6 Canceling Debts
We were so burdened. We took our debts very seriously. Luella had just delivered our second son, and we had no means of paying the enormous bill. Our little church was struggling to pay us, and we had encountered unexpected auto and home expenses. Times were so tough that we wondered if we would have sufficient food for our children to eat. Then we got the call from the hospital. I didn’t want to answer it, but I knew I should. As I walked to the phone I was anticipating what the caller would say to me. I was anticipating the threats and the guilt. The only thing that gave me peace was that I knew they couldn’t repossess our infant son!
The caller’s voice was friendlier than I had anticipated. She asked me how I was doing. “How am I doing?” I thought. “How do you think I’m doing? I’m about to face my economic execution, and you’re asking me how I’m doing!” But, instead of saying what I was thinking, I mumbled some kind of non-answer. She then said, “We have an assistance program for families like yours; we have decided that you qualify, and we have decided to cancel your debt. (We did have to pay some minor expenses.) I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! It felt like a boulder had been taken off my chest. I can’t express the joy and gratitude that flooded into my heart. After weeping together, Luella and I began to realize that not only had the cancelation of the debt lifted a burden from the past, but it had changed our financial future. Now we could struggle through without the burden of this debt hanging over us every day.
Why have I told you this story of God’s grace and provision? Because it speaks so powerfully to the marriage of everyone reading this book. Healthy marriages are healthy because the people in those marriages find joy in canceling debts. I cannot think of a more essential ingredient in marriage than forgiveness. Yet forgiveness is not always attractive. Forgiveness is difficult and costly. It will push you to the borders of your faith. It will tempt you to fear and doubt. But when forgiveness is granted and debts are canceled, the return is much greater than the cost.
“I DON’T THINK I WILL EVER BE ABLE TO
FORGIVE HIM”
“I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive him”—these were the first words I ever heard her say. She choked them out through her sobs, and she was convinced there was no way that she would ever be able to forgive him for what he had done. I thought I was about to hear a story of serial abuse or betrayal, but that is not what I heard. What I heard surprised me.
Sally said, “Jeb is basically a good man. He works very hard, provides for us well, and loves our children.” I was a young pastor, and I was confused, not only because of their story, but because I didn’t really understand the importance and dynamics of forgiveness. In the years to come, I didn’t learn the essentiality of forgiveness from counseling couples; no, I learned it in moments of pain and grace in my own marriage.
I tried to graciously assist Sally to tell her story. She and Jeb had met in college, fallen madly in love, and married between their sophomore and junior years. They decided that they needed to finish school, so they could only work part-time. Before the first year was over, they had had their first child. Neither one was emotionally or spiritually mature enough to deal well with the things on their plate. Not only was a sinner married to a sinner, but an immature sinner was married to an immature sinner. They struggled to be on the same page with one another, and they expressed their irritation all too readily. Jeb began accusing Sally of being self-centered and perennially dissatisfied. Sally saw Jeb as distancing and demanding. They didn’t have knock-down, drag-out fights, but their communication was largely negative and their low-grade tension was almost always in the air. Day after day there were problems between them that were not resolved. Day after day there were little moments of misunderstanding, hurt, and anger. Again and again they would end the day in disappointed silence, then fall to sleep rehearsing the wrongs of the other. The list got longer and the burden got heavier.
Over the months and years, the moments morphed into patterns of sin and judgment that neither one seemed to have the interest or skill to break. They both held onto their record of the other’s wrongs as if it was a valuable family heirloom. What had hurt them in the beginning they now found scary to let go of. Jeb and Sally defended themselves against accusations of wrong by pulling out their precious list of the years of wrongs the other had done. These confrontations never moved toward reconciliation. Each conversation seemed to increase the weight of the burden and to thicken the walls of their defenses.
But something else happened that was devastating to their marriage. No, there wasn’t a moment where things became physical, and neither one of them was unfaithful. No, what took place was progressive and subtle, but it sucked the life out of their marriage. Jeb and Sally had once liked one another, and they would tell you that they still did; but they didn’t. There were many more things about Jeb that Sally disliked than things she liked. In fact, when Sally talked in any kind of positive way about Jeb, it was about ancient history. And it was hard for Jeb to say anything good about Sally without diminishing it with negative stories and irritated qualifications.
