23.06 | Letting Go
Luke 6:37-49
“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven…”
Luke 6:37
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Many a follower of Jesus has hit these words with great confusion.
The quick reading is transactional. Our quick reading usually is. Most of the work in our transformation is moving away from the narrow tightropes of transactional religiosity into the vast acres of generous grace. The transactional reading of these words can only lead to one conclusion: that my ability to forgive will dictate the measure of the Father’s forgiveness of me.
Taken a little deeper, the question of forgiveness (or of judging, or of condemning too, for that matter), takes us quickly to some of the deepest and most costly experiences of pain. The wounds of society and the wounds caused to self. The transactional reading assumes that Jesus is requiring an unfeeling denial of pain, choosing a way of grace that we could get to if only we were better people.
There’s good news:
The Gospel doesn’t work like this.
With any passage, or any saying of Jesus—those we find easy, as well as those we find difficult—we have to reorient ourselves continually into the massive new world of grace, and then read from grace into our lives. Grace, where reconciliation with the Father is not earned, but given. Grace, where our ‘righteousness’ is not merited to us on the basis of our performance or our our feelings, but by our simple acceptance of the death and life of Jesus of Nazareth. Grace, where the transactional world is turned upside down to begin all conversations of personal transformation in the atmosphere of perfect love.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
The meaning must come from another place.
A little translation work helps us on our way.
The Greek word, used by Luke here for ‘forgive,’ is apoluō.1 It means ‘to set free,’ or ‘to release’. In the 68 times it appears in the New Testament, only twice (both in this verse) is it translated ‘forgive.’ In every other instance, crowds, people, or criminals are released, dismissed, divorced, and sent away. Apoluō is not primarily a word of reconciliation: it is a word of dismissal. Of letting go. Of the departure of something away from something else.
This doesn’t mean that the translation is wrong. The Bible does have a link between these concepts. However, it invites us to view ‘forgiveness’ through the lens of release rather than of reconciliation. The concern here, for Jesus, is not about how (or whether) we are reconciled to the Father. That is a given. He is speaking to His disciples, and they are already with Him. Rather, His concern is about how they may journey into the life of greater freedom and depth and purity and liberty that He is leading them towards.
And, as ever with Jesus, it goes to the heart.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Let go, and you will be set loose.
Among the most significant places of liberation in my own story, and in the story of many I’ve prayed with, pastored, and listened to over the years, has been the extraordinary liberty that comes from letting go of the bitterness, anger, and grudges that we hold in the letting go of forgiveness. For the school bully. For the friend who failed you. For the imperfect spouse.2 For those words said in anger that scarred you to the soul. Bitterness is like a disease that steals our freedom. It is what we feel when pain sinks into our bones, and the desire to mete out revenge, judgment, condemnation and critique finds room in our hearts. Bitterness is like a log in our eyes, blinding us to the basic and bruised humanity of those who hurt us. Bitterness makes our lives like a diseased tree, struggling to bear fruit of love, peace, and patience, because anger and fear and pain boil beneath the surface.
Jesus is putting before us a way of being that looks like freedom. That looks like the great letting go.
Does it mean we shouldn’t feel the pain? Not a bit. Grief is the necessary precursor to forgiven. You cannot forgive what you haven’t grieved.
Does it mean we can just choose it if we try harder? Again, no. Our choices matter, and transformation begins with our willingness, but true forgiveness requires the presence of the Spirit, working impossibilities beyond our strength within us.
Does it mean that it happens immediately? Again, we know better.
But the vision is there, and Jesus is the Lord of the eternal invitation—to a way of freedom and lightness and wholeness that goes from love through love and into love, in the lifelong work of our bruised hearts learning to let go, that we may know the growing fullness of His immeasurable freedom.
Reflect:
Forgiveness goes to very deep places for many of us. Hold your heart kindly. Sit with Him, and invite Him to bring to mind those places He may wish to invite you to hold today. Leave the rest.
Bring Him your willingness and your words, to let go.
And ask the Spirit of the living Jesus, who lives in you, to send away—to apoluō—that clinging bitterness, letting your heart heal into the Way of love.
Pray:
Lord Jesus,
Again, Lord, you amaze and discomfort me.
Your ambition for me is endlessly greater.
I so often think I was fine sitting here, in my own stuff and wounds,
Feeling better if I avoided the pain,
Or better if I could just stay angry.
I don’t always have the words for this,
And I know I don’t have the strength alone for this kind of journey.
But, Lord,
I bring you my desire to take another step today into your freedom.
And so,
I let go of these pains.
Would you enter the bitterness in my heart,
And lift it and take it away,
In the power of your Spirit,
That this heart may step further into the lightness of your love,
And the magnitude of your freedom.
Lord Jesus, in Your Name,
And in Your footsteps,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Isaiah 11-13 | Psalm 78:1-20
It is a friend to the word aphiēmi, which we spent a little time with on 15th April.
Sidenote: they’re all imperfect. My wife will concur.