Christian Forgiveness: Breaking the Cycle (Part 1/2)

Author: Stef Miles

We hear a lot today about the psychological benefits of forgiveness, and rightly so. Therapists, counsellors and neuroscientists have shown how bitterness and resentment slowly eat away at us. Carrying anger for a long time shapes the way we see other people, and eventually even how we see ourselves. It drains us, turns us inward and keeps old wounds alive, often in ways that are difficult to notice while it is happening.

Forgiveness, on the other hand, can bring real healing. Letting go of bitterness can free us from endlessly replaying the same injury and remaining trapped in the pain of what someone else has done to us. There is deep wisdom in this, and Christians can fully affirm it.

But I think Christian forgiveness goes deeper than personal wellbeing. Christian forgiveness is rooted in the gospel itself. We forgive because God has forgiven us, is one of those statements that can sound so familiar that we miss just how significant it is. Paul puts it simply:

“Forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:32

Forgiveness, then, isn't simply a technique for finding inner peace. It is participation in the life of Jesus, who reveals what God is like. This means Christian forgiveness begins with revelation. Jesus doesn't simply teach forgiveness as a useful moral principle. He embodies it as the very life of God made visible within the world.

I have found Matthew Ichihashi Potts' description in his book Forgiveness: An Alternative Account particularly helpful:

“Forgiveness is the habit of non-retaliation; or better, it is the judgment non-retaliation renders.”

There is something about that definition I really like because it immediately moves forgiveness away from sentimentality or vague moral niceness. Forgiveness isn't pretending that evil never happened, passively accepting abuse or suppressing the pain we feel. It is the refusal to return violence for violence, shame for shame and accusation for accusation. It interrupts the cycle of retaliation that so easily governs the way human beings respond to being hurt. Seen this way, forgiveness isn't something added onto Christian life. It is what becomes possible when our lives are shaped by Jesus. And nowhere do we see this more clearly than at the cross.

The Cross Changes Everything

As Jesus is being mocked, tortured and killed, he says:

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Luke 23:34

I find this one of the most important and revelatory moments in the passion narrative. We tend to think about wrongdoing in terms of intention. Did someone know what they were doing? Did they plan it? Did they deliberately choose to cause harm? Our systems of justice quite understandably take these questions seriously. But from the cross Jesus says something strange: “They do not know what they are doing.” That doesn't remove responsibility or pretend that what is happening to him isn't evil. Jesus is being publicly tortured and executed. There is no attempt to minimise that.

Instead, I think Jesus reveals something deeper about human beings and the forces that shape our actions. We act out of fear, shame, rivalry, trauma and inherited patterns of violence far more than we usually recognise. We like to imagine ourselves as autonomous individuals calmly making independent decisions, but human beings simply aren't like that. This is where René Girard's understanding of mimetic desire has been so helpful for me. Girard recognised that we are profoundly imitative creatures. We don't invent our desires and responses in isolation. We learn from one another what to desire, whom to fear, whom to blame and even how to respond when we are hurt. If retaliation surrounds us, we learn retaliation. If shame is passed to us, we learn how to pass shame onto someone else. Entire families, communities and cultures can become caught in networks of imitation where fear, resentment and violence are continually echoed and reinforced. Someone hurts me, so I hurt them. They carry that hurt elsewhere, and someone else receives it. Eventually retaliation begins to feel less like a choice and more like the natural order of things. But the cross interrupts this logic.

Jesus receives the violence of others without reproducing it. Rather than passing the wound on, he answers it with forgiveness. And after the resurrection, when Jesus returns to his disciples, the very people who abandoned him when he needed them most, he doesn't return with accusation or demand an explanation. He says: “Peace be with you.” John 20:19.

For me, this is the shape of the gospel. The forgiving victim returns, not to take revenge, but to offer peace to the very people who might reasonably have expected judgement. There is a powerful image in Hebrews that brings this into focus. The writer says that Jesus' blood “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24). Think back to the story of Cain and Abel. After Cain murders his brother, God tells him: “Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.” Gen 4:10. Abel's blood cries out from the earth following an act of violence. It is the ancient human story of blood calling for an answer, of harm demanding repayment. But Hebrews tells us that Jesus' blood speaks a better word. What is that word?

Given what Jesus actually says from the cross, I find it difficult to hear anything other than forgiveness. The cross is not a cry for vengeance against the world. It is a cry of forgiveness spoken into it. And that opens up an entirely different way of being human, one no longer governed by the assumption that every wound must produce another wound.

Forgiveness Is Everywhere

Much of this way of thinking has been shaped for me through the work of my friend of the network, Michael Hardin. One of the things Michael has helped me see is that forgiveness isn't simply one theme among many in Jesus' teaching. Once you start looking for it, forgiveness seems to be everywhere.

Miracles: When Jesus heals the paralytic in Mark 2, he begins by saying, “Your sins are forgiven.” Healing and forgiveness are held together.

Parables: Jesus’ parables repeatedly return to mercy, restored relationships and the undoing of our normal calculations about who deserves what. Think about the Prodigal Son, the Unmerciful Servant or even the Good Samaritan. Again and again Jesus invites people to imagine relationships beyond the usual boundaries of resentment, exclusion and repayment.

Conflict Stories: You see the same thing in the people Jesus chooses to eat with and restore. Tax collectors (Mark 7), sinners, excluded women and those pushed outside respectable religious life (Luke 7) find themselves welcomed back into relationship.

Teaching: Forgiveness is also woven into the Sermon on the Mount; “If you forgive others, your Father will forgive you.” (Matt 6:14–15)

Even Peter's famous question about how often he is expected to forgive becomes part of this larger story. Jesus refuses to give him a sensible limit. And there is an interesting biblical echo here. Peter's question and Jesus' response appear to reverse the ancient escalation of vengeance associated with Lamech in Genesis 4. Where violence multiplies itself without limit, Jesus imagines forgiveness doing the same.

Prayer: The Lord’s Prayer places forgiveness at the heart of discipleship: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive others.”: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive others.”

Then, at the Last Supper, Jesus interprets his death through the language of forgiveness. From the cross he forgives his killers, and in the resurrection he returns to those who abandoned him with peace.

At the Last Supper: Jesus interprets his death as forgiveness: “This is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt 26:28)

From the Cross: Again, forgiveness is spoken directly into violence: “Father forgive them.” (Luke 23:34)

In Resurrection: The risen Christ returns not with judgment but peace, breathing forgiveness into fearful disciples (John 20).

Even in Symbolic Action: Jesus washes his disciples’ feet in John 13, including the one who will betray him. Forgiveness is embodied in action, not just spoken.

Once you begin seeing this pattern, it becomes difficult to treat forgiveness as one Christian virtue sitting alongside a collection of others. Forgiveness is a thread running through the entire life and message of Jesus. It tells us something about who God is, but also about the kind of humanity Jesus is creating.

End or Part 1