Paul had a Wounded Heart

I would like you to read the first seven chapters of 2 Corinthians with this in mind:  Paul loved this group of believers  in Corinth but something had come between them–and it had broken his heart.

I have always loved this section of Scripture, but I don’t think I saw it as a personal letter until recently.  I think many of us read the letters in the New Testament as though the authors put chapters and numbers in them from the beginning like they were teaching manuals.  I know I can’t help but seeing them that way sometimes.  2 Corinthians is a book in the Bible, but I submit that it is also a very personal letter from Paul to the Church in Corinth.

Now I have always loved 2 Corinthians, especially the end of chapter 3 where the beauty of our permanent access to the Presence of God is revealed.  You will remember Paul unfolding the privilege of our access to God by contrasting between Moses’ temporal experience with the Presence of God and our experience through Christ which is radically different–radically permanent.  What an incredible truth.  Though I had excerpted that one picture of Moses’ face glowing and then fading as a way to understand our unique, permanent access to God through Christ,  I had not realized the broader text as a personal plea from Paul to believers in Corinth who were struggling.  His plea doesn’t crescendo until chapter 6 when Paul pours out his heart to these believers as a father calling out to his own children.

Read it, you will see what I mean.

When we see the book as a personal letter we realize the whole first part of the letter is warming up to this critical moment in chapter 6.  You can feel the emotion in his writing when he effectively asks, “Will you come back to me?  Can we be reconciled?”

2 Cor. 6:13 As a fair exchange — I speak as to my children — open wide your hearts also.

2 Cor. 7:2a  Make room for us in your hearts.

Let’s briefly run through the points that he builds in this very personal letter.  In the first two chapters you will notice that Paul simply outlines, in a humble manner, how much he had been doing as an apostle in recent days, and how much he had done to literally birth the fellowship in Corinth.  It was a review of their beginnings together.  However, we soon learn the fellowship had become infatuated with new leadership that were not laying the basic foundations of trusting in Christ alone.  This was unacceptable to Paul.  They had pushed Paul and his leadership aside, and for this he was not only disappointed–he was also hurt.

It is important to note that his disappointment does not unfold in harsh corrections, but, instead, he tries to win them with tenderness and reminders of the beauty of trusting Christ alone.  By chapter 3 Paul is painting a beautiful picture of what it means to live in Christ.   To live in Christ, he explains, means that we are surrounded with His favor and His privilege in the eyes of the Father:

Christ’s favor is that He is the favorite son of God and we are now clothed in that same favor.

Christ’s privilege is His unhindered access to the sweet, welcoming Presence of His Father: We have been given that same sweet, welcoming access.

Paul draws this favor and privilege together to try and win their hearts.  As he does this he shifts the words of insight into direct words of encouragement aimed right at the believers in Corinth.  He speaks to them about their call to responsibility–their call to do ministry:

Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.  He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant… 2 Cor. 3:5-6a

Ministers of a new covenant, really?  If we are ministers, then it means we are servants.  Ministry after all is just a fat vocabulary word that means “serving.”  According to this Scripture we are competent and fully able to perform this ministry.  What exactly is the ministry of the new covenant?

In the last half of chapter 3, as I have already noted, Paul underlines our new privilege in Christ to access–without any hindrance or time restriction–the actual Presence of God.  He is proving how in Christ alone we no longer have any obstacle between ourselves and God because we share in the access that the Son has to the Father.  The description of Moses’ shame as the Presence of God faded from his face is one of the most powerful pictures of the insufficiency of the old covenant in all of Scripture.  2 Corinthians 3:13 says, “We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away.” You see, the Israelites were gazing with disapproval at Moses face which would fade more and more the longer Moses was away from meeting God on the mountain.  In other words, Moses was restricted to enjoying the privilege of God’s presence only during temporary mountain-top experiences.  This inadequacy of the old covenant is contrasted with the power of the new covenant, established by Christ, which grants us eternal, unhindered access to the glory of God.  It says of us in the same passage:

“But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.  Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

The new relational privilege we have in Christ removes all possibility of shame–of the visible fading–because God’s Presence never fades…as a matter of fact it only gets brighter and brighter for those of us in Christ.

Again, Paul says, in the first verse of chapter 4:

Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.

There he goes again…he is saying we have this ministry. Just what is this ministry that we have?  We know it has to do with our new, continual, joyful access to the Presence of God.  We know that there used to be only temporary access to God because His glory could not remain with us until the Spirit, which was promised by the Prophets, was poured out on us.  We know Christ is our new covenant, and that he remains in us now by the Spirit.  Now we can experience God with us, Immanuel, in the Spirit who indwells us and we don’t have to just visit Him in a building once a week.  He is not flesh who is limited to time and space, but our Lord is Spirit and He now lives in us, and we now live inside of Him.

But just what is the ministry of service that we now have as a result?

In the beginnings of chapter 5 Paul describes how we are now clothed in Christ, and we long to be fully clothed in Him, that is to know Him completely in the Spirit.  He emphasizes being fully clothed because in the present we are only enjoying some of this promise and we long for more–we long to fully appropriate and enjoy the favor and privilege of living in Christ.  The Holy Spirit living in us is the deposit, the evidence, of this longing that will be fulfilled after this life.  This understanding, however, commands us to no longer see one another, or to see ourselves, according to our natural eyes, but to look on one another, according to Paul, with spiritual eyes.  Beginning in 2 Cor. 5:16 we read:

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.

