Biography
The Rev. Dr. Benjamin Reaves is ordained in the Seventh Day Adventist Church and serves as Vice President for Ministry at Adventist Health Systems in Orlando, Florida. He's a former pastor and college professor, and served 11 years as President of Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"The Fullness of Forgiveness"
When I hear the word forgiveness, the sound takes me back to childhood days, those days when a parent or a well-meaning adult would intervene in a red hot playground conflict with the unwelcome words, "Come on now, forgive each other." The sign of forgiveness was to shake hands or, even worse, give each other a hug. How often the grazing of the fingers or the arms-length hug made the forgiveness process, if not a distasteful ordeal, a shallow one; one you went through just to get it over.

Too often that childhood shallowness carries over into the day-to-day living of life and certainly distorts our view about forgiveness to the point where we very much need to be clear about what forgiveness is not. First of all, forgiveness is not just a good idea, or an option to be selectively used depending on the circumstances. Forgiveness is not a cover-up or a game of "let's pretend;" a performance in which we shrug our shoulders and pretend the offense was "no big deal," acting as if it didn't matter. Forgiveness is not teeth-gritting determination to keep going no matter what, refusing to let a wrong done to you affect, or be a barrier to, your progress. As Marjorie Thompson writes, "Forgiveness does not mean denying our hurt. It is not to be a doormat or to play the martyr." Nor does forgiveness mean "putting the other person on probation," ready to snatch it back if the person doesn't live up to our expectations. And perhaps most surprisingly, forgiveness is not forgetting.

I remember when, after a misunderstanding, my college classmate, said, "That's alright Reaves. I forgive you but I won't forget." Well, I felt if he was not going to forget, he wasn't going to forgive. But forgiveness is not forgetting.

Then what is forgiveness? Webster gives some help here, defining the verb forgive as "to cease to feel resentment" against someone, "to pardon, to give up resentment," or "to grant relief from payment."

Majorie Thompson describes forgiveness as making a choice to release the person who has wounded us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment may be. It is a choice to leave behind our resentment and desire for revenge. While that description is certainly useful, our greatest help is found in scripture, starting where Paul removes forgiveness as an option and tells us in Ephesians 4:32: "Forgive one another as quickly and as thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you." So true forgiveness is to be modeled after God's forgiveness.

The Scriptures use many metaphors and stories to illustrate God's forgiveness. There is, in Matthew18:21–35, the central image of a master who has mercifully canceled an incomprehensible debt. The canceled debt frees the debtor from imprisonment, shame, and destitution. In fact, two of the New Testament words translated "to forgive," vividly reflect this spiritual dynamic "to remit, to lay aside." And the Lord's Prayer, in Matthew 6:9-15, calls this the cancellation or "forgiving a debt."

While that gives me insight into forgiveness, I must confess, for me the fullness of forgiveness is more vividly modeled and graphically revealed in the story of the Prodigal Son. In Luke 15:11-13 we read: "Then he said, ‘A certain man had two sons.' " The younger, demanding his part of the estate, journeyed to a far country. In addition to rupturing the family relationship and after wasting his possessions with prodigal living, he decides, "I will arise and go to my father."

The old, old story of prodigals and penitents, actions and consequences, unfolds the fullness of forgiveness. For as the story goes on, the passage is pointed and powerful. While he was yet "a great way off," the father sees him as he is and, in spite of what he had done and what he had become, still he "had compassion, and ran, ran with arms outstretched and fell on his neck" in a loving, accepting embrace. The arms, the outstretched arms.

The picture of the father with outstretched arms of forgiveness and reconciliation reaches into my life and memories. It was when I was a prep school student and had run afoul of academy rules. The discipline committee was going to send me home and requested my parents to drive up from New York to Pennsylvania. I remember the morning when dad and mom drove up. I was waiting in the dormitory behind the walls of apprehension and defensive bravado. When told, "Your parents are here," I walked out of the dorm toward the car and saw her arms reaching out of the car window. I remember my mom's voice of hurt, disappointment, "Bennie, Bennie." But most of all I remember her outstretched arms. The arms of forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiving as God forgives. And she never mentioned my transgression again. Forgiving as God forgives.

