“Sorry.”
“That wasn’t an apology.”
“But, I said ‘sorry’.”
“I heard that, but it still was not an apology. Now, you need to say, ‘I am sorry’ and then explain why you are sorry. For example, ‘I am sorry for getting mad and hitting you.’ Then ask to be forgiven for what you have done.”
“Why do I have to say that? I already said ‘sorry’?”
“Because we need to hear that you are genuinely sorry for what you did.”
“Okay, I’m sorry for getting mad and hitting you. There I said it, now can I go play?” (This response—as usual—was expressed with an attitude and a roll of the eyes.)
“No! That was not a genuinely sincere apology. Sit here until you are truly sorry and can express that to your sister.”
When our girls were little, this was the conversation I often had with them when one had wronged the other. They felt that if they said the word “sorry” that was good enough—end of discussion. But they were wrong. In our home, just saying the word “sorry” did not cut it! Saying “sorry” did not show true repentance and a sense of sorrow for the wrong they had perpetrated. What was required was a genuine and sincere apology. Until we saw brokenness, and a sincere apology was given, they were not allowed to engage back into their playtime.
Asking for forgiveness gives the wounded person an opportunity to forgive and thus sets them free to love the one who wounded them. If the wounded refuses to forgive, it doesn’t hurt the one who inflicted the wound, but only the wounded! If the wounded chooses to live with unforgiveness in their heart, it will eat away at them like a cancer. Forgiveness must be asked for and given if both parties are to be free to love once again.
I have known women, young and old, who have held onto unforgiveness as if it were a warm intimate friend. All the while it was destroying them. When I came to Christ in 1984, I had sins in my past and in my present that God forgave. Those sins I laid before Him that night and He declared them forgiven! I was then free from my past and, because He made me a new creature in Him, I was free from the hold of sin that was existent in my life at the time. Free to love and free to live because I was forgiven. From that day forward, Christ freed me to forgive the “little offenses” that occurred in my life because He had forgiven me so much!
Is it difficult for you to forgive someone who has wronged you a little when God has forgiven you so much?
“Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.” Colossians 3:13b
The tone of the verse in Colossians is not one of merely “suggesting” that you forgive, but a demand to forgive. “So you must forgive.” Because God has forgiven each of us so much, and sacrificed His son’s life that we might be forgiven, we must forgive those who wrong us!
“And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.” Ephesians 4:32 HCSB
dianne