Search
Close this search box.

Losing My Loopholes: A Meditation on Forgiveness


If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. 
Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them. 
– Jesus

“Bingo.”

“This is it.” I thought to myself. “This is my loophole.”

For a long time I’ve been looking for a way out of doing something I haven’t at all wanted to do.

I’d been searching for an excuse out of forgiving a group of people who’ve wounded me, and been delighted to find that it was Jesus himself who was letting me off the hook.

It was the stuff an angry, spiteful Christian’s dreams are made of.

“If they repent…”

It was that TV courtroom drama moment when they lawyer starts to speak and just nails somebody—Boom. Fade to black. Roll credits.

Those words felt like escape to me. They felt like a reprieve.

For a brief moment I was lighter. I considered myself off the hook; exempt from pardoning those who’ve made me feel such pain. For a second or two I was once again free to hold that heavy grudge over my damagers, until the day that they come crawling back to me with remorseful hearts in hand and unrestrained, tearful words of contrition.

(Then, maybe I’ll think about it).

But my newfound freedom didn’t last very long. I remembered that this isn’t what we’re doing here.

This living a life of faith thing isn’t about looking for loopholes.

It isn’t about twisting one little phrase of Scripture to make life easier or to avoid sacrifice or to lower the bar.

It isn’t about exploiting the letter of the law to accommodate my anger.

Christianity isn’t about figuring out how to get Jesus to consent to me being a jerk to someone else.

The world has enough justified Jesus Jerks roaming around to last us an eternity and then some.

This isn’t about them, and it isn’t about me either.

My standard for loving people can’t be the capacity of my own heart, with its pettiness and pride and selfishness.

The Cross reminds me that the standard for a follower of Jesus, is cultivating in myself the very heart of Christ.

You don’t need to proof text that. You don’t need smoking gun Scripture quotes. You just know it when you see it. You feel it when you live it.

Faith is found in pursuing the kind of life that defies what is expected or earned or deserved from another.

It’s the striving to not simply give back what you received, but to give something undeserved, better, and beautiful in return.

That is what this Grace business is all about. It removes all of my loopholes. 

And that’s a good thing, because the truth is this forgiveness frees us as we give it. It removes from our own shoulders, the burden of needing to hear just the right words or discern someone else’s heart or believe their remorse is genuine before we forgive.

In fact, it releases us from needing someone else to be remorseful at all.

If I seek to emulate Jesus, I no longer have to catalog every grievance with those who brought pain in my past. I don’t have to inventory each relationship and keep track of the tipping points for pardoning them. That’s a wasteful use of time and energy.

Loopholes can be nooses.

Lately I’m realizing that “letting someone of the hook” isn’t a sign of weakness at all.

It isn’t them winning and me losing.

In fact, it’s not letting them off the hook at all, it’s setting me free. It’s releasing me from the difficult, exhausting task of holding all of these grudges until I determine that the objects of those grudges are each worthy of their removal.

It’s giving my heart more bandwidth to do something good in the world.

In forgiving, I’m not agreeing with those who’ve hurt me. I’m not condoning their conduct or sanctioning the terrible things they’ve done or agreeing with their motives or their methods. I’m looking at all of it soberly and honestly and saying, “That’s pretty awful, but it isn’t enough to destroy me. It won’t harden me”.

Forgiveness was never about the one receiving it. Jesus knew that. His life testified to it. His death did. His resurrection did.

Real love is sacrifice. Real forgiveness too.

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” – Luke 23:34

My calling is clear: In this life, I don’t get to play God, I get to imitate Jesus.

I’m slowly learning to forgive some people I really have no desire to forgive, who have never asked for me forgiveness, and who may never.

I will count this as personal growth, and evidence that true faith stretches us beyond what we could or would do alone.

I’m through looking for loopholes out of loving people well.

Share this: