Forgiveness Doesn’t Mean You Have to Submit to Abuse

What is forgiveness?

What does forgiveness mean? If I forgive my husband for something, what does that look like, biblically? It may mean canceling a debt. Or, does it mean you don’t talk about it anymore and you continue like everything is fine? That isn’t biblical. It isn’t a “get out of jail card” where you still offer your relationship and trust to a person who habitually sins against you. 

How do you deal with "70x7" verse in Matthew 18? 

You don’t have to do anything. That isn’t the heart of God. God gives us choices. Even Adam and Eve had choices and then they experienced the consequences of those choices. If God had truly forgiven, why wouldn’t he have erased the consequences of their sin? Too many churches teach that you must stay in relationship with a person even when they sin against you over and over and over again. 

Not even God has a relationship with unrepentant sinners. So why would we be required to have relationships with people who continue to sin against us when God, himself, doesn’t? 

When do you put things in the past and no longer bring it up?

If the past is still your present then you still need to deal with it because the lesson has not been learned. 

When the past is truly the past and the behaviors have truly changed and the person has repented, there is a time to let the offense go. But, understand, there may still be an impact upon the person who was sinned against.  

The church too often bundles forgiveness with an erasing of the consequences. That is not biblical. 

The past is instructive. 

For the person who sinned…If we don’t learn from our mistakes by reflecting on them, we will repeat them. Reflecting on the past is supposed to instruct you on how to do better next time. We learn from our mistakes.