I’ve got plenty of sins to deal with, but unforgiveness has never really been a problem for me. Most of that is due to my short memory: I can’t hold a grudge against you if I can’t remember why I was mad at you in the first place. Once or twice in my life I’ve run into a person and had the vague feeling that I should be upset at them for something he did, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was.
There have only been a few experiences in life that have wounded me with lasting scars. A few people who hurt me to such a degree that, many many years later, I still get chicken skin and a knot in my stomach just hearing their names.
That’s why Joseph’s words to his murderous brothers are so incredible to me: “Don’t be grieved or angry with yourselves for selling me here, because God sent me ahead of you to preserve life” (Genesis 45:5). He says this after they’ve sold him into slavery in Egypt, then carried on with life as if he was dead.
Decades later, after he’s risen to be the Prime Minister of Egypt and they’ve been reduced to begging for scraps from Egypt, he has the power to exact vengeance on his brothers. To teach them a lesson. To make them rue the day they crossed him.
Instead of vengeance, he chooses forgiveness. Which couldn’t have been easy. But Joseph had twenty long years to think about what his brothers had done to him. Twenty years to see how God used their evil act as a part of his master plan.
That’s the key to finding forgiveness: understanding that God is sovereign, and he allowed that person to do whatever she did for a purpose.
Paul expands on that thought in Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Whatever that person did, it was used by God to work good in your life, and that good is defined as conforming you to the likeness of Jesus. As painful as it was, that person’s actions somehow made you look more like Jesus. Which is better than anything that person might have taken away from you.
You might not be able to see exactly what good God has brought in your life. You might now know exactly what God’s purpose was, but knowing that he had a purpose should bring some kind of peace in your heart, and peace toward the other person. Joseph didn’t understand God’s purpose for twenty years, but he named his son Forgetfulness (“Manasseh”) because “God has made me forget all my hardship and my whole family” (Gen 41:51).
Forgiveness is never easy. The knot in your stomach may never go away. But the bitterness should.