When Authentic Forgiveness is Achieved

True forgiveness is a painful journey, a prolonged wrestling with a wound, and a process aimed at achieving genuine repentance by the offender, graceful acceptance by the victim, and restoration of the broken relationship. This is true forgiveness in the biblical sense.
 
Forgiving is not an instant solution or a quick fix. It is a long, deep, difficult, and painful process of wrestling with the injury, and risking a return to conversation and a resumption of relationship. The Christ of the cross, who shows how costly it is for God to forgive, is our great example (1 Pet 2:21). Augsburger states, “God used the Cross to make forgiveness possible and to model forgiving to an unforgiving world.
 
Some ask when authentic forgiveness is achieved. Augsburger states, “Grace and truth, acceptance and confrontation, sacrifice and prophetic rebuke are needed in resolving alienation, injustice, or interpersonal injuries.” Authentic forgiveness requires one party to repent and the other party to have the grace to accept that repentance with trust and respect. Authentic forgiveness occurs when there is mutual recognition that both repentance and acceptance are genuine, and when the severed relationship is mended. The final stage in authentic forgiveness is when the victim reconnects with the offender and discovers that the strange chemistry of reconciliation can heal the wound until nothing remains but the remembered scar with a transformed meaning. Such forgiveness results in a deeper and stronger union than before.

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.

Forgiveness is Not Unconditional

Conflicts are not resolved when misdeeds are overlooked—the hurts continue to ache and the relationships continue to decay. As forgiveness enthrones justice, to make harmony genuine, both parties should discuss the issues in depth with one another so that they can confess, repent, and reconcile with substance.
 
As Western culture has become increasingly individualized, the importance of a moral context has been trivialized and forgiveness has often been reduced to passive forbearance. It is only when moral values and virtues are central to the meaning of personhood that the importance of forgiveness is appreciated. Augsburger writes: “Authentic forgiveness is that cluster of motivations which seeks to regain the brother and the sister in reconciliation.… The courage to forgive is an excellency of character, a virtue that enables one to act in restoration of personal relationships, to risk in reconstruction of social networks, to commit oneself to live in moral integrity.” Forgiveness demands the moral virtues of justice, fairness, love, mercy, repentance, and reconciliation.
 
In Christian tradition, repentance and reconstruction of right relationship are central to the process of forgiveness. According to Augsburger, repentance should consist of three dimensions: remorse, restitution, and renewal. Remorse, when accompanied by a full detailed discussion of the issues, is a genuine sorrow. Restitution is an attempt by the offender to restore what was destroyed, again, when accompanied by full discussion. Renewal is a change in life direction, with the offender not only repudiating past behavior but affirming a new principle of moral action is needed. 

Forgiveness is the mutual recognition that repentance is intended, embraced, and pursued. Forgiveness is not unconditional. Augsburger writes: “Love may be unconditional, forgiveness is not.… The familiar teaching of unconditional, unilateral forgiveness is not forgiving but a return to loving.… Forgiveness … recognizes the complexity of reopening the future in risk, restoring relationship in trust, and recreating the nature of that alliance in justice.” Thus, forgiveness without repentance and reconciliation is incomplete; it is simply love for one’s enemy and a willing heart to forgive.

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.

The Relationship between Forgiveness and Repentance

Authentic forgiveness is a mutual recognition that repentance is genuine and reconciliation has been achieved. Without repentance, authentic forgiveness offered by the victim cannot be consummated because the victim can only extend a forgiving heart, which indeed demonstrates a love of one’s neighbor and enemy.
 
Jesus’s cry from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34), has often been misinterpreted to mean that he requires no repentance from sinners. But Jesus’s words echo the Old Testament practice of sacrifice for unintentional sin (see Num 15:27–31). His words confirm that his death is a once-and-for-all sacrifice to offer divine forgiveness for those people who act wrongly in ignorance. Nevertheless, this wrongful act in ignorance does not mean that there is no requirement of repentance.
 