Why had this happened? Because the patterns of sin and failure were not accompanied by patterns of confession and forgiveness; what was left was the compilation of the wrongs of the other. So, what they meditated on with regard to one another was largely negative. In their minds they daily saw one another through a lens of wrongs and progressively forgot what was good in the other. The gentle and patient acceptance of love gave way to dislike and disrespect. Yes, there I’ve said it. Jeb and Sally tried their best to deny it, but they didn’t like one another anymore. This simply made anger and irritation all the easier. They were a couple at war, and they were both overwhelmed with the daily carnage of the battle.
It was a friend of Sally’s that begged her to get help. The way out would be simple, but the cost would be great.
THE HARVEST OF UNFORGIVENESS
The Bible is very clear: what you plant, you will harvest (Gal. 6:7ff). In a marriage, every day you harvest what you previously planted and plant what you will someday harvest. Jeb and Sally weren’t experiencing mysterious difficulty. Sadly, they were harvesting what they had sown over the years. Let me lay out for you the marriage-damaging stages of the harvest of unforgiveness. I am deeply persuaded that the marriage of countless couples is in some way following this path.
1) Immaturity and Failure
Not only are all people who get married sinners, but most enter their marriages quite young, naïve, and immature. Typically, in the early years of marriage they do dumb, selfish, sinful things—things that neither one thought they would do. In their surprise and hurt, they give way to accusation, blame, judgment, and punishment rather than to honest confrontation, confession, and forgiveness. What they fail to realize is that not only are they responding poorly to the present moment, but they are beginning to set the direction of their marriage. Each selfish act followed by a bitter response damages the affection they have for one another and the unity they are meant to enjoy.
2) Falling into Comfortable Patterns
Since confrontation, confession, and forgiveness are all hard work, it is easier to give way to lower urges. It is easier to harrumph and walk away, to rehearse in your mind the other’s wrongs, to compile your list, to yell in anger, and to level a threat. So many couples fall into comfortable but relationally destructive patterns. Meanwhile, the affection between them is weakening, and the distance between them is widening.
3) Establishing Defenses
Rather than growing as the result of a healthy lifestyle of honesty and forgiveness, many couples learn early in their marriage to build up walls of defense against each other’s irritated accusations. Couples soon learn that the best defense is an offense, so they tackle the increasing criticism of the other by reaching into the list they have compiled and reminding the other how imperfect he or she is and, therefore, how difficult to live with. This combination of self-righteousness (convincing ourselves that we are not the problem) and accusation (telling our spouse that he or she is the problem) precludes relationship. We are not standing together seeking to defend our marriage against attack. No, we are viewing each other as adversaries and throwing up walls of defense against one another.
4) Nurturing Dislike
Because both husband and wife are allowing themselves to meditate on what is wrong about the other rather than celebrating the good God has done in and through him or her, their perspective becomes increasingly negative. Since human beings do not live by the facts of their experience but by their interpretation of the facts, this globally negative assessment becomes the interpretive lens through which they see their spouse. So what they once would not have seen as negative, they now interpret as negative. I have counseled many couples that simply don’t like one another very much anymore. If fact, I have had husbands and wives say to me that it is hard for them to remember what attracted them to the other person in the first place!
5) Becoming Overwhelmed
At some point, living with someone you don’t like very much and feeling the need to daily defend yourself against attack becomes very exhausting and discouraging. The same offenses are taken and the same accusations are leveled over and over again. The same debate over who is the harder to live with happens again and again. You come to the point of dreading getting up in the morning. You walk on eggshells, wondering when the next bomb will drop and shatter what little peace you have left.
6) Envy of Other Couples
It’s hard when you live like this not to look over the fence or across the aisle and envy couples that seem to have everything you don’t. It’s tempting to wonder what it would be like to be married to that other woman or that other man. It’s tempting to doubt God’s love and wisdom when you feel that you have been singled out for difficulties that others aren’t facing. It’s tempting to throw other couples in one another’s faces. Comparing your marriage to the airbrushed public persona of another couple is always dangerous but particularly destructive to a couple who are already not giving themselves much reason to continue.
