Forgiveness and Justice

Forgiveness is the opposite of revenge or punishment.  It could be argued that forgiveness is unjust, because a violation of the rules or standards requires an opposite reaction to restore balance in a relationship.

“All true forgiveness is substitutionary because no one really forgives without bearing the consequences of the other person’s sin.” (Neil Anderson)

Revenge is restoring the balance by adding an equal amount of bad to the other side of the scale, while forgiveness restores the balance by offsetting the original bad with an equal amount of "good," without adding to the other side of the scale.  If we see "good" as unselfishness, this begins to make sense.  The more significant an offense is, the more "good" it will take to forgive it.  The more consequences that have to be borne by the forgiver, the harder it is to truly forgive.

When we look at this line of reasoning in light of the Gospel, the events that take place become much more logical.  If an all powerful God wanted to forgive his people, why couldn't he just do that at his whim?  Instead that act required suffering, bearing the consequences for mankind's sin.  Now God is the one who setup these rules and principles in the first place, so technically he could have just made things work differently in the first place, but as it stands, his actions serve as an illustration to mankind, beyond the direct purpose they fulfill.  If all that was required for God to forgive us was for the thought to cross his mind, we would not grow from that, or become more Christ-like, in the image of God.

It is interesting to see how this applies to forgiving oneself.  We bear the consequences of our own sin either way.  But forgiveness is a positive way, instead of a negative one, which is why it is an important step to bringing continuing negative cycles to an end.

Forgiving other people is the simplest application of this idea.  For example in order to forgive my parents for mistakes they made when raising me, I have to be willing to bear the consequences of those mistakes in my life, without constantly blaming them. (I am realizing nearly everyone "recovers" from their upbringing in one sense or another, because our parents are all human)  Forgiving others removes our grievance from there feet, and puts it at God's feet, and he is usually the only one that can really do something about it anyway.