Anyone who has taken piano lessons or played a sport or learned a new language knows the importance of practice. A dedicated piano student plays every day at home. A language learner uses flash cards to memorize new vocabulary. An athlete runs drills, lifts weights, or studies new plays. Elite achievers often practice for hours a day.
Practice in Our Spiritual Lives
In the Christian life, we depend on Jesus and His life, death, and resurrection for our salvation. We rest in God’s forgiveness and love for this life and the life to come. Through the Holy Spirit, we mature spiritually as we grow to be more like Jesus. But the Holy Spirit often chooses not to transform us overnight. It takes practice.
The apostle Peter offers this advice:
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. . . . Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. (2 Peter 1:5–7, 10)
As sinners saved by Jesus, we are wholly dependent on His grace. As forgiven children of God, we are advised to “make every effort” to live the way Jesus taught us to live. Peter encourages believers to practice, and one way we can make this effort is by practicing forgiveness.
Building Forgiveness Muscles
Learning to forgive is like learning any new skill, except we have the added help of the Holy Spirit. Even so, forgiving people who have wronged us, especially when their actions have caused us considerable hurt, can be one of the most difficult things God asks of us.
Maybe we need some practice.
An aspiring pianist doesn’t begin with a concerto but with scales and simple melodies. Where in your day-to-day life can you practice low-stakes forgiveness?
Living in a metropolitan area gives me plenty of opportunities for small acts of forgiveness: the driver who cuts me off in traffic, the customer who holds up the line in a store, the cutthroat competition of the Target parking lot. After I gasp and slam on my brakes, what do I think and say about the driver who nearly caused a wreck? I can give in to anger and let the incident ruin my morning, or I can choose to let it go, to consciously forgive the driver, even to pray for him or her. It is a small thing, but over time, we can build our forgiveness muscles. Think about your daily life. When does God give you opportunities to practice forgiveness?
Paul uses the language of physical training in his letter to Timothy:
Train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. (1 Timothy 4:7–10)
Weight training utilizes progressively heavier weights as the athlete gets stronger. We can also step up our forgiveness training. When forgiving strangers for annoying grievances becomes habitual, we can progress to a heavier lift: forgiving people we know for the hurtful things they have done. What careless words said by a friend or coworker do you still remember and resent? The next time you’re tempted to ruminate and get angry all over again, pause and pray for God to give you the strength to forgive. Every time you remember those words, remind yourself that you have forgiven the person.
Forgiveness Isn’t Always Fair
Forgiveness can be painful. God created us with a strong sense of justice, but our sinful nature can twist that good instinct for justice into the desire for vengeance. The last thing our human nature wants is to watch someone who hurt us go unpunished.
On this point, though, Paul quotes God’s simple and direct words:
Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” (Romans 12:19–20)
As we step up our forgiveness training, we may reach a point when our whole being cries out, “But it’s not fair!” Truthfully, forgiveness is not fair, not in a purely human sense. It feels like losing to let someone who hurt us “get away with it.” But we are not called to mete out our own justice. We follow Jesus, who literally died so that we could be forgiven.
Jesus calls us to take up our own crosses and follow Him into the pain of forgiving those who do not deserve it. He promises to be with us as we do.
When Forgiveness Seems Impossible
To get physically stronger through weight training, we’re advised to “lift to failure.” In other words, we increase either the amount of weight or the number of repetitions of an exercise until we can’t finish another.
Forgiving those life-changing sins against us—violence, betrayal, discrimination, abuse—seems literally impossible. Humanly speaking, it is. Only the Holy Spirit can give us the ability to forgive, and not just those big lifts but the smaller ones too.
This is when we encounter one of the holy mysteries of the Christian life: We toil and strive, we train and practice, we seek God and try to forgive others, we make every effort. We inevitably fail and fail again. Yet, we still get stronger and more mature. Even when we fail, God succeeds. We are not in this alone, and we don’t forgive alone. Listen to Paul’s paradoxical description of spiritual growth:
Therefore, my beloved . . . work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12–13)
Paul encourages believers to “work out your own salvation,” which definitely sounds impossible. But then he continues, “For it is God who works in you.” So who is really doing the work?
In His grace, God intertwines our work and His. Jesus’ work on the cross makes it possible for us to receive His forgiveness and also to extend forgiveness to others. The Holy Spirit gives us the desire and the strength to practice forgiveness, and as we practice, He “who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
See how God’s forgiveness can transform your life in Unforgivable? by Ted Kober and Mark Rockenbach.