In Acts 3:13–19, Peter stresses that people who deny God in ignorance also need to repent. To those who denied, rejected, or even killed Jesus, Peter said, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” (Acts 3:19). Luke describes how Jesus, after his resurrection, reminded the disciples that everything written about him in Israel’s Scriptures must be fulfilled (Luke 24:44–46) and then authorized them to go to all nations to preach “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47). In obedience to this commission, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, preached powerfully about the gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). Repentance is essential for God’s forgiveness of sin and for salvation.
 
Repentance is indeed a necessary response to divine forgiveness and the salvation offered by Jesus. This is crucial because when disciples are called to follow Jesus to embody forgiveness, they will consider how repentance is associated with forgiveness in Jesus’s eyes. Many people tend to trivialize victimization by ignoring the claims of victims if they interpret what Jesus does for us as “cheap grace”—to use Bonhoeffer’s term. Cheap grace must be rejected because the forgiveness offered by Jesus was very costly—indeed, it cost Jesus his life. And Jesus takes very seriously the offenses that human beings commit against God and against one another, and he requires that sinners repent.

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.

Forgiveness Restores Communion

Authentic forgiveness is more than absolution of guilt. Based on the Trinitarian idea that God is a communal being, L. Gregory Jones argues that confession and forgiveness should take place communally. God, through his self-giving communion, is willing to bear the cost of forgiveness to restore humanity to communion in his eschatological kingdom. In response, human beings are called to embody forgiveness, with the aim of restoring communion between God and humankind, and with one another, seeking to remember the past truthfully, repair brokenness, heal division, and reconcile relationships.
 
Jones confronts the tendencies, both in the church and in other social contexts, to see the world either as “lighter” or “darker” than it is. To see the world as lighter than it is means the tendency to trivialize forgiveness by making it therapeutically easy, without dealing with repentance and justice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer polemicized against such “cheap grace.” He resisted, among other things, preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, and communion without confession. Sin cannot be overlooked or forgotten but, instead, must be confronted and judged in the context of forgiveness. To see the world as darker than it is, on the other hand, is to view forgiveness as impossible because violence is seen as the ultimate master of us all.
 
Jones resists the notions of either grace without judgment or judgment without grace, of either forgiveness without repentance or repentance without forgiveness. Grace without judgment is cheap grace that does not result in transformation of lives; judgment without grace holds others accountable but results in unbroken cycles of violence. Forgiveness without repentance invites continuity of sin, while repentance without forgiveness can lead to despair and self-destruction. To confront the tendency to trivialize authentic forgiveness, Jones asserts, “When we fail to see and embody this forgiveness in relation to particular lives, specific situations, and concrete practices, we too easily transmute the notions of judgment and grace, forgiveness and repentance, into abstractions that destroy rather than give life.”

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.

Authentic Forgiveness Comprises Repentance and Acceptance

Authentic forgiveness, in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, is an interpersonal transaction of the offender offering genuine repentance and the offended recognizing and accepting that repentance resulting in reconciliation of the broken relationship. Repentance—consisting of remorse, restitution, and renewal—and reconciliation of broken relationships are central to the process of authentic forgiveness. This is illustrated in the story of Joseph and his brothers, the parable of the prodigal son, and in the exhortations of Leviticus 6:1–7; Matthew 5:23–24; 18:15–17, and Luke 17:3–4.

In the story of the prodigal son, the younger son was filled with remorse as he confessed that he had sinned against heaven and against his father. His restitution and renewal came when he felt contrition and asked for nothing but to be a slave to serve his father. Reconciliation occurred when the father, following the son’s repentance, welcomed his lost son with full honor. Since authentic forgiveness should comprise both repentance and reconciliation, it is incomplete if there is repentance but no reconciliation. The central motif of biblical forgiveness sees reconciliation as its goal. Augsburger points out, “Authentic forgiveness is that cluster of motivations which seeks to regain the brother and the sister in reconciliation … The courage to forgive is an excellency of character, a virtue that enables one to act in restoration of personal relationships, to risk in reconstruction of social networks, to commit oneself to live in moral integrity.” 

