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Jesus knew forgiveness is hard but also important. He taught forgiveness, and crucially he modeled it—forgiving even the men that nailed him to the cross. Learning to forgive can be a long road, but looking to the example of Jesus is a great place to start.

Forgiveness

As we were looking at ways to talk about Jesus’ unexplainable forgiveness, we kept coming back to one moment — when Jesus forgave the people who put him on the cross. It’s a moment that almost becomes more difficult to comprehend the more you think about it. He said, “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” How could he, an innocent man, possibly forgive the people responsible for his death as it was happening? How could he forgive the people who jeered and showed no remorse? It feels impossible, but it’s what he did.
As he hung on the cross, he didn’t lash out — he asked a friend to take <a href="https://hegetsus.com/en/articles/jesus-practiced-self-care">care</a> of his mother, he comforted the man being crucified alongside him, and he prayed to God to forgive the people who put him on the cross. He came to preach forgiveness, to give forgiveness, and, in that moment on the cross, to model it.
His earlier teachings — in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere — point us toward forgiving one another, and there’s a reason why. Jesus knew that seeking revenge or getting even doesn’t fulfill, and holding on to hatred and resentment only breeds more of the same. Forgiveness is a two-way street. It is a powerful display of love for the one being forgiven, but that’s not all. It is also a release of resentment for the one doing the forgiving. The choice to forgive — though incredibly difficult at times — is a choice that stops the cycle of hurt and pain, turns the page, and brings with it real peace. It is a choice that is good for us.
Even when rejecting hatred and resentment was hard, Jesus chose forgiveness. He offered that forgiveness freely, and his call is for us to do the same.
Scripture references: Luke 23:34, Luke 23:40-43, John 19:26-27, Matthew 5:38-42

Jesus chose forgiveness.

We were thinking about what Jesus’ relationships with friends and family might have looked like and were surprised by what we found. Pastel paintings and imagery of Jesus so often depict him having a peaceful, wonderful time with his loved ones, but a closer look at the text paints a more complex picture.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-1123 size-full" src="https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/RelationshipsHeadlines-01.png" alt="" width="3750" height="261" srcset="https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/RelationshipsHeadlines-01.png 3750w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/RelationshipsHeadlines-01-300x21.png 300w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/RelationshipsHeadlines-01-1200x84.png 1200w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/RelationshipsHeadlines-01-768x53.png 768w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/RelationshipsHeadlines-01-1536x107.png 1536w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/RelationshipsHeadlines-01-2048x143.png 2048w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/RelationshipsHeadlines-01-1400x97.png 1400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 3750px) 100vw, 3750px" />Shortly after beginning his public ministry, Jesus went back to his hometown to share his message. A whole crowd gathered to hear him speak. By the time he was done speaking, they were calling to have him killed. They even tried to take matters into their own hands and throw him off a cliff. If we read this story too quickly, we might miss the fact that the very people trying to kill him grew up with him. They would have been friends and neighbors that knew Jesus when he was a boy. And that’s not the only example of good relationships gone sour. One of Jesus’ closest friends gave him up to the authorities in exchange for money, and another denied ever knowing him while he was being arrested. His family doubted him, and his own mother likely felt the relational strains that came part and parcel of a full-time traveling ministry.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-1125 size-medium" src="https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Quote-2-4-300x200.png" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Quote-2-4-300x200.png 300w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Quote-2-4-743x495.png 743w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Quote-2-4-768x512.png 768w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Quote-2-4-1536x1024.png 1536w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Quote-2-4-600x400.png 600w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Quote-2-4-1200x800.png 1200w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Quote-2-4-1400x933.png 1400w, https://hegetsus1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Quote-2-4.png 1800w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />The point is, Jesus’ relationships were far from perfect. Betrayal, doubt, insecurity, disagreement and distance muddied the waters even for Jesus. He couldn’t avoid relational stresses, but he did give us a model for how to respond to them and work toward restoration. His model? Radical patience and forgiveness.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-874" src="https://newstaging2stg.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/RelationshipsHeadlines-02.png" alt="" width="3750" height="521" />It might have been best illustrated in a story he told about a father and son. The son asked for his inheritance while the father was still alive—he valued the money more than the relationship. The father obliged, gave the money, and the son went off and spent it until he found himself completely destitute with nothing left. He resolved to return home to his father to humbly ask for a job—not to reclaim his spot as son, but as one of many hired hands. As he was walking up to the house, the father saw him from afar and ran out to embrace him. To forgive him. To welcome him home as a son.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-877" src="https://newstaging2stg.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/RelationshipsQuote3.png" alt="" width="3750" height="2443" />Repairing broken relationships is incredibly difficult, and the forgiveness Jesus both talked about and displayed is often messy and complicated. But know if you feel the pang of hurt in your relationships, Jesus did too, and take encouragement in his resolve to repair what was broken.
**If you are in an abusive relationship, please seek help. Jesus’ call to forgive should not be wrongly used to manipulate people into staying in abusive relationships. Seek out safety first.
Scripture References: Luke 4:14-30, Luke 22:1-6, Matthew 26:69-75, Mark 3:21, Luke 15:11-32

Jesus had strained relationships, too.

