The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. [Psalm 103:8-12 (ESV)]
When Moravian missionaries first arrived in the Arctic, they found no single word in the Inuktitut language for forgiveness. That doesn’t mean the Inuit people didn’t let go of past wrongs, just that they didn’t have a single world for doing so. Since forgiveness is an essential concept in Christianity, the missionaries wanted a single word that captured the kind of forgiveness found in Psalm 103. Using Inuktitut words, they came up issumagijoujungnainermik meaning “not-being-able-to-think-about-it-anymore.” This 24-letter multi-syllable word beautifully describes the God who will “cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” [Micah 7:19], who vows to “forgive their iniquity, and…remember their sin no more,” [Jeremiah 31:34], and who promises to blot out our transgressions and not remember our sins.[Isaiah 43:25]
The kind of forgiveness expressed in issumagijoujungnainermik is not limited to God. That is the kind of forgiveness we Christ-followers are to have for the offenses of others. A story about nursing pioneer and Red Cross founder Clara Barton illustrates issumagijoujungnainermik. When a friend reminded Barton of a spiteful act done to her years earlier, she acted as if it never happened. When the friend questioned, “Don’t you remember it?” Barton vehemently replied, “No! I distinctly remember forgetting it.” True forgiveness is deliberately choosing not to remember that wrong. Without our deliberate effort to put offenses aside, it’s easy for past hurts to weasel their way right back into our hearts and minds.
A recent Pickles comic strip (drawn by Brian Crane) illustrates what forgiveness isn’t. In it, Earl asks his wife Opal, “Are you mad at me for some reason?” When she reminds him that he left the refrigerator door open all night, he explains, “I didn’t mean to…I said I was sorry.” The repentant husband adds, “You said you were going to forgive and forget.” After replying that she did “forgive and forget,” Opal continues, “I just don’t want you to forget that I forgot and forgave.” Storing up our grievances and then reminding people of our forgiveness isn’t “not-being-able-to-think-about-it-anymore.” Still holding on to her grievance, it looks like Opal needs a lesson in issumagijoujungnainermik!
While it’s easy to forget where we put our glasses or keys (as both Opal and Earl frequently do), it’s not so easy to forget a wrong. Like Opal, do we say we forgive but fail to forget? D.L Moody would say that’s like burying “the hatchet with the handle sticking out of the ground, so you can grasp it the minute you want it.” It’s only by the power of the Spirit that we can practice issumagijoujungnainermik!
I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note – torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one. [Henry Ward Beecher]
By forgiving people’s sins, Jesus was placing Himself in the role of God because only God can forgive sins. Had Jesus not been God, it would have been blasphemy. When He raised the dead, multiplied food, stilled storms, and healed incurable diseases, Jesus was doing other things that only God could do. His incredible claim that He could bring Himself back from the dead, something only God could do, was another way Jesus claimed His divinity. The undeniable proof of His claim came Easter morning when Jesus demonstrated power over both life and death. The tomb was empty and people saw the risen Christ—they heard Him speak, watched Him eat, saw His wounds, and touched Him. The forty days the resurrected Jesus remained on earth, however, is about more than proof of his claim to be God; it’s about proof of our relationship to God.
In my last post, I pondered why Jesus chose the men he did as his apostles. As we enter Holy Week and the events leading to the Lord’s arrest and crucifixion, I wonder specifically about Judas Iscariot. We don’t know what Jesus saw in Judas when he was chosen as one of the twelve or even what was in Judas’ heart in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. We only know that discontent, ambition, and greed had entered his treacherous heart by the end.
As a teen and young adult, it was easy to be critical of my parents and their parenting. Vowing I’d never say or do some of the things they did, I was sure I’d never make any of their mistakes. Once I became a mother, however, I became far more forgiving and much less judgmental. Turns out, I made some of the same mistakes my parents did (and plenty more of my own).
God took Heaven’s best—the Lord Jesus Christ—to redeem earth’s worst! [Billy Graham]
Many years ago, my two boys were playing at their grandparents’ house. While Grandpa worked in the garden, the brothers climbed up into the apple tree and started to throw apples at him. A patient man, their grandfather told them to stop and, when more apples came whizzing at him, he offered a sterner warning. After briefly stopping their barrage, the rascals were unable to resist the temptation and chucked more apples at Grandpa. To their surprise, this gentle and loving man turned around, picked up some apples, and returned fire. Having played ball as a boy, Gramps had a strong throwing arm and excellent aim. He didn’t pull any punches as he pitched those apples back at his grandsons. The boys, unable to maneuver easily in the tree, quickly learned the meaning of “as easy as shooting fish in a rain barrel.” When they called, “Stop, Grandpa, it hurts!” he replied, “Yes, I know it does, but you needed to learn that!” It wasn’t until those hard apples hit their bodies that the youngsters understood how much their disobedience hurt their grandfather (both physically and emotionally).
Devotions of the Heart 