7) Fantasies of Escape
It always seems to lead here. You are angry, hurt, and overwhelmed. You don’t really like the other very much, and you don’t look forward to the times you have together. You feel overwhelmed and smothered. You tell yourself that you are the daily victim of the other’s sin. You can’t imagine that your spouse is really going to change. It all seems so impossible, so you begin to fantasize about escape. At first, it’s just the unrealistic daydreams of the tired, but it becomes more than that. The road between fantasy and obsession or fantasy and resolve is often not very long. You are in a place of being very susceptible to taking a means of escape that is not really escape but only troubles the trouble that you are already overwhelmed by.
You may be thinking, “Wow, Paul, that is a very bleak picture!” Well, I would ask you this: what is the journey you have taken as a couple? Do you have deeper respect, more tender affection, and greater appreciation than you had when you first got married? Are you more able to lovingly confront and graciously forgive? Has your friendship grown and your unity been solidified? Or has your marriage taken the opposite journey? Remember, Jeb and Sally had no “major sins” between them. Their marriage rusted into brokenness by the daily rain of the little drops of unforgiveness.
THEN WHY DON’T PEOPLE JUST FORGIVE?
Why don’t people just forgive? That is a very good question. If forgiveness is easier and more beneficial, why isn’t it more popular? The sad reality is that there is short-term, relationally destructive power in refusing to forgive. Holding onto our spouse’s wrongs gives us the upper hand in our relationship. We keep a record of wrongs because we are not motivated by what is best for our spouse but by what is expedient for ourselves. Here are some of the dark “benefits” of unforgiveness.
1) Debt is power. There is power in having something to hold over another’s head. There is power in using a person’s weakness and failure against him or her. In moments when we want our own way, we pull out some wrong against our spouse as our relational trump card.
2) Debt is identity. Holding onto our spouse’s sin, weakness, and failure makes us feel superior to our spouse. It allows us to believe that we are more righteous and mature than our spouse. We fall into the pattern of getting our sense of self not by what God has called us to be and do but by comparing ourselves to our spouse. This pattern plays into the self-righteousness that is the struggle of every sinner.
3) Debt is entitlement. Because of all our spouse’s wrongs against us, he or she owes us. Carrying our spouse’s wrongs makes us feel deserving and therefore comfortable with being self-focused and demanding. “After all I have had to endure in relationship with you, don’t I deserve . . . ?”
4) Debt is weaponry. The sins and failures that our spouse has done against us that we still carry around with us are like a loaded gun; it is very tempting to pull them out and use them when we are angry. When our wife has hurt us in some way, it is very tempting to hurt her back by throwing in her face just how evil and immature she is.
5) Debt puts us in God’s position. It is the one place that we must never be, but it is also a position that all of us have put ourselves in. We are not the judge of our spouse. We are not the one who should dispense consequences for our spouse’s sin. It is not our job to make sure he feels the appropriate amount of guilt for what he has done. But it is very tempting to ascend to God’s throne and to make ourselves judge.
This is nasty stuff. It is a relational lifestyle driven by ugly selfishness. It is motivated by what we want, what we think we need, and by what we feel. It has nothing to do with a desire to please God with the way we live with our spouse, and it surely has nothing to do with what it means to love her in the midst of her struggle to live God’s way in this broken world. It also is scarily blind. We are so focused on our spouse and all his failures that we are blind to ourselves. We forget how often we fail, how much sin mars everything we do, and how desperately we need the grace that we are unwilling to give to him. This way of living turns our lover into our adversary and turns our home into a war zone.
Yet, we have all been seduced by the power of unforgiveness. We have all used the sin of another against him or her. We have all acted as judges. We have all thought we are more righteous than our husband or wife. We have all used the power of guilt to get what we want when we want it and in so doing have done serious damage to the fine china of our marital love.
It seems almost too obvious to say, but forgiveness is a much better way. It is the only way to live in an intimate, long-term relationship with another sinner. It is the only way to negotiate through the weakness and failure that will daily mark your marriage. It is the only way to deal with hurt and disappointment. It is the only way to have hope and confidence restored. It is the only way to protect your love and reinforce the unity that you have built. It is the only way not to be kidnapped by the past. It is the only way to give your marriage the blessing of fresh starts and new beginnings.
