin is forgiven. And His love covers a multitude of sin. When we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for us who were ungodly. He was wounded for our iniquities. See the nail prints is His hands and feet? The scar on His side? God demonstrated His own love towards us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The great exchange is life on life. We rejoice because those who are Christ's have now received reconciliation. And we too can be reconciled one to another.