It sounds easy to say to other people. The fighter in us and defender of me says, “I want to pay back the wrong done to me.”

There really is two parts to forgiving. One part is the forgiving. the other part is the forgetting or maybe said like this…. wiping the slate clean like the offense never even happened. We can say we forgive someone and then deep down inside we hope we never have to interact with that person ever again. Is that really forgiveness?

True forgiveness is handling the offense and restoring the person to the status the person prior to the offense. It’s kind of a like an infant that breaks something having some value. We let it go. We forgive. The child isn’t even aware they caused an offense and have been forgiven. And we go on loving them like it never even happened.

This is how the Lord deals with us. He forgives us in such a way like the offense/sin/the missing of the mark… never even took place. How could someone love me that much? A grown person can consider this logic. An infant doesn’t worry about it. They move on in their forgiveness easily without reservation, without guilt, without mental anguish. They know who they belong to and that they are still loved. The infant doesn’t disqualify himself because of his wrong doing. Why do adults disqualify themselves? He says unless you are like little children, you cannot inherit the Kingdom.

Infants don’t suffer from guilt, self-condemnation, nor ongoing consequences of having done something that seems unforgivable. We must be like a little child, an infant. God is quick to forgive and forget. We are quick to disqualify ourselves and want to keep reminding the Lord that we “deserve” punishment for offenses He’s already forgiven and forgotten. Why do we complicate the simplest process?

The hard part about forgiving others is not considering they are an infant and they don’t know any better.