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We have been told that we ought to ‘forgive’ others, but what does that mean? You’d think such a common word would be easy to define, but it is not. Rather, when we try to explain, we come up with a word and idea that is close, but doesn’t quite seem to be good enough

When you say you forgive someone, do you intend to ‘condone’, to say “Oh, that’s OK” when whatever it is, is clearly not OK? Or perhaps you mean to ‘excuse’, to say “It’s not your fault entirely. You kind of were pushed into it.” Or ‘forget’, “Let’s forget that you did that”. Or ‘pardon’, as an authority pardons a convicted criminal. No penalty. Nothing to pay. A loan that has been forgiven means you don’t have to pay it. The loaner may hold you in contempt, but you don’t have to pay. Maybe some under the table cash? Doesn’t sound a lot like forgiving someone. None of those options are entirely satisfactory.

Forgive me if I haven’t been very clear in this. As Dorothy L. Sayers has said, words are labels and labels are always more or less precise but never exact. The word forgive is one of the hard ones, but If you have ever truly* forgiven someone, you know what the word means, and when you realize that you have been forgiven for doing some bad thing, you know what it means, and if you truly ask God the Father to “forgive your debts (or sins or trespasses), as you have forgiven your debtors, etc.” you know what the word means. So go ahead. Forgive whenever you can. Your mind knows more than the word tells you.

* ’Truly’ forgive. Millions of people say it all their lives when they repeat the Lord’s Prayer but they don’t think carefully enough about it