This is our supernatural ability:  to see one another clothed in Christ, restored to God, and on our way together into eternal family.  We can no longer live trying to preserve ourselves or to defend our own selfishness because Christ is our life. He has given us a new heart of selflessness. We can’t stand division, because Christ has brought us to the Father and to one another now as His own family.  We now have a Family heart.  This is what it means when Paul says in chapter 5 verse 16:

Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

He is saying he used to look at Christ as just a man, flawed, with no understanding of his privilege or favor as the son of God and no clue about the message of the Kingdom of God.  You see even the disciples regarded Jesus as a man for a while, but then, when He was resurrected, visited them for 40 days, and then poured out the Holy Spirit with power they no longer regarded Him that way anymore.  They realized who He really was!  Paul goes on…

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…

So, friends, if we are living in Christ and sharing in His Divine favor and His Divine privilege in the heart of the Father, then we can no longer look on one another as just men of flesh and blood with only a temporal destinies.  We have to see each other for who we really are.  We are all the sons of God through Christ who now have an eternal, spiritual destiny to walk together as Family in the eternal dreams of our Father.

And all this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…

And now we have been given a ministry of service that we are all fit, and ready to perform.  Ready?

And all this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…

That’s it!  We have been given the ministry of reconciliation!

Pause for a moment.  Consider your wonderful ministry.  Say it aloud, “I am a reconciler.”

God has already declared that we can do it so now let’s discover how to get good at it.  Paul goes on and explains:

…that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Obviously the Corinthian believers had added some flaming hoops of accomplishment to the Gospel of the Kingdom.  They had begun to require more than just the perfect reconciling work of Christ on the cross to bring us close to the Father.  They were falling from grace.  Paul was exercising his role as a reconciler and giving us this first example:

We are to look around at the people that God has put around us and beg them–we are to implore them–please, please be reconciled to God through Christ alone.

There is no room for other messages, others ways, or compromising attitudes about what is necessary to be adopted into the heart of the Father.  It is in Christ alone.  He is our Gospel and there is no other.  Christ has made a way for us to come right up into the very Presence of Father God and enjoy Him forever.  There is no reason for us to live as though He is distant, or live as though He does not love you.   And, just like the Corinthians, there is no reason to live as though we must add to the work of Christ to find our peace as the sons of God.   Come, let’s enjoy the Divine favor, and the Divine privilege of living in Christ who will envelope you in His love, and fill you with His power:  the Holy Spirit.  This is our message, and it is our first ministry:  bring men to the Father through trusting in Christ.

Wait, there is more.

Before we think, as some have,  that this ministry of reconciliation is exclusively the preaching of a message about Christ’s work to restore us to God we must discover more of what Paul did as a reconciler.  The actions of Paul’s life will reveal his work as a minister of reconciliation. This brings us the moment in the letter where Paul is pouring out his heart to the Church.  He is pleading for another kind of reconciliation–not between God and man, but between brothers and sisters.  In chapter 6 he implores the Corinthian believers as a father with his heart wide open.  He had been suffering because his relationship with these believers was suffering.  He had suffered literal hardships for them, and out of his love, Paul says:

I speak as to my children — open wide your hearts also [to me].

You see, dear friends, our ministry of reconciliation is always a service to others in two directions.  First, it is the sincere work to help others know the love of God and to know Christ has removed all obstacles between them and God.  This is the proclamation of the Gospel in words and with power.

Secondly, we are to be reconciled to one another.

Paul moved directly to imploring the Corinthian believers to open their hearts to him and to be reconciled to him.   Paul knew there was something dividing them, and he suffered under the weight of it.  He knew this suffering was shared by the whole Church there because it was a family issue.  To proclaim the reconciliation of men to God through Christ, Paul was under the divine obligation, the instinct of God, to also be reconciled with the family of God.  The simple point is:  how can we preach the family of God in Christ to individuals…if we cannot be, together as a community–the family of God in Christ.

The ministry of reconciliation is also the deep, sincere work of coming together as the family of God.  We are to follow Paul’s example and suffer under whatever suffering it takes to see ourselves and others reconciled together, living and loving without obstacle or division, as the precious family of God.  Paul said he had suffered much for these believers:

…as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses;  in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger;  in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love;  in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left;  through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors;  known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed;  sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything…

And all this for one purpose:

We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you.

Paul wanted to win the hearts and trust of the believers in the place called Corinth.  Why was this so important?  Because Paul loved the Church that Jesus loves.  He loved the people.  Paul had received, embraced, and chosen to take on the ministry of reconciliation.  Everywhere he went he was committed to winning people to God, to himself, and winning them to one another.  It was, to him, a natural, customary requirement of walking in the favor and privilege of Christ’s life.  It was, in fact, the only atmosphere that could properly reveal the purposes of God to reconcile us to Himself.

We work to reconcile people to God.

We work to reconcile people to ourselves, and with one another.

We can’t have one without the other.

To show how these two directions of reconciliation work together we can say: We can’t truly be reconciled to one another, as many who do not know Christ attempt to accomplish, until we are reconciled to the One who made us.  This is a spiritual impossibility.  And, we can’t minister the reconciliation of God to men, however, without being reconciled to one another.  The hypocrisy will destroy the whole message.

Go back and read the first 6 chapters of 2 Corinthians with all these thoughts in mind.  Remember that Paul wanted to resolve the separation that had developed between the believers in Corinth and himself and he was using every tool he could to get it done.  Read it fast and remember that the punch line is when he reveals his fathering heart in chapter 6 and pours out his desire to be received again by the Corinthian believers.  It will change the way you see this letter all together.

Dear believers, are you ready to mature in your walk with Jesus and take your responsibility in the Kingdom?  If so, let’s start together here in the one ministry we know that we have all been given, and the one ministry we know that we are all capable of performing:  the ministry of reconciliation.

