Faith In The Ordinary

On Forgiveness, the Blood of Christ, and Why We Cannot Write Anyone Off

Some of the hardest truths in the Christian life are not the ones we disagree with. They are the ones we believe deeply — in our heads, in our theology, in the songs we sing — but struggle to live when real life presses in on us. Forgiveness is one of those truths. It sounds beautiful when we speak about the grace of God toward us. It becomes something else entirely when we are asked to extend that same grace toward the person who has wounded us most.

Let me begin with honesty, because this subject deserves it. I am not writing from a place of mastery or easy resolution. I am writing from the middle of the wrestle – with Scripture open in front of me and a question I cannot put down: if I can run to God when I have fallen short, then where can others run when they have fallen short with me? That question has been sitting with me for a while now. And the more I sit with it, the more I realise that the way we understand grace for ourselves must eventually reshape the way we hold space for others. We ought not to look at holding space for others as a burden imposed from outside, but as the natural overflow of a heart that has truly encountered mercy.

The Door That Was Always Open for Us

There is a longing that sits beneath all the noise of daily life – quiet, persistent, and impossible to fully satisfy anywhere else. It surfaces in all kinds of moments – not just the peaceful ones, but the painful ones too. It comes up in the middle of hurt, in seasons of desperation, in the moments when you feel most lost. And even then, especially then, there is still only one direction that makes sense. It makes sense not because there is nowhere else to turn, but because there is only one place where you are truly loved without condition, comforted without judgment, forgiven without hesitation, and quietly, steadily made more into who you were always meant to be. That is why we run to Him. Not just out of need, but out of knowing and belonging. He is the only one who receives us exactly as we are and loves us too much to leave us there.

So, knowing the truth of what it means to arrive at His feet broken and to be met with love rather than condemnation, we already understand something profound about the nature of grace. We know what it feels like to need a place where we are not turned away. A place where our worst moment does not become our permanent identity. A place where the door is still open even when we arrive with the same failure in our hands that we brought last time.

The Gospel tells us that such a place exists and it exists not because of how sincere our repentance is, or how long we waited before coming back, but because of the cross. The blood of Jesus did not purchase for us a conditional welcome. It purchased an open door. And every time we have run through it, trembling and ashamed, it has held. Since we know what it is to need a door that stays open, then that memory must shape how we hold the door for others

Romans 12: What Mercy Produces in Us

Romans 12 is not simply a list of instructions. It is a portrait of what life looks like when the mercy of God has genuinely taken root in a person. Paul opens the chapter with a direct connection between the mercy we have received and the kind of living that should flow from it – offering ourselves, being transformed, no longer squeezed into the shape of the world around us. The whole chapter is the logic of grace worked outward, into every relationship and every circumstance.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Romans 12:2.

By the time Paul reaches the end of the chapter, he is addressing something that would have sounded almost unreasonable to his original readers – and honestly, still does to us today. He speaks of blessing those who have persecuted us. Of refusing to repay evil with evil. Of leaving revenge in the hands of God. Of overcoming evil not with greater evil but with good.

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse… Do not repay anyone evil for evil… Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath… Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:14, 17, 19, 21.

This is not telling us to be passive, and it is not the language of someone who has been told to simply absorb their wounds in silence. This is the costliest, counter-cultural, spiritually demanding thing a human being can do – and Paul presents it not as an extraordinary act reserved for saints, but as the ordinary shape of a life that has been shaped by mercy. The logic is simple and devastating: if we have been shown grace we did not earn, then we are not in a position to permanently withhold it from someone else. The same love that met us when we ran to Him is the love He asks us to leave room for in how we treat others.

The Sufficiency of the Blood

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:12 about freedom – the freedom that belongs to those who are in Christ. The phrase “all things are lawful” was likely a familiar saying among the Corinthians, used to justify whatever they wanted. Paul does not abolish their freedom; he reframes it. Not everything that is permitted is beneficial. Not everything that is available is wise. But there is another dimension to this passage that speaks directly into the question of forgiveness. If we truly believe, as a living conviction, that the blood of Christ is sufficient to cover every sin, then we must sit with the uncomfortable question: whose sins did we imagine it could not reach?

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price.” 1 Corinthians 6:19–20

We were bought at a price. So was the person who hurt us. Not a different price, or a reduced one, or a price paid with reservation. The same cross. The same blood. The same open arms that received us when we came running. This does not erase what they did. It does not make the wound smaller or the betrayal less real. But it does ask us a hard question: who are we to declare that what was done to us lies beyond the reach of what Christ has already paid for?

