Forgiveness Means Absorbtion

You'll have to forgive me for the lack of original content, but this Redemption book by Mike Wilkerson (of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, my soon-to-be-new-home-church) is utterly incredible. The book is written as a theological and pastoral overview of Mars Hill's redemption ministries. The redemption groups are organized in a 2-part system: healing from abuse & freedom from addiction. All of the groups are taught and lived out under the framework of the Exodus story. I want to share with you tonight a snippet from the chapter on the Passover which speaks about forgiveness in a really helpful light.

A helpful way to think about forgiveness is absorption. Imagine you're in a traffic, and another driver swerves into your lane, cutting you off and forcing you to hit the brakes to keep from crashing into his bumper. What do you do? If you flip him off and slam on your horn (not for safety, mind you, but for payback), you offend everyone else around you. They have to tolerate your road rage on top of the usual stresses of commuting. Furthermore, maybe the guy who cut you off didn't mean anything personal by it - he just needed to move over quickly to make his exit. But you, in your swearing, definitely meant somehthing personal against him. You have refused to absorb the offense and in the process have compounded the sin.

Absorption, says [Robert] Cheong, "is at the heart of forgiveness, since it involves the ability to deal with the pain in a way this it will not be passed on to anyone else." or, as Tolstoy put it, to forgive is to "swallow" evil and prevent it from going further. On the cross, Jesus overcame evil with good: he didn't return evil for evil; he didn't pass on the evil by seeking revenge; he absorbed it (Rom. 12:21; 1 Pet. 2:23). The only way we can truly absorb evil - the only way we can forgive - is to "roll it over" to Jesus who deals with it for us in perfect love and justice. To do that is to show love for our enemy because our desire that he should know the love and forgiveness of Jesus is greater than our desire to see him punished.

I am really benefiting pastorally from this book. Perhaps you're someone who has been wounded by events in your past, or perhaps you're someone who is struggling with a life-dominating issue. I can't think of another resource that has been this valuable in a long time. You can get the book on Amazon.