Authentic forgiveness, offered by victims to their offenders, takes its final step when victims reconnect with those who have hurt them. Authentic forgiveness requires one party to repent and the other party to extend grace to the repentant one with both trust and respect. When there is mutual recognition that both repentance and acceptance are genuine and the broken relationship is reconstructed, authentic forgiveness occurs. The victim discovers that the strange chemistry of reconciliation can heal the wound until nothing remains but the remembered scar with a transformed meaning. Such forgiveness results in a deeper and stronger healing and union than before. 

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.

Individualism Damages True Forgiveness

Western culture is permeated by individualism. On the positive side, individualism emphasizes that every human being has dignity and self-worth—as opposed to being a collection of insignificant atoms in the mass of humanity—and encourages responsibility. The flip side is that individualism promotes, as its central value, an individual’s self-interest. Individuals act on their own behalf, and the needs of the individual are regarded as more important than the needs of the community.

Authentic forgiveness is never just about a single individual’s need or self-healing; it is a social transaction, restoring and reconciling a broken relationship between the offender and the offended. Due to the emphasis on self-care, forgiveness in an individualistic culture has ceased to be an interpersonal bridge and become an intrapersonal process of self-healing that is unrelated to the community. Unfortunately, in Western cultures, unilateral forgiveness has become the norm due to psychological and sociological reasons such as self-love and the understanding of forgiveness as a private act of intrapsychic release.

Today, individualism influences many churches around the globe, the understanding and practice of forgiveness among Christians is distorted. The kind of forgiveness taught at these churches places less emphasis on the restoration of impaired relationships and lays more stress on intrapsychic release. Gregory Jones, in his book Embodying Forgiveness, explains that the unilateral act from an individual paradigm trivializes forgiveness. It makes it therapeutically easy, but the result is damaging to the Christian community because there is no sense of restoration of communion and reconciliation of broken relationships. The unilateral act of forgiveness causes the offender to ignore the need for repentance and reconciliation, which are crucial aspects of authentic forgiveness, both theologically and biblically.

Christianity is not solitary. The Christian community should not be directed by individualism. McClendon believes that the communal life of Christians was formed through the covenant meal hosted by Christ at the Lord’s Table. Since then, disciples have been connected to one another as community. To maintain community, both Christ’s costly forgiveness of human beings and human beings’ costly forgiveness of one another are essential. Forgiveness, writes Augsburger, “is not a private act of intrapsychic release but instead a truly social transaction of interpersonal reconciliation. The conflict belongs to the community as well as to the disputants … and the understanding of forgiveness is focused on regaining the others as brothers and sisters.”

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.

Two Aspects of Authentic Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a divine gift offered by God to overcome hurt, brokenness, bitterness, and hatred, in order to release people from their past, reopen the future, and empower them to risk further relationship.
 
Authentic forgiveness comprises two aspects: mutual recognition that repentance is genuine, and reconciliation of the broken relationship. Practicing authentic forgiveness brings transformation, both personally and communally that God intends.
 
Forgiveness, however, is understood and expressed differently in different cultures. Some forgive by overlooking, some by forgetting; some forgive to avoid conflict-without discussing in depth each party’s responsibility-and some forgive to achieve self-healing without dealing with the broken relationship. Such deviations from biblically based forgiveness cannot fully renew people or empower them to break out of the cycle of brokenness and blind retaliation. 
 
Authentic forgiveness is not merely about harmony; it requires discussion of the issues in depth, genuine confession and repentance by one or both parties, and reconciliation.
 
Many people misunderstand what forgiveness truly is. It is not forgetting the past, overlooking wrongdoing, maintaining harmony at all costs, or a one-sided act to release pain. Rather, it is a social transaction that comprises genuine repentance by the offender, the offer of forgiveness by the victim to the offender, and restoration of the broken relationship of the parties involved.
 
Authentic forgiveness offered by the victim is consummated when there is genuine repentance by the offender and reconciliation of broken relationship between the parties involved. Genuine repentance of the offender should consist of three elements: remorse, restitution, and renewal.

 

- John C. W. Tran, Authentic Forgiveness: A Biblical Approach, 2020.