Christian Living

It May Be Hard to Forgive, But Its Harder Not To

by J.W. Phillips
01/27/25
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C.S. Lewis once observed that everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea—until they have something to forgive.

Some people just don’t want to forgive. What they really want is revenge. Ah, sweet revenge!

For a little while maybe … But if you follow that course, it won’t be long before what was once satisfyingly sweet will become sickening and sour.

In fact, there will be one you do not want to meet who will join you on that road! E.M. Bounds wrote, “An unforgiving spirit is not only Satan’s widest door into our hearts, but it is his strongest invitation and warmest welcome.”¹

Can you understand why? It’s because the person who refuses to forgive is in total agreement with the “Accuser of the brethren”! With laser beam intensity, he will encourage you to rivet your attention on how you have been wronged.

Stew in it!
Soak it all up!
Drench yourself in bitterness!

Following this advice, there are people today who harbor resentments, which at this point in their lives are much more costly than the original injustice inflicted against them.

Whenever they think of that person who wronged them, their eyes water, their stomach churns, their face becomes flushed, as memory (with remarkable accuracy) replays the entire episode.

By refusing to forgive they have empowered the wrongdoer to extend his or her harm! The bitterness they won’t let go refuses at the same time to let go of them!

The wall erected to shut that offending person out is the same wall that now locks them in. It is a prison wall, if only they would have the good sense to see it!

The fourth-century African bishop, Saint Augustine, whose mental acumen was so sharp he dominated theology for six-hundred years, once referred to these words— “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”—as “that terrible petition.” Terrible not in the sense of being erroneous or immoral, but in the sense of being awesome in its implications.

At first glance, these words appear to say that God will forgive us only as we forgive others; and therefore, if we refuse to forgive, by that refusal we will have forfeited any future forgiveness we might need from the Lord.

However, that isn’t exactly what’s being said in this petition. More accurately put, our unwillingness to forgive will reduce our capacity to receive forgiveness.

George MacDonald made this very point, saying no man who refuses to forgive his neighbor can believe that God is willing, yea wanting, to forgive him.

The underlying premise being: If we can’t believe, we can’t receive. It is in this way that a refusal to forgive can cut us off—decisively and drastically—from the cherished blessings of God.

But it doesn’t have to play out this way. Let me tell you of a man who chose a different path.

After a long and successful career, the poet, Edwin Markham, looked forward to his retirement. Then he made a shocking discovery: His good friend, a banker, had fraudulently misappropriated Edwin Markham’s life savings—and there was nothing he could do about it! Edwin Markham found himself a poor man, a pauper, at age 60.

“I must make a living,” he said. “There’s nothing else to do but to begin writing again.”

With bitterness in his heart, he then returned to his desk, attempting to write. But he was so obsessed with the wrong that had been done to him—the injustice of it, the unfairness of it—he couldn’t write.

One day, while sitting at his desk drawing circles, Markham decided that, like it or not, he had to forgive this man or he himself would die. So he bowed his head and lifted a prayer to God, saying, “Lord, I do forgive him.”

Upon saying those simple words, Edwin Markham felt a heavy burden instantly lifted from his shoulders. Momentarily, he noticed all those circles he had been doodling. Those circles then triggered a burst of inspiration, causing him to write the lines for which today he is most famous.

He drew a circle which shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout
But love and I had wit to win
We drew a circle that took him in.

And what do you know? For the next twenty years the poems and songs flowed generously from the pen of Edwin Markham. In fact, he found his greatest success during what were supposed to be his retirement years.

Now contrast Edwin Markham’s experience with that of Jonah.

Did you know that one of the greatest revivals in history was led by a man who didn’t want the people who heard him to be forgiven?

When the call came that day for Jonah to preach to the city of Nineveh, Jonah ran just as fast as he could—but in the opposite direction, toward Tarshish and not Joppa, some 2500 miles off course!

Indeed, Gentile salvation was such an abhorrent prospect to Jonah it took a storm and a miraculously prepared fish to track him down! And later, when the people of Nineveh did respond to the Lord and were forgiven, Jonah, the man who had preached that message, became furious.

The bizarre ending to this story finds Jonah sitting outside the city, fuming!

The all-consuming thought that preoccupied him was this—the very idea that forgiveness should be extended to these people! This thought caused Jonah to churn and burn inside, almost like a seething furnace.

The name Jonah may mean “the dove,” but there was nothing “gentle-as-a-dove” in Jonah’s response. Jonah became so enraged by the success of this revival he repeatedly asked the Lord to let him die!

Describing this sorry scene in his book, A Larger Christian Life, A.B. Simpson said of Jonah, “He sat under a withered gourd, his face blistered and swollen from the scorching sun and his eyes red from useless weeping.”²

Interestingly, from that time onward, we don’t hear another word about this man. For all we know, he ended his ministry, and his life, spiritually stuck.

Centuries later, when Jesus began his ministry, the objection was raised that no prophet had ever come from Galilee (John 7:52). But this charge wasn’t true. There was a prophet from Galilee—Jonah, the forgotten prophet. Forgotten, quite understandably, because he had such a lousy disposition and a stone-cold, unforgiving heart!

There’s no mention of Jonah in the “Hall of Fame” chapter of the Bible (Hebrews, chapter 11), even though 120,000 people came to the Lord through his ministry.

This stunning outcome in Nineveh was hardly predictable. No sir! These proud, pagan people had their own gods!

Despite the remarkable repentance in Nineveh, though, it was Jonah who still needed to repent. Angry that his prophecy of doom didn’t come to pass, and perhaps sensitive about loss of reputation, Jonah was steamed!

In his book, Seeing the Invisible, A.B. Simpson said of Jonah:

“… he left enough of his own wretched shadow across his work, and left his miserable, morbid and murmuring figure under the Assyrian sun as a memorial of one whom God might have made the most illustrious prophet of the ages if only he could have been rid of self.”³

For a time, very brief as it turned out, Jonah did improve—a little bit. But once the severe mercy of God let up, all such progress vanished. Thomas Goodwin wrote, “That was Jonah’s fault. Oh, he was a broken, humble man when in the whale’s belly; but how outrageous when out!”⁴

When free at last to be who he was, Jonah proved that the self that allows bitterness to soak in, and unforgiveness to grip the heart, is destined for defeat.

All along the shoreline of God’s kingdom we find one sidelined saint after another, each ruined and wrecked by this refusal to forgive.

The lesson should be clear: If we don’t let go of our unforgiving spirit, it will hold on to us with a gargantuan grip that hurts and harms until it bruises and breaks.

Notes:
1. E.M. Bounds, Winning the Invisible War, (Springdale, PA., Whitaker House, 1984), p.135.
2. A.B. Simpson, A Larger Christian Life, (Uhrichsville, OH., A Barbour Book, 1988), p.74.
3. A.B. Simpson, Seeing the Invisible, (Camp Hill, PA., Christian Publications, 1994), p.41.
4. Thomas Goodwin, Patience and Its Perfect Work, Kindle Edition, 2010, Kindle Locations: 782-783.