When God forgives he declares, "I will not remember your sins no more." [Jeremiah 31:34]
That's the way God is. It's not that he is forgetful, he no longer holds our sins against us. He determines not to remember, not to bring it up against us. Unlike the experience Pat Cook tells of two businessmen who were roommates in college, meeting at a convention with their wives. The men, reliving the days of happy go lucky youth, sat in the hotel lobby and before they knew it most of the night had slipped away. They knew they would be in trouble and the next day they happened to see each other.

"What did your wife think?" said one.

"When I walked in the door my wife got historical."

"Don't you mean hysterical?"

"No, historical. She told me everything I ever did wrong. She got historical on me."

God does not get historical on me. Could it be, then, the fullness of forgiveness is found in the release it brings from the burden and guilt of the past; release for the forgiver and forgiven? Is that the fullness of forgiveness? Or is it found in the relief it brings, the relief of those times of tension in a relationship with a friend or family member; tension so thick the air could be cut with a knife? That's relief for the forgiven and the forgiver.

Or is the fullness of forgiveness found in the rejoicing it initiates? The joy that bubbles all through the party for the Prodigal, and bubbles up through the pain of Psalm Thirty-two as a forgiven David testifies, "happy is the man."

Release, relief, rejoicing are all part of the forgiveness experience, but one or all does not bring the fullness of forgiveness. Forgiveness is of God and the fullness of forgiveness is most clearly seen through the prism of his purpose.

"People are mistaken," writes theologian L. Gregory Jones, "if they think of forgiveness primarily as absolution from guilt; the purpose of forgiveness is the restoration of communion, the reconciliation of broken-ness."

So, based on the scriptural picture of God's forgiveness, to forgive another means to provide a door of opportunity for reconciliation that is not just a restored relationship but a new, changed relationship between forgiver and forgiven. So the fullness of forgiveness is found in reconciliation to a relationship that doesn't get historical.

Central to the fullness of forgiveness is the inextricable connection between receiving forgiveness from God and giving forgiveness to man, and one is not possible without the other.

Forgiveness starts with being forgiven.

Interview with Benjamin Reaves
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Ben, your message on forgiveness began with an illustration of the playground conflict mediated by a well intentioned adult that resulted in a forced kind of forgiveness. It doesn't work, does it?

Benjamin Reaves: No, it does not work.

Talbot: But what advice do you have for a third person mediator who longs for a reconciliation between two family members but is fearful of driving a wedge further between them or jeopardizing the relationship?

Reaves: They are wise in being fearful of jeopardizing it. It is hoped that they enjoyed a relationship with both of the parties, so they must never forget that they represent a third party and that everything has a context and a history. Maybe in their relationship to each one they can perhaps best serve by modeling an openness, an acceptance, a willingness to listen, to hear, to understand and to be present.

Talbot: To be present. Isn't that critical! You say that forgiveness, true forgiveness, is making a choice to release the person who has wounded you of that sentence of judgement, even if the judgement is justified. But what does one have to do to reach that point of making the choice?

Reaves: I have thought about that a lot and it seems to me that, number one, we all have the power of choice. We can choose to forgive. But the power to forgive has to come from God. It is only in our reliance on God's grace and the ministering of the Spirit in our lives that we can gain the power to forgive. Ours is the choice to exercise that power.

Talbot: That's the inextricable link you talk about between experiencing forgiveness of God and giving forgiveness to another. But what about people who don't experience that revelatory moment or do not have a religious sensibility, who do not understand God's unconditional forgiveness?

Reaves: It is very difficult for them to approach the fullness of forgiveness. However, they are able to move in the direction of relief. It will make you feel better, the direction of release from the past and those things, but until they sense the presence of God and involvement of God, then they cannot experience the fullness of forgiveness. The act of forgiveness starts a journey or process that hopefully will take them to the fullness of a relationship that is restored; that, as I like to think, never gets historical.

Talbot: Ben, we think about forgiveness as a relational experience. In one word, can our nation be a forgiving nation?

Reaves: I believe so. I must believe so because I believe our nation was born of God's providence.

Talbot: Thank you, Benjamin Reaves.