The cost of forgiveness is great, but the harvest of forgiveness is a beautiful thing, so it is vital to understand what forgiveness is and does.
WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?
Here is what you have to understand: forgiveness is a vertical commitment that is followed by a horizontal transaction. Both aspects of forgiveness are essential in the order that I have presented them.
When you have been wronged in word or action by your husband or wife, your response must be shaped by an immediate commitment that you make before God. Forgiveness begins by your giving the offense to the Lord. This does not mean that you act as if something wrong is right. It means that you do not carry the wrong with you (bitterness), and that you do not treat the other in light of the wrong (judgment). You entrust yourself to God’s mercy and justice, and you give yourself to overcoming evil with good (see the principles laid out by Paul in Rom. 12:9–21). You commit to respond to your spouse with the same grace that you have been given. You do not insert yourself into God’s position and mete out punishment for his or her offenses.
Now, this does not mean that you eat the offense and act as though nothing happened. It does not mean that you pretend you were not affected, offended, or hurt by what your spouse said or did. In fact, the Bible actually calls the one who has been sinned against to go to the person who committed the offense and present him with it. Are you confused? Does it seem that this is a contradiction of what I said above? This is where the order of the two parts of forgiveness is essential. The reason you must start with giving the offense to God is so that when you come to your spouse, you come with the right attitude (grace) and the right goal (reconciliation). Vertical forgiveness clears your heart of the baggage of bitterness and condemnation so that you can face her with her wrong in a way that is kind, patient, loving, humble, and encouraging.
Something important needs to be said here. Husbands, it is not spiritually helpful for you, or loving toward your wife, to act as though what is not okay is okay. Wives, it is not good for you or kind to your husband to act as if a sin committed against you is all right. The Bible nowhere calls us to grin and bear it for the sake of the relationship. In fact, I am persuaded that our silence in the face of wrong is not motivated by a desire to love the other well but by not wanting to hassle through the difficult process of kind and loving confrontation. We are silent not because we love our spouse but because we love ourselves, and we do not want to put ourselves through something uncomfortable. When we fail to bring such things into the light, they fester in the dark of our own sinful heart, and the other does not benefit from the conviction and confession that would help him grow and change.
You see, while the first part of forgiveness is judicial, that is, entrusting the offense to God who alone is able to judge, the second part of forgiveness is relational. It is a transaction of grace between the person who has committed the offense and the person who has been offended. Now, pay careful attention to what I am about to say: you cannot relationally forgive someone who has not asked for it. The biblical pattern is this: someone confesses, you forgive. That is why you go to her. You go as God’s instrument, with the hope that her eyes will be opened, that her heart will be grieved, and that she will respond by confessing her sin and asking for your forgiveness (which you are ready to give because you are not harboring bitterness in your heart.)
Often, forgiveness is a process, not an event. You may find yourself returning to old, bitter thoughts and getting angry once again, and you need to confess that to the Lord and seek his help. You may have succumbed to treating your spouse judgmentally, even though you had committed not to, and you need to confess that wrong to him or her. It may be that the one who committed the offense is having a hard time seeing and owning what he or she has done. This may mean that you have to go to your spouse more than once, reminding him or her that there is a sin between you that has not been dealt with, and because of that there is a breach in your relationship and the need for reconciliation. Your purpose is not to badger him into confession but to let him know that you love him so much that it pains you to have wrongs in the way of the unity and understanding that you should be experiencing. But it must be said again: you cannot forgive someone in the relational sense of what forgiveness means until he or she has sought your forgiveness.
WHEN IS FORGIVENESS NEEDED?
There is another distinction that needs to be made here. The biblical call to confession and forgiveness is to be followed only in instances when one spouse has done something to the other that the Bible calls sin. You do not need to ask forgiveness when you have done something out of human weakness, like forgetting in the busyness of the day to pick up something at the store. It is right to communicate to the other that you are sorry for forgetting and for any hassle it might have caused. You do not have to ask forgiveness for accidents, like tripping on the rug and dropping a piece of fine china. Again, it is right to express remorse for your spouse’s loss, but in such cases you do not need his or her forgiveness.