Let’s cast off our obsessions with building our own unique, gift driven ministries until we have become proficient at removing obstacles between one another.

Let’s put down our fixation on improving organizations or teaching our revelations until we have become famous as ministers of coming together.

I am looking for heroes in the ministry of reconciliation.  Would you consider becoming one?

How to:  Help Others Reconcile

I made clear in our introduction (yes, all of that was just the introduction) we certainly have the commission to proclaim Christ to all those around us.  Since, this proclamation will look blindingly stupid if we,  however, are not reconciled to one another let’s begin with some basic encouragements on how to be ministers of reconciliation among our own spiritual Family.  Again, this does not replace our proclamation of Christ, it will simply harmonize with it, and prove its living truth.

Now to the insanely practical stuff which will be formatted into a to-do list.

1.  Help others identify the wounds.

The walking wounded often have no idea.  They often have no idea they are wounded.

Sometimes we know we are broken in an area, but we don’t know why.  Sometimes we discern others’ brokenness, but we don’t know the root.  I submit to you that 9 times out of 10 our brokenness is the result of unforgiven offenses.    Unforgiveness leaves in its wake a string of clues.  These clues don’t make a perfect case for unforgiveness, but they do at least point to something important. Here are some examples of brokenness that point me to the possibility of unforgiveness in the life of someone I love:

1. 1. A consistent over-reaction to certain kinds of requests, or challenges especially from close friends, spouses or leaders.  This includes angry outbursts, exaggerated assumptions about what others are “trying to say,” and blowing small things up into much bigger proportions than would otherwise be expected.  This is a clue that someone else failed to pay a debt in the past, and that same unpaid debt is now being unfairly added to new situations in the present.
   2. A consistent over-reaction to a basic relational or work expectation so that it is always perceived as too  heavy a requirement.  Common quote, “They are asking too much of me.”   This is a sign that because of unpaid debts (people still owe me!) when put under any new requirements the person feels it is grossly unfair because they are being asked to extend credit to others…when, in their hearts, they are already tapped out.
   3. A consistent need to “stay on defense” when in the context of strong leadership.  This posture is revealed in the “I am always right…don’t even question me” or the “They don’t really know me,” kind of attitude around leadership.  This is a sign of a wound where leadership did not treat the person fairly, or leadership still owes this person something it did not provide.  When new leadership shows up they find themselves paying for the debt that is owed by someone else.
   4. Inability to form intimate, lasting bonds with others–especially with a spouse, a leader, or close friends.  An intimate, lasting bond is different than an ongoing, but relatively shallow, relationship based on need or accommodation.   Any unforgiven wound will create a tender bruise in a person’s heart.  This wound is often never exposed because the person learns to hide it very well, and keep it from being bumped.  This process of hiding often reveals itself in a failure to really open up and bond intimately with others.
   5. An uncontrollable need to slip judgmental comments into any conversation involving a certain person or certain group.  Obviously, if there is unforgiveness there will be judgement against the wounder.  A judgement is simply a belief that something is a fact. Some judgements might be quite fair, but unuseful. Others might be useful.  Judgements made in unforgiveness–as we are speaking of them here–always bind the judger and the judged up into a critical atmosphere of comment and thought.

I may not have a crystal ball on these, and I certainly can’t be too dogmatic, but I would usually put money on all of these symptoms pointing to an offense in my life or the life of others that needs to be discovered and dealt with. Someone needs to be forgiven!  I believe it is our duty as ministers of reconciliation to notice brokenness in one another’s lives and not just figure out ways to cope with it, ignore it, or cover it up.  In almost every case we can find a way to help people heal by simply asking leading, but direct questions like (and I will relate these directly to the list above):

1. 1. I have noticed that when your wife criticizes you a little bit for not helping her around the house that you really flame up.  It seems like your anger is just ready to fire up to blue-flame-hot as soon as she turns that knob.  Where do you think that extra heat is coming from?   What does her criticism remind you of?
   2. It seems that when we have leadership team meetings and everyone is generously taking on jobs and looking for ways to help that you seem to be consistently looking for ways to do as little as possible.  I feel, sometimes, that you believe we want to take advantage of you.  We don’t.  But since you react this way: who in the past really took advantage of you and exploited you?  Who made you feel used?
   3. When we invited Joe to come and teach and challenge us as a home group I noticed that you were uneasy the entire time.  You even went out of your way to argue with him and diminish his attempts to encourage us.  I don’t think Joe has ever hurt you personally because you just met him…so can you describe what kind of guest teacher or visiting leader really hurt your heart?  Who does Joe remind you of?
   4. Listen, I can’t help but notice that this is the third major missionary school that you have chosen to give yourself to in the last 5 years, yet I never see you connecting with anyone from the previous schools–and now, I don’t see you connecting deeply with anyone that you don’t have to work beside.  What is the hardest thing for you in terms of going deep with others and making close friends? (The answer will begin to reveal the wound and the wounder if the conversation continues.)
   5. Every time you mention the fellowship by name you seem unable to control your need to share what you think they are doing wrong.  Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think you are trying to be mean about it–I just know that you never compliment them unless you have a disclaimer that connects to a criticism.  How is it that a whole group of people together are able to represent something perpetually offensive to you?  Is it really the whole group, or is it one person that really bothers you?

These are all basic conversation tools built on loving discernment that require those around us to get to the bottom of their offenses.  What a service we are doing for them and for the family of God if we can help them identify the wound.  If we don’t they will forever be trapped in extracting payment from people in the here and now for what was done to them in the past.

After we help identify the wounds we have to move on to the next step in the ministry of reconciliation.

2.  Help others identify the wounder

Realizing we are mad is one thing, but personalizing the anger is quite another.