Reading through the accounts of Jesus’ life, there’s a lot of talk about forgiveness. Jesus taught about when to forgive, how to forgive, what it means to be forgiven — it was clearly a very important topic. Unsurprisingly then, with so much talk of forgiveness in different ways and different contexts, definitions can get muddy, and we can miss the point. However complex forgiveness can be, Jesus made some things very clear: forgiveness is necessary and costly, and forgiving and forgetting are two different things. Let’s take a look and quickly unpack that.
To illustrate forgiveness, Jesus tells the story of two people in debt. The first debtor goes to the king, to whom he is in debt, and explains his case. The king has compassion and forgives — he takes the loss on himself and completely erases the debt. But that first man, who just had his debt erased, happens to be owed money by a second man. When the second man comes to him unable to pay, the first man has no compassion and has him sent to debtors’ prison until the debt is paid in full, even though he was just spared from that fate himself. The king hears word of this and punishes the unforgiving man. So what are the takeaways? First, true forgiveness can be costly. It often means abandoning a desire for payback or retribution and calling things even when they aren’t. It’s hard. Second, we ought to be quick to forgive because, very frequently, we need to be forgiven ourselves.
So forgiveness is costly and necessary, but Jesus made another aspect of forgiveness clear to us as well — forgiveness is deliberate. We hear this phrase thrown around: “Forgive and forget.” Is that something Jesus preached? Well, not exactly. There’s this pretty powerful moment where Peter and Jesus are reunited after Peter has denied even knowing Jesus three times. In the middle of their conversation, Jesus gives Peter the opportunity to confirm his loyalty and love three separate times — once for each of the times he denied Jesus. You see, Jesus didn’t forget the wrongdoing, and he didn’t say, “Don’t worry about it; there’s nothing to forgive,” because there was. Rather than ignore the wrongdoing, Jesus made the space to specifically forgive and resolve it. He didn’t forget what Peter did, but he also didn’t hold it against him.
That’s often where forgiveness is warped into a tool for manipulation instead of one for healing and reconciliation. We’re told that to forgive is to completely forget, and that can turn forgiveness into a get-out-of-jail-free card — one that encourages bad behavior by making space for it. Jesus’ forgiveness is different. It doesn’t make light of the wrongdoing; it makes much of the reconciliation. His forgiveness acknowledges the wound, exposes it, and then pours an abundance of patience, kindness, and love on top of it so that the healing can happen.
**If you are in an abusive relationship, please seek help. Jesus’ call to forgive should not be wrongly used to manipulate people into staying in abusive relationships. Seek out safety first.

Jesus forgave, but did he forget?

When holding onto anger was most justified, Jesus forgave, and he called us to do the same. We’ve compiled some of our favorite stories here as a testament to the power of forgiveness not just in the lives of the ones being forgiven but in the lives of the ones doing the forgiving as well. It seems Jesus might’ve been onto something.

How to forgive like Jesus did.

For Jesus, it was issues with society at large that escalated into verbal confrontations with what we might call the religious influencers of his day — the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They made Jesus an enemy because they believed him to be a disruptive dissident who challenged their customs and character, and they were right. He strongly opposed what the Pharisees stood for and publicly scolded their hypocrisy and greed on numerous occasions. His gall shaped the Pharisees’ anger, and as his following grew, so did their disdain.
The elite was not the only group who had a bone to pick with Jesus. Common folk made an enemy out of him, too. Some felt that his message was too blatant, too brazen, even ludicrous. So, they took it upon themselves to make him feel unwelcome in his hometown and in cities across Israel. After all, it was an incensed crowd, not only a handful of religious elites who demanded that Pontius Pilate condemn Jesus to death. Ironically, he had famously rode into Jerusalem on a donkey a week prior, and many were ready to crown him king. However, the aforementioned religious elite were quite powerful and used their influence to drown the voices of those who supported him and turned those on the fence away from him.
Jesus faced a mountain of outward enemies, but he also faced opposition from his inner circle. In arguably one of the most notorious cases of betrayal ever, Jesus had to navigate the emotional strain of being offered up to the authorities by one of his own — Judas. It was his own friend, one of his inner twelve, who led the Roman authorities to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. For three years, Jesus treated Judas as a confidant, a brother. Only for Judas to later reveal himself as one of his most detrimental foes, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Jesus appeared to have a laundry list of enemies, but how did he react to those who opposed him? Well, he didn’t fight fire with fire. He chose different weapons to combat his enemies — love and forgiveness. But what does that really mean? Jesus talked a lot about forgiveness, and we reference it all the time, but it’s one of those words that’s been used in so many different ways it’s started to lose its meaning, so we explored it a little deeper here in the next article in this series.

Jesus was no stranger to controversy, either.

Living out the traits Jesus valued usually means saying things that are incredibly difficult to say. Scroll down to learn more.

How is Jesus’ Love Like a Second Language?

Giuliano’s Story: Learning to say “I forgive you.”

Whether your heart language is Italian like Giuliano’s, English, or any other, “I forgive you” can be one of the hardest things to say — especially when it comes to long-standing brokenness in family relationships. It can feel almost impossible. But Jesus taught that a merciful life is a flourishing one, so how can we take steps toward learning forgiveness even when it’s hard? Jesus’ love is like a second language. It takes practice.

That Day

More than just about anyone else, Jesus had reason to harbor resentment and hatred. He was wrongly accused, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. But in his last moments, he didn’t speak out against the people involved in his wrongful execution, he had compassion on them. He displayed radical love until the end, forgiving the very people that put him on the cross.