You do not need to ask forgiveness for differences in personality or perspective. It is not wrong that you see things differently from your husband or wife. God has authored your story. He determined the influences that have shaped you. He brought you together in the intimate community of marriage. Differences are not wrong, but what we do with them might be.
You do not have to ask forgiveness for attempting to do something and failing. Perhaps you told your wife that you would fix something, but you were not able to. This is not a sin against your wife and does not require confession and forgiveness. It is loving, however, to let her know that you are sorry for the hassle caused her by your inability to get the job done.
Forgiveness is a vertical commitment and relational transaction that is to occur in moments when sin has gotten in the way of the unity, love, and understanding that God welcomes us to enjoy as his children in marriage. It lifts the burden off our shoulders of bearing wrongs and restores what has been broken. The more you are willing to forgive, the more you experience its blessings. The more you experience its blessings, the more you are quick to give yourself to the cycle of commit-confront-confess-forgive. You start living in the benefits of short accounts between you and your mate. You love the fact that there are no big and open issues between you. You have no closets to empty, and you are thankful, and in your thankfulness you appreciate one another all the more and also the one—God—who calls you to forgive.
WHAT FORGIVENESS REQUIRES AND
RETURNS
Forgiveness is an investment in your relationship with God and in your relationship with one another. As with all investments, there is cost involved. In any investment you make, your concern is that the return will be greater than the cost. So, it is important that we consider the requirements and returns of forgiveness for you and your marriage.
Forgiveness requires humility. It is only when we really do believe that life is bigger than us, that there is something more important than our wants, needs, and feelings, and that we have been given life and breath for the purposes, plans, and praise of another, that we will be willing to forgive. When we stand in the center of our own universe with nothing more important to us than ourselves, we find nothing more offensive than a sin against us. Or when pride allows us to think of ourselves as righteous—surely more righteous than the person we live with—then it is hard for us to forgive. Forgiveness is much easier for the person who lives conscious of the reality of how much he also needs to be forgiven. Nobody gives grace better than someone who is convinced he needs it as well.
Forgiveness also requires compassion. Compassion is being moved by the plight of another, coupled with action to help him or her. Husbands and wives, does compassion ever grip you when your spouse sins against you? Are you touched by your spouse’s struggle with sin? Do you feel for her when she faces the disappointing reality of her failure once again? Are you sad for him in those moments when he is easily entrapped? Do you stand alongside one another in the worst of moments doing anything you can to relieve the burden of your spouse’s struggle with sin? You forgive her because you love her, and because you love her, you care about her and the struggle she is going through with sin. You know what it is like to commit to what is right and end up doing what is wrong (see Romans 7). You forgive him because, by God’s grace, you look at him through tender, rather than judgmental, eyes.
Forgiveness requires trust. Forgiveness is not so much an act of faith in your spouse as it is an act of faith in God. You do believe that God is with you. You do believe that his Word is true. You do believe that what he calls you to is right and good. You do believe that he will give you what you need to do what he has called you to do. You do believe that your identity is secure, even if your spouse rejects you and doesn’t seek your forgiveness. You do believe that there is blessing on the other side of the hard work of forgiveness. You do believe that when you fail and take up the offense once again that God will forgive you and give you the power to change. Because you trust God, you are willing to forgive your spouse.
Forgiveness requires self-control. If you are going to forgive your spouse for committing a sin against you, you must say no to yourself, exercising the self-control that only God is able to give you. To forgive, you have to say no to bitterness, which permits you to carry a wrong and not give it room to expand in your heart and shape your responses to your husband or wife. You have to say no to the desire to lash out with angry words and actions of vengeance. You have to say no to the impulse to share your anger with a relative or friend. Giving way to these things is never a prelude to forgiveness.
Forgiveness requires sacrifice. Earlier I said that we fail to approach our spouse when he or she has wronged us because we love ourselves more than we love our spouse. Perhaps that seemed harsh to you, so let me explain. Seldom is self-love a self-conscious thing. Perhaps what you are conscious of is that you’re afraid of rejection, afraid of being drawn into a long debate, afraid of your spouse getting angry, or afraid your spouse will throw all your failure in your face. In short, you don’t want to expose yourself to all the possible dangers of lovingly confronting your spouse with something he or she has said or done but hasn’t acknowledged. Do you see what you are doing? You are opting for self-protection rather than for what would be helpful for your spouse and for your relationship and pleasing to God.