One of the great cover-ups designed to protect our hearts from the truth is the generalization of anger.  I think it is a cover-up that is designed to be a kind of coping mechanism.  This mechanism allows us to be generally angry at a group of people or generally angry at a person without ever identifying the actual violation. I call it a coping mechanism because if we avoid the actual, specific violation then we do not have to be responsible to personally forgive anyone.

This allows us to justify the anger and nurture it.

We may even use our generalization of anger to start campaigns against similar offenders and the injustices we see around us.  I believe that this method of covering up offenses is used most often by the self righteous and the zealous Christian to firm up their position of rightness. It sounds like, “I was right, they were wrong…all those who remind me of them are wrong and I war against them.”  I have seen this in the eyes of women raging against misogyny,  church planting pioneers warring against tradition, and homosexuals posturing against the opposite sex.  It takes the crushing, humbling weight of the cross to bring about the courage necessary to see the specific wounder and to choose to forgive.

One of the most generalized angers I see today is people angry at the “church.”  They start anti-tradition websites, they rage against leaders, they lead innovative church design movements, they promote the small church, or the new church or the old church–whatever is not like the offensive “church” in their minds.  All the while there is one specific person who was the great specific wounder who desperately needs to be forgiven.  All that anger, all that protest, all that vitriol…could be put to rest if only one person could be completely forgiven.  I put money on it.

Another place that I see it often is between married partners.  I will make identifying the wounder even more personal on this topic.  I remember when I first realized that we had just entered one another’s unforgiveness mine-fields.  Of course, anyone entering into the intimacies of marriage are going to quickly discover each other’s brokenness, but it is a hot moment when we discover that up close and personal.  Remember that brokenness rooted in unforgiveness is often displayed in over-reactions to a simple word or action that is not intended for harm…but is definitely received as harmful.

I remember the day we were driving in the car on Bedford-Euless Road and I said something stupid that made my wife angry.  She looked at me with a look.  Maybe you know the look.  It was scorn.  I literally f-r-e-a-k-e-d out.  Now, she was only expressing a reasonable amount of scorn that was a perfectly fitting reaction to the stupid hurtful thing I had said, but I, on the other hand went totally ballistic.  After quite a verbal throwdown and after the subsequent cool down period she said something like, “I know you are mad, but you were just mad at something behind me…you were not just mad at me.”   She was right.

You see, I had not completely forgiven my own mother for something I had held against her as a child.  Doesn’t that just sound terrible?  My mother is a beautiful lady who loved and served and looked after me and my brothers in wonderful ways my whole childhood. Regardless,  I had held an offense against her.  I saw on my mother’s face (and a similar look later on Robin’s face) that was a look of scorn.  I was not offended because she looked at me that way.  I was offended because I saw her look at my dad that way, and in my little boy’s heart I found it most hurtful that she would scorn my father.   Now, this paragraph makes no case for whether my father deserved it or not–that is beside the point.  I equated that look of scorn as an act of war against all that was good and holy in my little world.  Now, flash forward 20 years to the Beford-Euless Road freak out and you see the results of unforgiveness.  I had to make peace with my own mother and release the bondage I had tied up in heavenly places before I could remove that explosive mine from the field of my life.  I had to forgive my mom before I could control my unwarranted anger at my precious wife.  I did not want my wife to ever step on it and “get blowed up” again.

If we want to help others remove the mines in the fields of their lives so no one gets hurt–we need to help one another identify the wounder.

3. God might be right in the middle of it.

Many people are angry at God and don’t even know it.

God can be the wounder.

God does not always act right.  We ask Him to heal, but the sick get sometimes get sicker.  We beg Him to heal and sometimes they die.  That is not right.  We get angry.  Theologians, be quiet.  We are not here to understand with our minds the problem of pain or the sovereignty of God.  At this moment we are simply offended and we need to be honest about it.  Offenses do not have to be intellectually sound or theologically correct.  They are what they are.  When we are hurt, it means we are offended.  When we are offended we need to forgive.  If God has offended us, then we need to forgive God.

We need to forgive God.  I said it.

Offenses are offenses even if they are not real.  They only need to be perceived.  This truth applies to our relationships with others as well, but it definitely applies in our relationship with God.  He is not like us, He does not play by our rules, and His love operates in ways that we can not and never will fully understand.  We often perceive His actions wholly incorrectly because we have feet of clay and weak little minds.  Do we think He does not know that?

When we perceive that He has neglected us, forgotten us, looked over us, or ignored us, then He has committed sins of passivity toward us.  He should have acted but He did not. The only way to restore our relationship with Him is to forgive Him…it is not to understand Him.

When He robs us, brings us pain, or destroys something we love, then He has committed active sins against us.  We must forgive God for what we feel in these moments and in these memories because no matter what we come to understand about Him we must still be honest about how we felt at the moment of pain.  We must not live in the shame of our weak, dim intellect and its desire to just excuse God on rational grounds.  We must seek to forgive God from our soul which feels, acts, thinks, and wills.

Most forgiveness does begin with some truth about the wounder.  The truth that I cling to when I come to God with feelings of hurt that seem to come from Him is:  God is good.  There may be no better song I have ever heard touching this than Michelle Patterson’s song featured on the Third Circle album by that same title, “God is Good.”  It was written on behalf of a couple who had lost a baby, and she sings:

You give good gifts to me, I pray that I receive them well
So pass the cup of suffering and let the oil of joy be poured
God is good, God is good.
We love Your purpose, Father, we want the glory to be Yours
So pass the cup of suffering and let the oil of joy be poured
God is good, God is good.

