Have I Really Forgiven Someone If I Keep Remembering Their Wrong?

00:00:00.000 | Well, have we forgiven someone if the wrong they committed against us keeps replaying

00:00:09.800 | in our minds?

00:00:10.800 | It's a question from a listener named Emily.

00:00:12.680 | It's a very good question.

00:00:14.880 | But before we get to that question, today is the final day of T4G in Louisville, and

00:00:21.160 | we're talking today over the telephone, not over the studio line.

00:00:26.000 | And so here's that email from Emily.

00:00:28.400 | Dear Pastor John, thank you for your years of faithful ministry online.

00:00:32.640 | My question is in regards to forgiveness.

00:00:35.000 | The other day, my husband made a hurtful comment about my appearance and with the help of wise

00:00:39.280 | counsel and older woman in the faith, walked me through expressing my hurt to my husband

00:00:43.800 | about it.

00:00:45.320 | Of course, he asked for my forgiveness right away.

00:00:47.960 | But the lingering question I have is this, how do I know if I've truly forgiven him?

00:00:52.640 | It still hurts when I think about it.

00:00:55.040 | And I do think about the event.

00:00:56.920 | I'm seeking by God's help to serve and love him despite what I feel.

00:01:02.200 | But is lingering pain from the offense a sign that I have not really forgiven my husband?

00:01:09.360 | Let me start broad in a way that I think will be more generally helpful to all of us who

00:01:17.600 | are married and even others in similar kinds of relationships, perhaps, and then get more

00:01:25.640 | specific for Emily's issue of whether she has really forgiven her husband.

00:01:32.840 | What I have found in our marriage, which I did not expect, and which I think is true

00:01:40.640 | more generally in marriage, is that for Christians, that is for me, who want to bring their lives

00:01:50.080 | into complete conformity to the teaching of Scripture, the great battle for holiness,

00:01:57.120 | that is the battle for being the most loving person that you can be, as God portrays and

00:02:04.480 | defines holiness in the Bible, that battle consists more than I ever thought it would

00:02:13.040 | in the struggle to avoid sinning in response to being sinned against.

00:02:21.040 | Let me say that again because it might sound a little complicated.

00:02:26.320 | One of the greatest battles for holiness and love in Christian marriage is the battle to

00:02:33.080 | avoid my sin in response to my wife's sin, which I may feel against me.

00:02:41.580 | But I have in mind the kind of thing that Emily's talking about, namely just being sinned

00:02:46.360 | against by words that hurt or by neglecting words that would have helped or by facial

00:02:53.540 | expressions that seem to indict or patterns of behavior that seem indifferent or disappointments

00:03:02.840 | that seem they could have been avoided with just a little more care, et cetera, et cetera.

00:03:08.880 | And of course, complicating this is that we often feel sinned against when the words or

00:03:17.900 | the behavior had no sinful intention behind them at all.

00:03:23.740 | And if we tried to forgive such a behavior, it would be offensive because the other person

00:03:31.320 | doesn't even feel that she or he did sin against us, and so our offering forgiveness is like

00:03:39.920 | an indictment that they don't feel guilty of.

00:03:44.060 | So with that complication, one of John Piper's major battles, and sounds like others share

00:03:53.920 | it, battles for holiness in marriage and other relationships is not simply avoiding sinning

00:04:04.100 | against others.

00:04:05.660 | That's the simple way I thought about it as I began marriage.

00:04:08.260 | I think I'm just going to avoid sinning against my wife.

00:04:12.380 | But rather, the more complicated situation of avoiding sinful responses to the sins of

00:04:20.540 | others.

00:04:21.920 | And what makes this battle so peculiar is that in the very moment when we may be sinning

00:04:30.740 | against someone, we have strong feelings of self-justification because of how we've been

00:04:37.600 | sinned against.

00:04:39.240 | So it's subtle.

00:04:42.420 | We can hardly bring ourselves to think of ourselves as right now having to deal with

00:04:47.260 | my sin when really the issue is her sin.

00:04:52.120 | What Paul Tripp calls your inner lawyer is rising up and saying, "Hey, it's her problem.

00:04:57.680 | It's her problem.

00:04:58.680 | You don't have any sin problem here.

00:05:01.000 | It's her problem."

00:05:02.000 | When in fact, my biggest issue right now is my sin.

00:05:07.800 | And some of the feelings that we have may be warranted, may be justified.

00:05:14.160 | Some of the hurt or the indignation may be justified.

00:05:19.340 | So you can see how complicated the emotional moment is when there is an actual warranted

00:05:26.880 | sense of being wronged.

00:05:29.760 | We say that again, an actual warranted sense of being wronged along with the hearts rising

00:05:39.200 | up sinfully in response to the wrong.

00:05:43.920 | So all of that to say that Emily's question is a very important part of a larger and common

00:05:52.040 | issue in most long-term relationships, especially marriage, where we inevitably say and do things

00:06:00.800 | that hurt or disappoint or frustrate the other person and where we must navigate the complexities

00:06:09.400 | of both being genuinely wronged and yet dealing with our own sinful responses to being wronged.

00:06:20.680 | One of the most important things that I see in all relationships, especially marriage,

00:06:27.800 | is that my responsibility before God is not, not the behaviors of my wife, but my responses

00:06:36.320 | to those behaviors.

00:06:37.720 | It's my responsibility.

00:06:39.200 | It is very easy, especially in the beginning of a relationship, to feel like, "I gotta

00:06:45.160 | fix all the things that are coming against me that I don't like, you know, that frustrate

00:06:50.400 | me or disappoint me or wrong me.

