A Most Challenging Act to Perform: Forgiving Your Enemies

The idea of meting out our own brand of justice is a tale as old as time, and it finds expression in our movies, books, and lives. When someone offends or wounds us or the people we love, it is natural for us to want justice to be done. Often, our sense of justice leads us, and in many cases, the thought of forgiving your enemies or letting God deal with it is far from our hearts and minds.

In contrast to carrying out our own justice to right wrongs is the notion of forgiveness, which is jarring, especially when we’re knee-deep in our feelings about a situation. Forgive the person who just stole my promotion from me? Forgive the person who stole my purse? Forgive the person who assaulted me?

It’s hard enough to forgive the people in our lives that we love, but what about forgiving our enemies? That seems like a bridge too far. In those moments, it makes more sense to follow the way of vengeance than it does to follow the way of Jesus.

Forgiveness is an act of the will. It is a conscious choice not to hold onto a wrong or a hurt done by someone against us. When you forgive someone, you choose to treat that person with the same respect and courtesy as you would someone who hadn’t wronged you in any way. You wipe the slate clean with that person, relinquishing your claim to get back at them, and you hold no feelings of ill will against them.

As you would expect, forgiving your enemies isn’t necessarily a one-off thing. You may have to let go of the same offense several times in your heart, even as you act out your forgiveness in how you treat them. The verses that follow, touch on the idea of forgiveness, but also address some of the feelings, thoughts, and inclinations that arise when someone hurts us, showing us Jesus’ way of dealing with them.

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. – Luke 23:34

One of the hard sayings of the Bible comes from Jesus when he says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:44,45). This goes against our natural grain, which feels more comfortable with loving our friends and hating our enemies. But Jesus himself demonstrated this radical love of enemies.

He did this by praying for the people who had orchestrated his crucifixion, and while they were jeering at him as he hung on the cross. His famous words entreating God to forgive them, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) stand in stark contrast to the treatment He was receiving from them at that moment.

This was an intercessory prayer (a prayer offered on behalf of someone) asking God to forgive people when they didn’t understand the magnitude of what they’d done wrong, and they had no intention of asking to be forgiven.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. – Romans 12:14

In this verse, Paul echoes what Jesus said in Matthew 5:44, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In the US, the concept of persecution, especially for one’s Christian faith, is a somewhat foreign one. In Paul’s time, persecution would look like being ejected from your family or the community, losing your property, or even your life because you follow Jesus.

Our instinct when people harm us in these and other ways is to curse them, to hit them as hard as they hit us. But instead of cursing, we are to bless them. In the next verses, Paul showed how to bless those who curse you, and why.

Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. – Romans 12:19-21

Our instinct is to carry out justice on those that hurt us or our loved ones. When Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to bless them, is that because he doesn’t care about justice being done? Far from it. What we are called to in places like Romans 12 is to grow in our trust in God’s justice. God will judge, and He will deal out the appropriate punishment, and so it is not for us to exact our own justice.

“Beloved”, Paul writes, “never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’.” God will take it upon Himself to right the wrong, and we can leave it in His hands to do so.

In some situations, the machinery of the state will work to protect your rights that have been violated. In others, we like the saints that have gone before, entrust ourselves to God’s timing even as we and they call out, “…in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’” (Revelation 6:10).

As we wait for God’s justice, we can let go of the feelings of anger that would threaten to overwhelm us. If vengeance is God’s, we don’t need to hold onto it and the accompanying feelings of anger and resentment. We are freed from the need to get even because God will do it for us in his time and in his way.

We can do good toward the person who meant us harm. So, instead of vengeance, “To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,” Paul says in verse 20.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. – Ephesians 4:31-32

God’s forgiveness toward us shapes how we are to behave toward others. God grants us the power to live out this new life and to be able to forgive even our enemies, letting go of the wrath, anger, bitterness, and malice that often binds our hearts when someone hurts us or our loved ones. A good practical example of this can be found in Corrie Ten Boom and her experience of the power of the Spirit enabling us to perform the impossible.

Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch Christian writer and itinerant evangelist. She was also a holocaust survivor. As an itinerant evangelist, she traveled across Europe, visiting churches, and sharing the good news about Jesus Christ.

During the second world war, her family had helped many Jewish people escape from the Nazis by hiding them in their home. They were discovered, and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where her sister died twelve days before Corrie was released.

In one of her books, The Hiding Place, Corrie retells the story of when she met a man who had been one of the guards stationed at the concentration camp where she and her sister Betsie had been held.

She was speaking at a church event when the man came up afterward to shake her hand. In that moment, she felt she did not have the strength to forgive that man, or even to perform the simple act of shaking his hand. She prayed fervently for God to intervene, and somehow the Lord provided what she needed at that moment to let go of her feelings of bitterness and resentment towards the man.

Corrie’s story illustrates how difficult forgiving your enemies is. No one would have blamed her for withholding forgiveness from a man who worked with the Nazis and did nothing to help her or her sister in their time of need. Like Joseph in the book of Genesis, however, Corrie felt compelled and was empowered, to perform that most challenging act of forgiving a person who had intended nothing but ill toward her.

Forgiving Your Enemies with the Help of Christian Counseling

The choice to forgive is a complicated and often difficult one. Forgiving your enemies is a choice that’s in your hands. We can choose to forgive our enemies and leave them in God’s hands, freeing ourselves of the negative feelings associated with that person.

If you need help with the forgiveness process or some other issue, please contact us today to schedule a counseling appointment. It would be our privilege to walk with you on the spiritual journey of releasing your burdens to the Lord.