Tenderhearted: Toward a Heart of Forgiveness
Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you (Ephesians 4.31-32).
Reflection
As an ordained minister, I do not often receive gifts from first-time visitors to our church. But that Sunday I did. It was the last Sunday before our move. Between tearful goodbyes and heaps of cake, I spotted a man I had never met. He was waiting to speak with me. As he approached, he said he had been praying during the service for God to reveal who his gift was for. Because he sensed it was for me, he handed me a wooden plaque with a picture of a rearview mirror and a winding road. I rubbed my fingers over the wood-burned words: ’Stop looking back … you’re not going that way’. I knew immediately in my spirit what it meant. It was an invitation to learn how to forgive.
Months before, my boss had called me into his office to discuss the sermon rota. Eager to continue my preaching ministry, I had come with my calendar in hand. You can imagine how surprised I was when the conversation took a different turn. Not only was he not scheduling me to preach. He was telling me that I was no longer permitted to exercise any visible leadership role in the services. His position on women’s ordination had changed – and although I was ordained and in good standing in our diocese, he had the authority to make this change.
I sat speechless in my chair, feeling stunned and betrayed. It was as if all my work had evaporated in a moment: all the tilling, planting, and reaping for naught. I had walked in as an authorized minister confident in my role and delighted with my daily work. I walked out, a woman unmoored.
Have you ever been there? In the wake of the Fall, we cannot escape being sinned against—especially in our places of work. These offenses are the ‘thorns and thistles’ we unavoidably encounter as descendants of Adam in a broken world (Gen 3.16-19).These offences take a variety of forms. Sometimes we are sinned against in small and subtle ways – a cutting remark, a stolen opportunity. But at other times, our workplaces wound us grievously. We are left angry, disoriented, and confused about how to respond. Someone else’s sin has left what feels like an indelible mark on us, and we wonder: what am I to do with the stain?
At this juncture, we have choice. Either we continually revisit the past or we move forward in the often-painful work of forgiveness and grace. Either way is costly. The Greek word often used for ‘forgive’ in the New Testament is aphiemi, which means to cancel or remit a debt. If we choose to forgive, we must absorb the ‘cost’ of another’s sin without exacting payment in return; in essence, we pay their debt and accept the stain that the wrongdoing has left on us. We must also let the offender go, even if it means we move forward with a limp, instead of returning their evil. This is because the perils of unforgiveness far outweigh the cost of extending grace. As Tim Keller writes:
Unless you forgive deliberately, thoroughly, and with all the help Christ offers, your anger will ‘defile’ you, as Hebrews says. Our English word wrath comes from the same Anglo-Saxon root as our word wreath. Wrath means to be twisted out of your normal shape by your anger. And the same Anglo-Saxon word also gives us the now somewhat archaic word wraith… a ghost, a spirit that can’t rest. Ghosts, according to legend, stay in the place where something was done to them, and they can’t get over it or stop reliving it. If you don’t deal with your wrath through forgiveness, wrath can make you a wraith, turning you slowly but surely into a restless spirit, into someone who’s controlled by the past, someone who’s haunted.
In other words, unforgiveness pollutes the heart, and gradually deforms us into beings who act less and less like Christ.
How, then, do we guard our hearts when we are sinned against? How do we steward our soul so that offenses (including in the workplace) do not corrupt us but make us more compassionate and gracious? I wish the answer was an easy formula or a neat, linear process. But I have discovered in the wake of that unexpected conversation some years ago that forgiveness is less a one-time decision than an ongoing journey—an invisible pilgrimage from the land of offense to that heavenly country of sacrificial love. On the way, Christ walks with us, daily granting us the grace we need.
Why and how do we make this journey? What the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 4 can help us address these questions in a person, a posture of heart, and a set of practices.
The Reason we Go
The two verses from the chapter of Ephesians that are cited above suggests that, for Paul, the reason we embark on this journey is Christ and his reconciling work on the cross. Paul is saying that we forgive because God in Christ has forgiven us, and, like Christ, we are called to forgive unconditionally. Understandably, many people who have been wronged insist that sincere apology and repentance are necessary preconditions for their forgiveness. However, God in Christ did not require human beings to repent before he took up his cross at Calvary; rather, he forgave so that they might repent and believe. Since they are called to forgive as God in Christ has forgiven them, Ephesians teaches that humans are called to extend unconditional forgiveness to all, however difficult this might seem.
The Posture we Adopt
The key to overcoming this difficulty along the pathway of forgiveness is what Paul calls ‘tenderheartedness’ (Eph 4.32). This is a posture of merciful compassion that relentlessly chooses to forgive. The Greek word rendered ‘tenderhearted’ here means inner compassion - a heart in which mercy resides. Tenderhearted people have marinated themselves in the mystery of the Gospel. They have looked in the mirror long enough to see their sin and allow the kindness of God to lead them to repentance. They actively cultivate a heart of kindness that responds with love towards anyone who offends them.
