What Do Forgiving People Look Like?

Love is shown by forgiveness. How can we become people who forgive others as Jesus has forgiven us? What can we do? In this concluding post on forgiveness, I want to leave you with two things from Jesus’ example in the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10 that we need to be learning so that we can excel at forgiving people.

Be more concerned about being forgiving than being right. Now I don’t mean here that by being forgiving you are admitting that you are not right. Not in the least. What I am saying is that we should be much more proficient at exercising our privilege to forgive than our right to be right. This is the point of Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:21-35.

You remember the story. A wealthy king was looking through his books and settling his accounts and realized that one of his royal servants owed him upwards of a billion dollars. Of course he called the servant in, he did not have the money and begged for more time to pay it back. But instead of giving him more time, the king forgave the debt (notice that the servant did not ask for forgiveness).

It was not too much later that this same servant found a servant who owed him $1000.00. He cornered him, slammed him up against the wall and demanded his money. The servant did not have it and begged for more time to pay it back. But the servant refused, and threw him in jail.

News of this got to the king who became furious and ordered the servant back. “How could you treat him that for a $1000 debt when I forgave you your billion dollar debt to me?” The King reinstated the debt of the servant and threw him in jail until he could pay every penny back. “That,” Jesus says, “is how my Father will treat you unless you forgive your brother from the heart.” Be more concerned about being forgiving than being right.

Look for the good in others and as much as possible look past the bad. We need reasons to change, to grow, and to succeed. People will not change if they don’t have a reason to. If you don’t give a person a good reason to change they will continue doing exactly what they have always done. This is because people are reward oriented. Jesus knew this and sixteen times connected reward with obedience through faith; both heavenly rewards and earthly rewards. Very often we focus on giving the person the wrong reason to change.

One of the cardinal laws of personal relations is this: people thrive under praise and deteriorate under criticism. If we want to be exceptional in our relationships we have to master this basic principle. People thrive under praise and deteriorate under criticism. Look for the good in others and praise it. Praise it often. Praise it sincerely. Nothing motivates a person more to respect and respond to you more than honest praise. Nothing brings up a person’s defensiveness faster than criticism.

Mandi and I were given a challenge a while ago that we are still working at, and I think this is a good opportunity to pass the challenge on to you. For the next 90 days, totally eliminate all criticism of your spouse…even positive criticism. Now that’s 90 days in a row, not 90 days out of the year!

Some of you readers think you’re going to get of easy because you’re single or too young to be married. For you, you know that person who annoys you more than anyone else? Don’t say anything negative about him or her for the next 90 days. I don’t know who that is, but you do. Maybe it’s a friend, maybe it’s a co-worker. Maybe it’s your mom or dad. Don’t say anything negative about him or her for the next 90 days.

Now some of you are thinking, “Are you serious? If I did that I wouldn’t be able to talk to him!” Maybe you shouldn’t. And I bet there is at least one person reading this who is thinking, “How is my husband/my wife going to know what they are doing wrong if I don’t tell them?” Praise what they are doing right and watch how fast they learn.

Zacchaeus exceeded all the requirements of the law by returning four times what he had stolen and giving away half his wealth to the poor. Surely this is more than any who would rather Jesus criticized him could have hoped for. Jesus demonstrates against such thinking that a good meal and a smile can do more than years of social ostracizing by a grumbling crowd.

So let’s sum up these three posts:

Loving one another like Jesus loves us means being a forgiving person. Don’t let lack of repentance keep you from forgiving. Oftentimes forgiveness is the very thing that brings a person to repent.

Being forgiving means looking for the opportunity to forgive. It means exercising our privilege to forgive instead of our right to be right.

Forgiving people know that people thrive under praise and deteriorate under criticism. They know that being gracious and forgiving often accomplishes more than being critical and faultfinding does.