00:06:52.440 | I gotta fix that other person and help them stop doing the things that bother me or frustrate

00:06:58.840 | me or wrong me."

00:07:01.320 | Instead of realizing my number one responsibility before God and my number one challenge in

00:07:08.680 | holiness is not getting my partner changed, but getting myself changed so that I respond

00:07:19.120 | in godly, Christ-like, humble, loving ways, even if what is being said is hurtful.

00:07:27.040 | It seems to me that the overwhelming challenge of the New Testament to all of us is, "Do

00:07:32.560 | not return evil for evil," 1 Peter 3:9.

00:07:35.880 | "Do good to those who hate you," Luke 6:27.

00:07:40.600 | Paul, "When reviled, we bless.

00:07:43.440 | When persecuted, we endure.

00:07:45.640 | When slandered, we entreat," 1 Corinthians 4:12.

00:07:51.240 | The deep, sweet, strong contentment we have to have, we must have in Christ in order to

00:08:00.320 | have emotional resources to respond like that, that's the great beauty of the Christian life.

00:08:07.000 | That kind of sweet, deep, strong contentment in Christ.

00:08:12.320 | That magnifies Christ wonderfully.

00:08:15.960 | To have resources to respond encouragingly and hopefully and wisely to one who wrongs

00:08:22.760 | us instead of angrily or with self-pity or whining or manipulative moping or silent treatment

00:08:32.120 | or sullenness.

00:08:33.120 | You can hear my acquaintance with my sin.

00:08:37.800 | This is the great miracle that the children of God, John Piper anyway, wants to experience.

00:08:47.280 | We all hurt each other and disappoint each other and frustrate each other almost every

00:08:53.900 | day in some degree.

00:08:56.920 | The great challenge in the Christian life is to be so deeply and joyfully content in

00:09:03.120 | our fellowship with Jesus and all that God promises to be for us in Him that we are not

00:09:08.600 | drained, we're not drained by the disappointments of our relationships.

00:09:15.360 | So with regard to Emily's specific question, I would say this, consider the analogy between

00:09:22.600 | being emotionally hurt and physically hurt.

00:09:25.240 | When Paul was whipped with 39 lashes, even after he forgave his persecutor, there would

00:09:32.960 | have been big welts on his back and terrible lacerations on his back that would have hurt

00:09:39.400 | him for weeks to come.

00:09:41.960 | So on this analogy, there can be both physical and emotional pain that lingers after the

00:09:51.100 | act of forgiveness.

00:09:53.400 | This pain in and of itself is not necessarily sinful.

00:09:59.720 | It's not necessarily a sign of unforgiveness.

00:10:03.240 | However, we all know that both physical pain and especially emotional pain can morph, morph

00:10:12.640 | in an instant into resentment and anger and bitterness.

00:10:16.460 | And that morphing can be so subtle that it's hard to know when it's happened.

00:10:22.040 | And that's why Emily is asking her question.

00:10:25.100 | It's hard to know when her pain is morphing into selfishness and bitterness and resentment.

00:10:35.220 | So I would just conclude with four brief suggestions for Emily and for the rest of us to keep our

00:10:42.600 | pain and our sorrow from morphing into sinful, unforgiving resentment.

00:10:48.460 | Number one, let's do what Jesus did in 1 Peter 2, 23, where instead of returning evil for

00:10:55.340 | evil, he handed over to him who judges justly.

00:10:58.780 | We consciously take any sense of being wronged and we hand it over to God who is able to

00:11:06.220 | settle accounts more justly and wisely than we can.

00:11:09.420 | Number two, direct your mind away from the hurt, away from whatever act you're remembering

00:11:17.600 | to what is true and beautiful and pure and lovely and praiseworthy, like Paul says, with

00:11:23.060 | a sense of being treated by God better than we deserve.

00:11:26.980 | And number three, renounce all tendencies to punish or wound your spouse with acts or

00:11:33.900 | words or looks or silence.

00:11:36.060 | And lastly, earnestly will and work for the good of the one you have forgiven.

00:11:44.740 | The real sign of forgiveness is that you don't seek to punish the other.

00:11:50.360 | You seek the good of the other.

00:11:53.940 | So good.

00:11:54.940 | Those are vital hedges that we need in our lives against this toxic resentment that grows

00:12:00.200 | up when we relive the wrongs of others against us, especially in marriage.

00:12:04.700 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:12:05.700 | That was John Piper over the phone today.

00:12:07.420 | Rarely do we do that, but sometimes we must.

00:12:10.080 | Thank you for making the Ask Pastor John podcast a part of your day.

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00:12:27.940 | us a question of your own, you can do those things at our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:12:32.140 | Well, when it comes to all those New Testament warnings aimed at the rich, are those warnings

00:12:40.180 | directed at middle-class Americans today?

00:12:42.900 | Are we the wealthy ones?

00:12:44.620 | We're going to break for the weekend and tackle that one on Monday.

00:12:47.180 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.

00:12:48.620 | We'll see you then.

00:12:49.620 | And have a great weekend.

00:12:51.020 | And if you're traveling home from Louisville, have safe travels on your way home.

00:12:54.340 | And we'll see you back here on Monday with John Piper back in the studio.

00:12:58.060 | We'll see you then.

00:12:58.780 | [END]

00:13:00.780 | 1. What is the New Testament?

00:13:02.780 | 2. What is the New Testament?

00:13:04.780 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Have I Really Forgiven Someone If I Keep Remembering Their Wrong?

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