This is a good place to start in our journey to forgive God, and a great place to help others in their troubles learn to be reconciled to Him as well.

4. Where was Jesus?

Many people look back at the most hurtful times in their lives and privately hold an offense against God because He did not rescue.  He did not prevent the pain.  It’s true, He didn’t.  It may also be true that we haven’t yet seen what God was actually doing in that moment.  Yes, God was right in the middle of the offensive scene–but He was not doing what we assumed He was doing:  nothing.

I was in the Emmaus Road Ministry School back in 1990 hosted by T.D and Dudley Hall who brought in lots of excellent people to equip us.  John Sheasby was teaching on forgiveness.  He is the first person I ever remember bringing up the idea of asking the question, “Where was Jesus?”

What is meant by that questions is, “Where was Jesus in time and space, and what was he doing and feeling when you were being disrespected?

“When you were being neglected?

“When you were being treated unfairly?

“When you were raped?”

Was Jesus out in space somewhere doing cosmic things leaving you all alone? Was He playing craps with the devil over your life just to test you?  Was He looking on but helplessly unable to do anything for you?  Was He simply nowhere to be found?  These are common examples of how people imagine the answer to the question, “Where was Jesus?”

One young lady in the class that day had a vivid memory of being abused as a child.  It was during a prayer time, and while being coached by John and the ministry team, that she began to recount the abuse.  The ministry team asked, “OK, now, ask the Holy Spirit to show you where Jesus was at that very moment…”

There was a pause.

And then she began to cry and speak, “I see Jesus and He is standing over me with His arms outstretched and He is weeping and crying over me.”  This young lady had an arresting vision of the involved, emotionally broken heart of Jesus who, though He did not stop the abuse, was deeply wounded Himself by it.  I had never heard anything like this before and it shocked me into a new realization of how God is affected by our pain.  It impressed on me how intimately involved Jesus is in our moments of wounding.  This new picture of God who would share our pain and would suffer under the weight of our wounds was such a profoundly new picture for her that it was no longer necessary to answer the question, “Why does God allow pain?” (however, important that question might be) in light of her understanding of how God feels about her pain and where He was when she were suffering.

After helping others to discover the wound and wounder, it is imperative that we try and understand where Jesus was at the moment of hurt.  This picture of Jesus and His heart for us is what can equip us to move to the next stages of reconciliation and healing.

5.     Guide people to empathize with the offender.

Though we don’t like to think of it this way, even in the most horrendous commitment of a personally damaging crime, even the one who commits the crime is loved by God.  This is so hard for us.  God is love.  God is not just love for me, but He is love for everyone.

And God sees what we don’t see:  He sees the brokenness in the life of the one who broke us.

When we separate ourselves for a moment from the point of pain and just look over the lives of those around us we see that no one is perfect.  Everyone has been affected by the broken machinery of this world, and the dysfunctional machinery of this world has crept into the perceptions, thoughts and actions of everyone.  Since the beginning of human history when man chose to break free of the privilege of walking humbly with God he took for himself instruments of murder and harm and unleashed himself against his fellow man.  It is an unwavering sign of the great unwinding of the universe that we, as human beings, are personally responsible.   We committed cosmic treason against God, took our lives into our own hands, and now we continue to suffer under the curse that we invented.  It starts with Cain and Abel and continues to this day.

Broken people continue to act like broken people.  They hurt one another.  They hurt me.  I hurt them.  God sees it all and has compassion on all of us because He traces the root of it all back to the beginning of the disease of sin that we brought on ourselves.  He looks at both the wounder and the wounded and says, “I want to heal you.  Let me touch you?”

Remember, in Matthew 18:26 it says, “The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.” Here lies a key to reconciliation:  We need to find compassion toward those who owe us.

One clear way to find that compassion is to get the heart of God for the one who offended us.  We can ask the Holy Spirit, “Show us how Jesus felt about the abuser when he abused me, the rapist when he raped me, and the neglector when she neglected me.”

We will learn about their brokenness.  We will learn that they were broken by someone else themselves.  We will learn that chain of brokenness will trace back to the Garden of Eden.

We have to break that chain.

The only way to break the broken/breaker cycle is to forgive.  When we do we are agreeing with the heart of Christ.  We are being our true selves.

I remember praying with a friend who was struggling deeply with explosions of rage and subsequent isolating depression.  We will call him Roy.  Roy struggled with feelings of being unable to complete tasks and he was unable to manage the spiraling, isolating depression especially at the critical last hours of trying to complete a work project.  During a prayer time together we began to ask the Holy Spirit to show us the roots of this rage and reaction.  As we prayed the Holy Spirit revealed to him a scene in his childhood when he originally felt the same rage.  It was the first time he could remember an uncontrollable anger and feelings of that kind.

The scene in his memory climaxed with him, as a little boy, crying furiously and breaking an entire box of crayons into bits out of anger and resentment.  Why?  When he looked over the scene in his memory he realized that he was angry at his own father.  His father, he felt, constantly left him. His father said he would be at the game, but never showed.  He said he would come to the party, but always left early.  After a string of these unsupportive, passive retreats from his father, Roy, himself, grabbed that box of crayons and in a rage broke the things that were precious to him.  Later in life as an adult he now found himself raging against his wife and treating those things and people he loved the most with the same diminishing anger and resentful depression…especially when he was under pressure to complete the task, to finish the job.  He clamored for responsibilities, and then ran from them in the end.

Then we led him to ask the Lord to show him how He felt about his dad.  There was a pause and then the emotions began to flow as the Lord revealed how broken his dad was, and how inadequate he had felt because of his own wounds.  When Roy’s heart was moved with compassion toward his own father he was able to release him from unforgiveness and repent from breaking first the crayons and then others in an immature way to cope–or unfortunately repeat–his dad’s brokenness as a passive, but aggressive, neglector.