Forgiveness requires that we be willing to let go of our desire for safety and comfort and for the surface peace of silence, and, as an act of faith, that we endure what we do not want to face in order for the other to be helped and our relationship to be reconciled.
There is one thing that forgiveness requires that is more important than anything we have looked at so far. Forgiveness requires remembering. Why is it that we are so skilled at remembering the other’s weakness, failure, and sin and so adept at forgetting our own? Why are we so good at seeing all the ways that another needs to be forgiven but forget how great our need for forgiveness is? When we are filled with the grief of our own sin and with gratitude for the amazing forgiveness we have been given, then we will find joy in giving to our spouse what we have received. Perhaps a lifestyle of unforgiveness is rooted in the sin of forgetfulness. We forget that there is not a day in our lives that we do not need to be forgiven. We forget that we will never graduate from our need for grace. We forget that we have been loved with a love we could never earn, achieve, or deserve. We forget that God never mocks our weakness, never finds joy in throwing our failures in our face, never threatens to turn his back on us, and never makes us buy our way back into his favor.
When you remember, when you carry with you a deep appreciation for the grace that you have been given, you’ll have a heart that is ready to forgive. That doesn’t mean that the process will be comfortable or easy, but it will mean that you can approach your needy spouse remembering that you are just as in need of what you’re about to give to him or her.
A BETTER HARVEST
Yes, you can choose to carry that list. You can choose to punish the other. You can choose for disappointment to become distance, for affection to become dislike, and for a desire for companionship to morph into a search for an escape. You can taste the sad harvest of marital détente that so many couples live in, or you can plant better seeds and celebrate a much better harvest. The harvest of forgiveness is the kind of marriage everyone wants.
Forgiveness stimulates appreciation and affection. When we forgive one another daily, we do not look at one another through the lens of our worst failures and biggest weaknesses. As we talk honestly, weep and pray, and repent and reconcile, our appreciation for one another grows and our affection deepens. We quit looking at the other person as the enemy. We stop protecting ourselves from him or her and begin to work together to build walls of defense against the many threats to a marriage that exist in this fallen world.
Forgiveness produces patience. As we respond God’s way in a daily lifestyle of confession and forgiveness, we begin to experience things we never thought we would see in our marriage. We begin to see bad patterns break, we begin to see one another change, and we begin to see love that had grown cold become new and vibrant again. We experience hard moments when God gives us the grace not to give way to powerful emotions and desires that would take us in the wrong direction, and we see the practical help and rescue his wisdom gives us again and again. All this means that we no longer panic when a wrong happens between us. We no longer take matters into our own hands in the panic of hurt and retribution. We no longer try to be the other’s conscience or judge. No, we are much more relaxed in the face of failure and willing to patiently follow God’s commit-confront-confess-forgive plan. We have come to understand that his grace is bigger than any difficulty we will ever face in our marriage. So, we are able to rest and wait, knowing that God is at work, even when we are exhausted and discouraged, and that he will not quit working until his work in us and our marriage is complete.
But there is one more thing. Forgiveness is the fertile soil in which unity in marriage grows. When you are living every day in the confession and forgiveness pattern, you are forsaking your way for a better way. Your marriage is no longer a daily competition for who is going to get his or her way. You no longer see your spouse as a threat, wondering just when he will once again get in the way of what you want. You are not obsessed with your comfort, pleasure, and ease and with the fear of when your mate will interrupt it. No, forgiveness puts you on the same page with each other. You have both submitted your desires to the desires of Another. You no longer try to build your own little marriage kingdom. No, you now, together, live for God’s kingdom. You now live with the same set of expectations and rules. You now have the same way of thinking about and addressing problems. And together you celebrate what God has given you, both aware that you could never have done it yourselves. You now experience unity like never before, because forgiveness has liberated you for a higher purpose and a better daily plan.
Remember Jeb and Sally? God put someone in their lives to show them a better way. Yes, Jeb and Sally are still making war, but it is no longer with one another. Together they are battling the one enemy that is after them and their marriage. As Jeb and Sally do this, they are very thankful that forgiveness has freed them from the war that they used to be so good at making.