Love & Forgiveness

How often have you claimed to love someone but found it difficult to forgive him/her when something went wrong? Think about some of your friends, who are no longer your friends because they wronged you in some way or the other. What about your relationship with your partner? Is your love still as strong as it used to be, or has it deteriorated with time and inevitable wrongs on either side?

We all know that no one is perfect, except God. When someone blames us for something wrong we have done, we immediately point to this fact as an excuse. We say things like, "Everyone makes mistakes", "As if you are so perfect!", and so on. Then why is it that we, despite knowing all of these things, find it hard to forgive?

Are you opening your mouth now to tell me that you do forgive the people you love? Because you must, and according to the Bible, love isn’t love without forgiveness. If you read 1 Corinthians 13, you will find the various qualities of love listed out beautifully. It's a popular passage, and quite self-explanatory, so I'm not going into the details of it here. I will, however, pick out one statement from the passage - the one on forgiveness. It says in verse 15, that love "keeps no record of wrongs".

It’s time to re-evaluate your understanding on the very virtue of forgiveness according to this standard! The kind of forgiveness the Bible talks about is that which goes beyond the act of forgiveness in the present - a kind of forgiveness which goes well into the future, and never brings up the case as ammunition for another argument. This means that if you do dig up an old incident in which your partner hurt you, or keep score as to how many times you were hurt as opposed to you hurting your partner, you have not forgiven in the right manner, and what you have for that person is NOT love.

Two other very significant verses that talk about how one must forgive are:

“Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs.” -  Proverbs 10:12

and

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” - 1 Peter 4:8

Both the above verses are referring to forgiveness as a virtue of love. Forgiveness, to an extent where we cover (forgive) the wrongs of our loved one and keep no record of it (forget). “Forgive and Forget” is an age-old saying, but newer ones have cropped up in the recent past. The world tells you to “forgive, but never forget how they made you feel” or “forgive, but never again trust him/her”. Those, my friend, are the exact examples of how not to forgive.

If you wish for your relationship to thrive on true love, strive for the virtue of forgiveness as described in the Bible. It will most definitely be a challenge, but prayer and practice can make you progress :)