The cycle was broken. The curse was lifted.  He does not struggle with debilitating anger and uncontrollable depression spirals any longer.  He can take projects right to their successful completion.  He no longer receives his dad’s poor actions towards him as a child as a defining judgement against him.

Everyone who has committed the sin of breaking someone has been broken by someone themselves.  The ones who break have been broken by another.  Feeling the brokenness of the breaker is a step in agreeing with the heart of Christ and it helps us have the much needed compassion we need in order to forgive from the heart.

6. Take personal responsibility.

Forgiveness is a personal work, and it is not accomplished through third parties.

In Mark 11:25 Jesus says, “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” Again we are reminded of the consequences in this life if we do not forgive others, but I would like to underline the significance of the word “you” in this verse.

Jesus does not say, “When someone else stands praying, if they hold anything against anyone, then they should….”

No.

He says, “you.”

The focus is on you.  It is on me.

If I have anything in my heart against anyone, then I have to forgive.

The Word doesn’t say I should teach that other person what a hurtful thing they did to me and then I should forgive.  That might be a necessary conversation if the person is still living, but it is not the point of this verse.  The point is that I have to unequivocally forgive the offender–and that it  is my job and no one else’s.  If you are hurt, then you must personally forgive.  It is a critical factor in intimacy with the Father.  It affects our prayer life.

This is the first principle in understanding the necessity of having direct conversations in the arena of the ministry of reconciliation:  take personal responsibility to act and don’t transfer that responsibility to anyone else.  It is patently unfair to put on anyone else your unwillingness to forgive.  Others don’t deserve to have to deal with it, the offender can’t fix it, and you won’t be able to live with it.  If we have been offended we must forgive.

It is also true, according to Scripture, that if we know we are the offender, that we must seek forgiveness.

This is the second principle in having direct conversations and is found in Matt. 5:23-26:

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you,  leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.  Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.  I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”

We saw that in Matthew 18 the debtors–the ones who owe us–will be thrown in jail to pay back what they owe if we won’t forgive.  We also learned that we will be thrown in jail if we won’t forgive.  Pretty much everyone ends up in jail in an unforgiveness drama.  This is a real supernatural payback prison and it is has really earthly affects.  This same prison is reflected here in this verse as well in Matthew 5, but it is turned back on us.  (It is almost as if to say:  there is no get out of jail free card in relationships where unforgiveness exists.)  If we don’t seek others’ forgiveness, according to this passage, when we know that we are the offender, then we will be thrown into jail ourselves!

I know that from personal experience to be true.  I have walked in the atmosphere of others’ failure to forgive me for seasons before I realized that I was the offender.  (It is not always obvious if they don’t tell you.)  In one case that just came to light recently I discovered that I had been an offender with a long rap sheet of offenses in a  friend’s life who had been collecting my offenses for years, but I never knew it.  Others knew it, but I did not.  Ouch.  What an atmosphere this created.  I can attest that I was being asked to pay back every last penny that I owed, but my debt was never, ever dissolved because it was never allowed to come into the light.  The prison I was in kept me from being able to build better relationships with them and their friends, kept me always feeling on the edge of failure when I was around them, and also kept them in a storm of relational confusion with me.  When I finally realized through a painfully long collection of clues that I was, indeed, the offender I had to go and ask them for a personal meeting.

Now, some would say that was unfair.  It was, after all, someone holding an offense against me.  Shouldn’t they have to leave their prayer time and come talk to me.  Well, no, that is not how it works.  The point of these two Scripture passages is one and the same:  if you offend or have been offended, and are aware of either one, it your job and no one else’s to take responsibility and seek reconciliation.

It wasn’t until I went and created a face-to-face conversation and asked for forgiveness for everything and anything that was on that person’s list of debt that I was let out of prison.  I am glad I am out of prison now.  I am glad I did not wait any longer on them to come to me.  I found out, personally, that that kind of waiting is a waste of time.  I hate jail.

7. Guide people to use forgiving language that is clear.

Forgiving is a direct, powerful act, and it is not a collection of loose feelings or soft sentiments.

Not that long ago I sat at a table with two dear friends who had really gotten into some friction with each other.  They had been working together for years, but their relationship had slowly ground down to some general feeling of resentment and dissatisfaction.  We had a meal together and afterwards we began to talk.  I was their pastor, and so they gave me some freedom to be challenging and to guide a discussion.  I told them that it was time to bring their frictions into the light.  They said, OK.  I explained that since we all still loved each other, and because I was committed to both of them that no one would be taken advantage of and they would have to trust me to watch over their hearts in the discussion. They said, OK.

Now, this is where many leaders who are not aware of our unique and specific call to be ministers of reconciliation might take a decidedly different tack.  I can think of a few, indirect, and non-Biblical ways to  handle the friction.  Here are some bullet point ideas on how to mess up the reconciliation process:

• Generalize the offenses and pray general prayers of forgiveness.  This is the ministry of don’t-rock-the-boat-with-the-details. In other words, the details are too painful so let’s not get into them.  Odd don’t you think considering it is the pain of the details that caused the rift.
• Minimize the offenses and sweep them under the rug.  This is the it’s-no-big-deal-let’s-just-forget-it ministry.   This is often done in the name of “not taking offense” school of thought that seeks to teach the offended how they should not be offended in order to make the offense go away.  Wow, have you tried that?  (This is not to say that learning how to be less offend-able is not a healthy Kingdom skill, but that point is moot once the offense has landed.)
• Use your discernment and try and fix their relationship because you can see it better than they can.  This is the gift that relationship gurus bring to the table: mystery and special knowledge.  I say “mystery” because after that kind of counseling session both parties are still angry at each other, but they have a lot of personal stuff to think about.  And I say “special knowledge” because everyone leaves knowing the guru is somehow smarter than them all, but no one knows why.

