I recently wrote about how the first step in forgiving another is acknowledging the sin that’s been committed against us. You can read that post here. The second step in the forgiveness process goes deeper than acknowledging to grieving the offense.

Ironically, many of us don’t really know how to grieve, nor do we understand its necessity to the process of emotionally forgiving.

3 reasons why we need to grieve …

1. God is grieved over the sins we commit against Him. And since we’re created in His image, we have the need to grieve the sins done against us as well. The skill of grieving is something the culture in Bible times understood and valued, using it to facilitate healing and letting go. Check this out …

“Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come; send for the most skillful of them. Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids.” Jer. 9:17-18 (NIV)

2. In a more physical and psychological sense, scientists have discovered that when an animal survives a threat, the animal must release pent up “survival energy,” that’s often demonstrated through shaking and trembling.*

As humans we may not need to shake or tremble, but in response to threats and traumas our emotions must be released and who better to release them to, than to our loving, comforting, Savior who knows how it feels to be rejected and offended? {2 Cor. 1:3-4, Heb. 4:14-16}

3. Grieving the offense helps us to feel and understand the gravity of the sin, as well as, the power of Christ to heal and redeem the sin.

Allow me to back up just a bit here …

• I’m taking an extremely slow pace to unfold the forgiveness process. I’ll eventually address the need to develop a forgiving spirit that’s able to release the offender quickly to our ultimate Forgiver in Christ.
• I’m not focusing on the decision to forgive, but rather the emotional processing of forgiveness. Both are necessary to forgive, but the “process” is where I’m focusing at this point.
• I’m focusing on the person who’s held resentments for some time. We all need to develop a forgiving spirit—one that does not hold offenses easily or quickly—but that’s so much further along in the sanctification process for the person who’s resentful. It’s like asking a “couch potato” to run a marathon in his/her first attempt at running! Good luck with that!
• The NT Greek word for forgiveness is aphesis, which means “pardon, cancellation of an obligation, punishment or guilt.”** If we don’t know what we’re pardoning by fully examining and grieving the pain, then we can’t truly release our offender through forgiveness. It’s like writing a check without knowing how much to write it out for!

Bottom line –
We must work through the messy, painful emotions related to our losses in order to understand the high price Christ paid for all of our sins. When we jump immediately from “resentment” to saying we’ve forgiven someone, we’re probably trying to project the image of what we feel a “good Christian” should be and do. When we do that, it becomes more about us and less about Christ and His sacrifice.

Today I’ve made the case for the need to grieve in the forgiveness process. In my next post, I will explain exactly how to grieve offenses.

What do you fear about facing the pain and grieving the offenses of your offender?

What has kept you stuck in the forgiveness process?

*From Waking the Tiger by Dr. Peter Levine and Ann Frederick

**From How to Forgive When You Don’t Feel Like It by June Hunt

Click the link to read more in this Forgiveness Series.