Forgiving Is Not Calling It Nothing

You have tried. Several times, in fact, and each time you have got to the same wall. The promise itself has never wavered; it is the forgiving that will not go through.

To forgive it, in the way you have understood forgiving, you would have to agree that it was not that bad. And it was that bad. It was exactly as bad as you thought it was at the time and your assessment has not changed in four years.

So the whole thing stalls there. Because you will not lie about the size of it, and lying about the size of it appears to be the entry requirement. Meanwhile the promise stands and the debt stands, and the two of them sit in the same house without touching.

I want to say something before anything else, and on this subject it always comes first.

If the repeated thing is somebody frightening you, controlling you or hurting you, then this is not a forgiveness question and I am not going to treat it as one. Forgiveness has never once meant staying where somebody is doing harm, and nobody who cares about you would ask you to take it again. Talk to somebody qualified where you live, this week, and if there is danger in that house, contact an emergency service or a domestic violence line today.

For everybody else, and this is most people who arrive here: the entry requirement you have been given is not in the Bible, and I can show you that in one verse.

Blotted out, not denied

There is a line in Isaiah where God describes His own forgiving, and the verb is the whole answer.

I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake (Isaiah 43:25, King James Version)

Blotteth out. That is a word about a record being cleared, and it presupposes that there was a record and that the record was accurate.

You cannot blot out a thing that did not happen. The verb requires the offense to have been real and to have been correctly recorded, and then it removes the debt while leaving the accuracy alone.

You are able to clear a real debt without pretending it was a small one, and Isaiah has never once required the record to be falsified first. Isaiah 43:25 blots out transgressions that were genuinely there, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available to a woman who will not lie about the size of a thing.

That is the whole answer to the wall you keep hitting. God's own forgiving does not involve minimizing. He does not say it was not so bad. He says it is cleared.

You have been asked to do something God does not do, and no verse has ever once made shrinking an offense part of forgiving it. The passage keeps the transgression real and removes it anyway, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a false requirement out of a person's way.

Where the requirement came from

Let me be fair to whoever taught you this, because it is almost always well meant.

People say things like: you have to let it go. Stop dwelling on it. It is in the past. And what they are usually trying to say is that carrying a grievance hurts the carrier, which is true.

But the phrasing does something they did not intend. It suggests that the way to release a thing is to reduce it, and a person of integrity will not reduce something that was genuinely large.

So the people most committed to telling the truth end up least able to forgive, which is precisely backwards and has kept a great many honest people stuck for years.

You are stuck because you are honest, and honesty has never once been the obstacle to forgiving anything. Isaiah 43:25 removes a debt without adjusting the account of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who unsticks somebody who has been held up by their own integrity.

You made a promise in a house where a real thing happened, and forgiving it has never once required you to say it did not. It is written that He blots out transgressions, and the Spirit of God is the one who clears a real record while leaving the truth of it standing.

Say it, and then say the other half

Here is the assignment and it has two parts and both go out loud.

Say out loud, alone: I forgive it. And name it accurately while you do. Do not use a smaller word than the true one.

You are naming it at full size and releasing it in the same breath, and Isaiah has never once required a record to be falsified first. Isaiah 43:25 blots out transgressions that were genuinely there, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets an honest man forgive an honest account.

Something like: I forgive what he said in the March, which was cruel, and I am not calling it anything other than cruel.

Then say out loud what you will do differently. That is the second half and it is what keeps this from being submission dressed as grace.

Something like: and I am not going to be in that room the next time that conversation starts.

You are able to name it truly and release it in the same sentence, and the naming has never once been the thing preventing the release. Isaiah 43:25 keeps the transgression accurate and blots it out anyway, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a woman does both halves out loud.