“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

It’s often one of the first things that comes to mind when we think about the difficult topic of forgiveness. The thought comes from —”as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” In the same way that the Lord forgave you, you should also forgive. To the same degree. And how did God forgive you? Unconditionally. When you didn’t deserve it. When you weren’t even asking for it. When you were still his enemies (). But forgiving in this way is a tall order—maybe the most difficult thing in the Christian life. We should forgive others who don’t deserve it, but how can we possibly do this?

I haven’t suffered enough to speak too authoritatively on this, but I have one thought that has helped me. Compare to , which says “We love because he first loved us.” This time the connection between God’s actions and ours isn’t “as,” but rather “because.” The reason you should love others is because God loved you. In other words, the ultimate motivation for our love for others shouldn’t be fact that they deserve love. Instead, the motivation should be that God has loved us.

Now, let’s apply this concept to forgiveness, since forgiveness is one part of love. How can we possibly forgive others when they don’t deserve it? We can do it by finding our motivation in the fact that God forgave us. We can choose to think “God has forgiven me. He says that that should be enough reason for me to forgive others. Am I willing to trust him in this?” It doesn’t make forgiveness easy, but I think it helps.

But this thought process isn’t just for the times when it’s really hard to forgive. If we don’t practice this motivation for forgiveness when it’s easy, our forgiveness muscles won’t be strong enough to do it when it’s hard. We need to practice this motivation in the little things. As I’ve tried to do this, I’ve found out just how quickly my mind goes to other reasons to forgive. I tend to think “he didn’t mean to do it” or “it’s not that bad,” and these thoughts seem to help me forgive. But what happens when he did mean to do it and it is that bad? I will have trained myself to look for a reason to forgive within the person himself—and if I can’t find that reason, I can’t forgive. So lately I’ve been stopping myself and saying “whether or not he meant it, the reason I’m choosing to forgive him is because God forgave me.” It takes intentionality, but I think it better prepares me for harder things to come in the future. It also helps me focus my attention on God’s work of salvation, resulting in gratitude and worship—which is my end goal anyways.