Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21
Forgiving Lord,
Yesterday we prayed about believing in the forgiveness of sins,
about really acknowledging the inexcusability of our own sin.
Today, we pray about the complexity of forgiving others their sins.
As C. S. Lewis pointed out, “Forgiving doesn’t mean excusing.”*
So many times, we say, “But I can’t forgive that —
they cheated me.
They bullied me.
They abused me.”
Exactly.
They did something we are called to forgive.
It is inexcusable.
We don’t need to make excuses for what they did.**
We don’t need to say it was okay.
We must forgive it.
If a friend broke her promise,
if a husband broke our hearts,
if a boss broke our trust,
we must forgive it.
What does it mean to forgive?
It is to look on their sin
and name it for what it is,
to pray to God
that he will remove our resentment
and our wish to make them pay.
It is not necessarily to trust fully
or to reconcile immediately
or to restore relationship
without the work of repentance and restoration.
Father, you know we are utterly incapable
of true forgiveness
without the love and sacrifice of Christ
working in and through us
by your grace.
Help us we pray
to forgive those who sin against us.
In the name of our forgiving Savior.
Amen
Read Romans 12: 17-21; 2 Corinthians 5:18; Colossians 3:13; Ephesians 4:32.
This prayer inspired by C.S. Lewis’s essay “On Forgiveness,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Essays
**As Lewis points out, we are also often better at making excuses for our own sin than we are for others.