The Way we Journey: Embracing Boundaries and Lament
But how does all this work in practice? Exercising a merciful heart does not involve tolerating abuse or enabling wrongdoing. It involves, instead, creating healthy boundaries and enforcing consequences. If a coworker has a history of betraying your confidence, you forgive that person, refusing to hold them hostage in your heart, but you may also decide not to confide in them in the future. If a coworker steals from your company, you forgive but you may also decide to take legal action. To quote Tim Keller again:
Sometimes people think that forgiveness means we have to immediately resume the relationship with the wrongdoer at the level it was before. But until a person shows evidence of true change, we should not trust that person. To immediately re-trust a person with sinful habits could actually be enabling him or her to sin.
Just grace requires that we reckon with the character of the offender and their response to their sin before we undergo a slow and intentional process of restoring trust and responsibility.
In addition to setting boundaries and enforcing consequences, the tenderhearted person commits to processing their pain. Paul’s words ‘be angry and do not sin’ (Eph 4.26) suggest that we are not to bury our pain, or pretend it is not there, but to work through it intentionally. Modern psychotherapy and neuroscience support this approach; unlamented pain does not simply disappear by itself but embeds itself into our bodies and brains. Part of the work of forgiveness, then, is lament: to grieve what happened—what could have been and should have been.
However, we are to do so before the God of grace and justice, who treasures and bottles our tears (Ps 56.8). The danger in speaking to other people but not to God, is that we fall into backbiting and slander. ’Let no evil talk come out of your mouths’, Paul writes, ‘but only what is good for building up’ (Eph 4.29). When we fail to confess our anger to God in quiet prayer, it inevitably spills out. We find ourselves exacting ‘payment’ from our offender - for instance, by speaking ill of him or her to others, convincing ourselves that we are ‘warning’ them.
Tenderheartedness requires, instead, that we marshal our mouths and refrain from using our words as weapons of retribution. We choose to speak kindly of those who have harmed us when they come up in conversation. Rather than endlessly ruminating on their errors, we delibrately put their sins out of mind, mirroring God, who mercifully forgets (Isa 43.25).
The fruit of this practice is that slowly, over time, our bitterness recedes. As we regularly unburden ourselves before God, and possibly with one or two people we trust, that confidential space becomes a container for our anger and a place to surrender our pain. Through prayer and lament, God detaches us from the snare of resentment and grants us the grace we need to forgive. In this process of reckoning with offense and releasing our emotions, it is sometimes helpful to list with specificity the wrongs done to us. This forces us to confront the harm head-on, grieve our losses and forgive each individual sin. As we prayerfully submit this ’ledger list’ to God, God takes our sacrificial offering and transforms it into grace.
The One who Walks with us
As we walk this journey, it is important to remember that we do not walk alone, and that the One who walks with us has witnessed our pain. In the book of Genesis, we meet Hagar, a slave woman who is not only impregnated by her master but abandoned by him to endure harsh mistreatment at the hands of her jealous mistress. In the wake of these experiences, Hagar flees to the desert, where she meets the Angel of the Lord. This messenger encourages her to return and submit (in essence, to forgive) her mistress. He then speaks a prophetic blessing over her. But it’s how the interaction ends that is most telling: Hagar, a slave woman, becomes the first person in scripture to name God. She calls him El Roi: the God who sees (Gen 16.13).
Our omniscient and omnipresent God sees it all: every unkind word, every act of wrongdoing, every betrayal and abuse that we suffer; and not only does God witness it with us, God bears it for us (1 Peter 2.24). In some mysterious and incomprehensible way, God carried our sins and suffering – the sins we have committed and will commit; the sins that have been, and will be, committed against us; and the suffering we have experienced, and will experience – in his physical body on the cross. In a visceral way, therefore, God knows exactly how we feel (Isa 53.4). The worst thing that has happened to us, or could happen to us, God has experienced – on our behalf and for our salvation.
But not only has God seen and experienced our suffering, he promises to avenge it. As Paul writes: Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ”Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord."’ (Rom 12.19). The God who witnesses our pain and completely identifies with it on the cross will one day also avenge it, thereby expressing both God’s justice and God’s grace. Knowing that no offense goes unnoticed by God and that no injustice will go unavenged enables us to surrender our right to retribution in the present. It allows us to stand, in solidarity with Christ, in extending the gift of forgiveness to those who have done us wrong.
Accepting the Invitation
Since that fateful Sunday many years ago, I have become increasingly convinced that unforgiveness is our Enemy’s favourite way to distract, discourage and derail us. Perhaps this is why Jesus was so quick to tell his disciples to ‘shake off the dust from your feet’ when they experienced rejection in their work (Mt 10.14). He knew that harbouring offense would hinder their walk and witness; thus, he invited them to forgive the wrongdoing and not look back. Will you do the same? Your invitation is waiting. The journey may be hard, but the destination is glorious.
Author
Rev. Abigail Whitehouse, Associate Rector, Truro Church (Fairfax, VA)