What Forgiving Your Spouse is Really About
It was a hot day in July. I had just had a conversation with my husband that left me feeling abandoned, rejected, and treated unfairly. I left the house and went on a run alone to burn off some of my anger. And I hashed it out with God. My feet picked up speed and sweat and tears ran down my face as I poured my raw emotion out to Him. Finally, I angrily spewed, “why should I keep sacrificing myself for this?”
Jesus’ reply was poignant, and stopped me in my tracks: "Because I did.”
I am about to challenge us. And please know I am doing it from a place of deep humility. I do not do this well. It is something I’m learning to do moment by moment and I often fail. It can take me a long time to get to this place. I pray you open your heart to receive this and choose a healing way with me.
When we are faced with the need to forgive, we often base our decision on one of these things:
Our feelings
Whether or not our spouse has apologized or showed remorse
Whether or not our spouse has acknowledge how we’ve been impacted
The degree to which they hurt us
The number of times they’ve hurt us
Bad news: none of these are good reasons for or against forgiveness.
Good news: we have a much stronger anchor than this.
At this point in my conversation with Jesus, I stopped running and took out my phone and started recording a voice memo as I let Him teach me.
Forgiving my husband is not between me and my husband. It is between me and Jesus.
Read Philippians 2:1-8:
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!
Jesus was the very fullness of God (Colossians 2:9). And despite being the most powerful, most holy, most perfect being, He did not feel entitled. To anything. In fact, He humbled himself to the point of complete self-sacrifice. For me. For my husband.
If Jesus chose not to hold my husband’s sin against him, I have no right to.
If Jesus gave me forgiveness and freedom from condemnation and sin, I cannot use that freedom to condemn another (Matthew 18:21-35).
However I have been hurt, if I claim to be saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, I have to acknowledge that I am not in a position to hold that hurt against my husband or anyone else.
The way I walk in that forgiveness and the way it looks varies by circumstance. But in the end, this is about me and Jesus. Jesus pursued me when I was still hostile to him (Romans 5:8).
This is courage. This is true love. And I am called to have the same mindset in my marriage. Before my husband apologizes or empathizes with me. Before he acknowledges how his actions impacted me. Before I feel like it.
This is easier to read on a day that your spouse isn’t requiring your forgiveness. If you’re reading this on a day that sounds a lot like that hot day in July (and many others like it), and your heart is feeling more broken than open, I want to let you in on what Jesus said to me next. I can still picture where I was on the trail when His next words washed over me: I am near to the brokenhearted, because I am one of them.
You can’t get much nearer than that, can you?
He called us to be like Him after He chose to be like us. He calls us to imitate Him in really difficult things. But He has been one of the lowly. The ridiculed, the despised, the rejected, the abandoned, the betrayed. He went through the kind of relational hardship and even heartbreak that you are experiencing in your marriage. He’s calling you to do the hard thing because it means freedom. He’s no stranger to what it will cost you. Or to what you will gain. It’s a worthy trade. He would know.
I pray comfort over your heartbreak, and courage over your next steps, my friend.
Think about it:
What are you finding difficult to forgive right now? If something current doesn’t come to mind, what tends to be difficult for you to forgive?
Do it:
Pray for the Lord to soften your heart and ask Him what step of forgiveness He is calling you to. Step out in faith, empowered by Jesus’ example in Philippians 2.