Forgiveness, at its deepest level, is not a statement about what the other person deserves. It is a statement about what we believe the cross accomplished. If we write someone off permanently and decide in our hearts that their sin is simply too much, too deep, too personal to ever be covered, then we are not just guarding ourselves. We are, quietly, setting a limit on grace. And grace does not have limits. To write someone off because of their sin or offense against us is to quietly insist that the blood of Christ was not enough for this one.

What Forgiveness Is — and What It Is Not

Because forgiveness is so often misunderstood – especially by people who have genuinely been hurt — it is worth being honest about what it actually requires of us, and what it does not. Forgiveness does not mean that what happened was acceptable. It was not. It does not mean you are issuing a verdict of innocence on the person who wronged you. It is not a minimisation of your pain, a denial of what occurred, or a requirement that you pretend the wound does not exist. God is not asking you to perform a peace you do not yet feel. That would not be forgiveness – it would be suppression, and He is not in the business of suppression.

Forgiveness does not require immediate reconciliation. Some relationships are not safe to return to, and wisdom in those situations is not the opposite of forgiveness, it is part of loving yourself well. You can release someone from the debt they owe you in your own heart while still maintaining careful boundaries in the real world. The two are not in conflict. Trust is rebuilt over time, if it is rebuilt at all. Forgiveness can begin today.

What forgiveness does require is the willingness to release your claim to be the final judge. Romans 12 reminds us that vengeance belongs to God – not because He is indifferent to what was done to us, but because He is the only one qualified to settle accounts perfectly. When we hold on to the right to make someone pay, we are not just hurting them, we are taking on a weight we were never designed to carry, and it will cost us more than it costs them.

Forgiveness Is Not Something We Manufacture

Here is one of the most important things I have had to come to terms within this season: I cannot produce this kind of forgiveness on my own. Neither can you. The capacity to forgive the way Christ forgave – to bless when we want to curse, to release when every instinct says hold on – is not the result of emotional maturity or spiritual discipline alone. It is Christ in us. It is the fruit of a Spirit who is actively at work reshaping instincts that would otherwise default to self-protection and retaliation.

Left to ourselves, most of us do not naturally move toward the people who have hurt us. We move away from them, or against them. What changes that is not trying harder. It is returning again and again to the same place we run to when we ourselves fall short – into His presence, where we are loved, comforted, forgiven, and slowly changed. The more time we spend in that place, the more it begins to reshape how we see the people who have wronged us. Not as enemies to be defeated. As people who, like us, need a door to be open.

A Word to the Weary

If you are reading this and you are simply tired – tired of being told to forgive, tired of feeling like you are always the one who has to do the hard work, tired of carrying a wound that the other person has never even acknowledged – I want you to hear this: you do not have to arrive fully healed before God can work. You do not have to feel generous before you begin. You just have to be willing to be willing.

Sometimes the most honest prayer you can offer is not “I forgive them.” Sometimes it is “Lord, I want to forgive, but I am not there yet. I am willing to be made willing. Help me”. That prayer is enough to start. He does not require you to perform something you do not yet have. He is in the business of producing in us that we cannot produce in ourselves – and He meets us exactly where we are, not where we think we should be. Bring Him the wound. Bring Him the anger that still lives in your chest. Bring Him the grief of what was lost and the exhaustion of carrying it. Run to Him with all of it – desperate, hurting, not yet ready – and let Him do what only He can do. Receive you. Comfort you. Forgive you. And slowly, gently, make you more like Him.

The Door We Refuse to Lock

The Gospel is, at its core, a story about a door that never closes. A Father who sees his returning son while he is still a long way off and runs to meet him, not waiting for an explanation, not demanding a full account of every wrong choice, but running. A Saviour who, nailed to a cross by the very people He came to save, prays forgiveness over them in the same breath. A Spirit who intercedes for us when we do not even have the words.

We are not asked to be God. We are asked to be shaped by Him. To let His mercy become the grammar of how we live, especially toward those who have made our lives harder. Not because they have earned it and not because it is easy. But because we remember what it was like to run to Him – broken, desperate, longing to be loved and made whole – and find that the door was open. That He was already running toward us.

That is the invitation of Romans 12 lived out. That is the logic of the cross applied to our closest wounds. Grace means that the door we ran through to reach God is the same door we refuse to lock for someone else. Not because they deserve it. Because we didn’t either. And it was open anyway.

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”  Ephesians 4:32.

A Prayer

Lord, You know what was done to me, and You know what it has cost me to carry it. I am not asking to stop feeling it, I am asking You to carry it with me. Teach me what forgiveness looks like in my particular pain. Remind me, again and again, of what it feels like to run to You and find You already there,  loving me, comforting me, forgiving me. And make me, slowly, the kind of person who keeps the door open for others the way You have always kept it open for me. Amen.