Biblical Forgiveness: Conditional or Unconditional?

Last night, Katie and I watched a show on PBS called, "Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate." While the program provided an intriguing overview of the varying responses of different communities and individuals to some of the more shocking atrocities of the past fifty years (including the tragic Amish schoolhouse shooting), it became clear early on that the discussion of forgiveness and its antithesis, anger, was not being done through a Biblical framework. I winced as I heard individuals conclude that forgiveness is a kind of cheap grace, and as a woman, whose father was shot more than fifty years ago during an anti-war bank robbery stunt, insisted that she could not forgive her offender because what she did was "not okay." I winced both out of sympathy for the victims' trauma and because of their fundamental misconceptions of forgiveness that their statements revealed. Forgiveness is a distinctly Christian act and it cannot be understood properly apart from the gospel. While on the one hand I identified with the woman being interviewed who scoffed at a quick, easy, unconditional forgiveness as "cheap grace", this is not true forgiveness. True forgiveness is gutsy and costly. In light of this, I would like to offer three things that characterizes Biblical forgiveness as conditional rather than unconditional. I realize that this is a controversial subject on which Christians may disagree. However, I believe that from the imperatives that we have in Scripture, we are to forgive as God has forgiven us and not differently (cf. Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13).

1. Biblical forgiveness takes sin seriously.

A common misconception that was continually perpetuated in the show last night was that forgiveness involved dismissing your offender's sin. This drastically undermines the essence of forgiveness. Forgiveness does not say, "It's okay" or "No big deal" but "It is a big deal. Your sin against me is horrible. But I forgive you anyway." What makes forgiveness so unique, so transcendent, so supernatural is not that it involves ignoring a person's offense but that it involves recognizing the person's offense in all its grotesque ugliness. This act is scandalous to the world. The world can overlook a wrong, excuse sin, or even overlook a person's misdeed, but forgiveness is the heirloom of the church. It is the church as a body of sinners that considers sin in all of its darkness and still forgives. However, the question must be asked: if Biblical forgiveness does not minimize sin, how is such forgiveness still possible?

2. Biblical forgiveness is rooted in the cross. The fundamental condition for Biblical forgiveness is the cross. This is why any attempts to discuss forgiveness apart from a cross-centered perspective will ultimately fail. The reason we forgive is because God forgave us (cf. Ephesians 4:32). He did this by providing his Son as a propitiation for our sins (cf. Romans 3:25). The cross also demonstrates for us that forgiveness is not cheap. It is not without condition. God did not simply dismiss our trespasses against us. Instead, he punished Jesus in our place so that we might be freely accepted and acquitted. Further, because the God of Scripture is a just God who avenged his name that had been dishonored by pouring out his wrath on his Son, we have no need to take revenge. Although righteous anger is an appropriate response to the injustices committed against us, a belief in a just God who satisfied his wrath in Christ on the cross ensures us that all wrongs will be righted. The cross ultimately liberates us to forgive knowing revenge is God's perogative (cf. Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19). Therefore, from the standpoint of the cross, it is precisely because God has met the condition of justice by placing his Son on the cross that we can forgive others.

3. Biblical forgiveness is conditional. With the cross in mind, we can now see that how we forgive our enemies is not to be different from how God forgives his enemies. Additionally, we do not receive God's forgiveness apart from the condition of repentant faith. The implications of this I believe include the fact that anger is allowed for the believer. The Christian does not just have to respond with a warm fuzzy feeling of forgiveness every time he is wronged. Some offenses will go unforgiven precisely because the offender refuses to recognize his sin. It is for this reason that I think, however well-intentioned, the response to the Nickel Mines shooting was unfounded. Such a forgiveness is fairly criticized as "cheap grace." In contrast though, Biblical forgiveness is a kind of forgiveness which recognizes that even in repentant offenders there are temporal consequences. Biblical forgiveness does not undermine the need for the punitive actions of the state. What this means is that forgiveness is not a virtue in itself but is a virtue in the context of God's demonstration of forgiveness through the cross.

I do not doubt that I may have erred in my limited discussion here of such a difficult topic. Many of you may ardently disagree. Please feel free to respond and show me the point where you take issue.