I took a simpler angle.

I said to Anna, “Anna, you need to say specifically how Terri makes you feel lately when you are around her.”

I said to Terri, “Terri, you are going to have to share with Anna how he has made you feel over the last season.”

After they shared, and I made sure no grenades were launched, I then asked Anna in order to clarify, “Anna, it sounds like you feel like you were exploited because Terri just needed a slave to do whatever she wanted.”  She agreed.  I said, “Anna, you need to forgive her for treating you this way.”  She agreed, but before I let her speak anymore I turned to Terry and asked, “Terri, did you mean to use Anna and to make her feel exploited?” Of course she answered no…and in a bit of obvious coaching I asked, “Is there something you would like to ask Anna to do?”

Terri took the hint and said, “Anna, would you please forgive me for treating you like a slave, and making you feel exploited? I am sorry.”

Anna said, and I made sure it was audible and clear, “I forgive you.”

Then I turned to Terri to clarify her feelings and said, “Terri, I think I heard you say that you felt Anna promised what she did not deliver as a partner, and then you felt accused of being a dominatrix when you just asked her to do simple things…is that right?”

Terri expanded it by saying, “Not only that but I began to feel that she owed me for all the back time and unfulfilled commitments.”

I turned to Anna and said, “It sounds to me like you are ready to stop working as a partner with Terri, regardless, of your present willingness to forgive one another.  Is that true?”  The answer was affirmative.  “It sounds like you have failed in some basic areas to be a good partner to Terri…is there anything you would like to say?”

Anna, taking her cues from earlier, said, “Terri, I am sorry for not doing my jobs.  It was unfair to you, and I should have done better.  I do think it is time for us to stop working together on the same team.  Will you forgive me for failing to do my job and then treating you like it wasn’t fair for you to ask me to do more?”

“Yes, I forgive you,” came the reply.

They hugged.

Well, in about 15 minutes two people released the ongoing offenses that had been brewing between them for months.  A partnership that was no longer working was dissolved.  One young lady was released to become personally responsible for her own destiny in the work of the ministry, and another young lady was released to obey God without requiring others to serve her as slaves.  Each one was also released from judgements against them that had been pressing on their hearts.  Terri could say, “I am not a high control freaking Type A overachieving people destroyer.  That is not true about me.”  This is so good.  Anna could say, “I am not an underachieving Type B leech who needs to follow someone so I am never responsible for anything.” Also true and also needful.  So much deliverance, freedom, release from prison, and future shaping came to life in a few short minutes.

Imagine the playout on the bullet-point scenarios outlined above as the non-Biblical ways for me to have pastored them through their friction.  I predict the result would have been a protracted mess and a pretty good time in unforgiveness jail for all three solutions.  How about you?

8. Help others to release offenses they have adopted from others.

Taking up the offenses of others creates a tangle in the web of unforgiveness that is most difficult to unravel.  Helping others unravel it is just as difficult.

This is one section of this article I wish we didn’t even have to consider.  From my experience, this part of the ministry of reconciliation is a mystery in terms of how to guarantee success or believe for certain outcomes.  The problem is obvious:  when we take up offenses on someone else’s behalf none of the above direct, conversation, Biblical scenarios seem to directly apply.  Oh, it is not hopeless, I am just relaying to you a bit of concert about the high level relational equations that begin to develop as the result of taking up third party offenses and the rocket science level algebra necessary to decode and dismantle them is a challenge for me personally.  It is one thing for two people to meet and forgive one another, and it is quite another to ask a third person who has taken up their issue (but is not recognized as a player in the problem to begin with) to form a clear path to repentance, forgiveness, confession, etc.

Here is what I do know:

We can help others identify when they have taken on someone else’s offense.  This involves noticing the signs when someone is offended on behalf of another–or group of “anothers”–and the subsequent judgement and prejudice that is sure to follow.  I hate to sound to remedial here, but asking the direct question of a person in our sphere of influence, “Hey, do you think you are carrying so-and-so’s offense, because it sounds like it to me?”  is a great start.

There are three layers of motivation that I can think of where people justify taking up other’s offenses.   Let’s consider these as discernment enhancers:

1. “I take up their offense in the name of Justice.  That was not fair!”  This is probably the most aggressive version.  We see a person being treated unfairly, or we see a whole people group being treated unfairly, and instead of taking it to God and asking Him to deal with it, we take it into our hearts to go all Rambo on them and plan to correct the injustice.  This is a carnal judgement and does not release the Kingdom of God.  This is how so many people get trapped in other people’s hurts with no way to ever help them forgive the offender. The need to correct, fix, or destroy the offender gets so blown up that the third party serves only to muddy the waters of reconciliation and become a real problem for everyone involved.  Justice belongs to God.  He may ask us to seek it and love it and proclaim, but we have to remember it belongs to Him.  We must be very careful to cry justice before we get the Lord’s heart in the matter. He can be trusted to enact it.   Psa. 140:12 “I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.”
2. “I take up their offense in solidarity with their pain.”  This seems in some way related to “bearing one another’s burdens,” but it is not.  The empathetic ability to feel someone else’s pain is one thing, the choice to join in it without the requirement for seeking healing is quite another.  You see, many have found that in the name of community or relationship that requiring others to improve and mature is an unwelcome pressure, and, so, the choice becomes to join with one another in our pain…and just stay there as an act of friendship. Tell me, is it true friendship to see a friend in a hole and just jump in to be with them, or to jump in to be with them and bring down a rope as well?
3. “I take up their offense because I am already offended.”  This one happens so often.  Someone offends your friend.  Your friend drops that offense on you.  You hear about it and it reminds of the way so-and-so treated you…and that so-and-so has never been forgiven.  You have a tree of bitterness growing in your life, and so you are ready to welcome that new offense on behalf of your friend because you have a shady spot for it.  This kind of third part offense has no trouble, usually, sharing sharp judgement, justifications for unrelenting anger, and a refusal to go and directly seek reconciliation.  Beware.

Secondly, we can encourage them to drop it.  We may have to lead our friends, depending on what we discern as the reason for them taking up the offense in prayers of acknowledgment, repentance, release, and forgiveness.  I always lead the prayers aloud so that the earth can hear it.  It might involve others’ ears, and it might not.  An example of involving others’ ears is we may have to encourage them to go and break the soul-tie–the carnal partnership–they made with the offended and let them know they can’t carry that burden anymore.  This should, hopefully, sponsor some Biblical reconciliation encouragements in the great situation.

And, we may have to ultimately, and best of all, teach others how to throw of taking on third party offenses, and to take on the ministry of reconciliation.  (Start at the top of this article.)

9.  Affirm others in their choices to forgive

Let’s celebrate forgiveness and reconciliation!  Yes.  We really need to make some encouraging noises on behalf of those who choose reconciliation and forgiveness instead of bitterness and revenge.  That may sound silly, but weigh the number of times in our movies and entertainment that revenge, hate, and bitterness are glorified as appropriate responses to being hurt and you will realize that we are “pushing back” on quite a flood of contrary-to-the-Kingdom cultural influence.  This is a counter-cultural encouragement and it unique to those who have entered the Kingdom of God.

Reconcilers deserve to be celebrated.

Those who come and confess their hurt need to hear, “I am so proud of you for being honest, and I want you to forgive me.”

Those who come and ask for forgiveness need to be met by a sincere hug and a verbal willingness to forgive.

Those who seek to reconcile need to be given the time to unfold their story in enough detail so that true repentance, compassion, understanding, and forgiveness can truly be offered, and people in our watchcare need to know how much we think of those who are willing to walk through the fires of reconciliation.  The fires of reconciliation are not, to be clear, the need to plow into someone for an extended period of time to prove to them how much they hurt you.  No. It is the fire that requires honesty and bringing the truth into the light.  It is the fire of humility to admit failure and bad behavior.  It is the fire of releasing someone from a payback jail that had become such a secure emotional place in our heart.

If we are pastoring, or teaching others in any way, we need to make priority on sharing the joys and Kingdom rewards for forgiveness and our Kingdom responsibility to be ministers of reconciliation.

Will You Make a Commitment with Me?

Let’s make a contract with each other and with those around us.  I share this contract in whole and in part with those I walk with.  This is how we establish our expectations of one another and breed a culture of reconciliation.  Try it:

• I choose to be honest with you if you hurt me and to tell you the truth about my feelings.  I will seek to not be a reactor to every little thing.  I will take my hurts to the Lord and talk to Him first.  But I commit to come to you with anything that lands between us in our relationship that is going to be an obstacle for trust between us.
• Do you choose the same thing toward me?
• I choose to speak to you about these personal notes of trouble and offense that pop up between us before I go and talk to anyone else.  If I go and talk to anyone else it will be an overseer and not a peer so they will be able to handle my emotion and my hurt and be less tempted to take it up themselves.  I will only share it with them out of respect for you…if I am confused and not sure how to communicate my heart with you.
• Will you do the same for me?
• If you come to me with a hurt or offense you have with someone else–whether against you or against them–you need to expect me to try and help you reconcile.  Don’t expect me just to take your hurt in my heart and try and carry it.  I will work with you to find a path to bring it into the light and to seek reconciliation with the other party no matter what.
• Will you commit to have the same heart?
• If you come to me with an offense I promise to listen and to be respectful.  I will avoid my carnal, knee jerk instinct to defend myself and show you where you were wrong.  What is important to me is that if I hurt you, whether intentional or accidental, whether real or perceived, that I first be able to ask you to forgive me so we can reconcile our hearts together.  Then we can work to reconcile the specific issues.  I will walk in the light of my pastors and overseers with anything you bring me that I can’t quickly see and repent from.
• I will not let time, the false healer, get in the way of a fast reconciliation conversation with you.  I will not sweep offenses under the rug of time, and I would plead with you to make the same commitment.  I want to convert my “stewing in it” time down from weeks, or even days, down to as short a time period as is possible for me get my bearings–a day or so max.
• I will not entertain any judgements or accusations you bring to me about leadership in your life.  The Bible says to not even “entertain” an accusation against an elder without bringing a couple of witnesses.  So don’t bring accusations against me, and don’t try and have me join up with accusations you have against other leaders, without bringing your witnesses to the crime.  You get your witnesses and bring the situation into the light right away in as tight a relational circle as possible.  Let’s give every good leader, including myself, a chance to repent in tight circle of witnesses before anyone else could be burdened by it.  If you do bring witnesses to me about someone else be sure that we will be on a fast track to meet with the offender all together.

That is a good start for a reconciliation ministry contract between us!  What a great commitment we are making with each other to be Kingdom minded and loving towards one another at all times!

Love,

Ben Pasley

Download the well formatted PDF article complete with linked Table of Contents, fancy cover, and Bible-ography! being_a_reconciler

Tags: forgiveness, kingdom, ministry of reconciliation, offense, pastoring, reconciliation, responsibility

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