Rachel Whisman

While sitting next to one of my students, she brought her eyes towards me and shared, “Well, that was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be…” 

I responded with, “What was?” 

“Forgiving him. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be,” she replied. 

All but ten minutes ago, this student decided to break one of my rules in class: keep your hands and feet to yourself. She did not like the consequence that she had received from me either. After we discussed her misbehavior, I walked her through how to forgive the student she had sinned against. The other student forgave her, and this is when my student turned and looked at me, saying, “That was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.” Her self-awareness as a seven-year-old shocked me, and her statement of the truth was piercing. Minutes ago, her face didn’t convey hesitancy nor trepidation, but unbeknownst to me, it was there. Hidden behind a tough exterior, her heart was trembling, and she felt safe enough to share that with me. 

It made me pause and think of Christ. Did He think that? Did He think, “God, forgiving these people was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be?” He was willing to go to the cross and “be acquainted with our sufferings,” including our sin and God’s wrath placed on Himself. A weight he faithfully bore. Who could prepare you for that? Whether He asked that or not, the weight of sin still hung heavy as I talked to my student. She understood the wrong she had committed. Her conscience was guilty, and her pride was humbled by being forgiven. Jesus was innocent, and his humility was exalted in the forgiveness of our sins. Thinking about her remark made me thankful for what Christ did for us. 

It also brought to mind how my student didn’t say this statement until after she stood face-to-face with the one she had wronged. Before, when it was just her and me, she was nonchalant. Things changed, though apparently, when the other student came to receive forgiveness. Just like her, our sins seem indifferent, acceptable, or fine on their own. It is not until we stand face to face with God, whom we have wronged, through His word, that the Spirit convicts us in the heart of what we have done. We see this in David’s encounter with his conviction of sin in Psalm 51:4, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.” He had done wrong on so many levels, but it is to God that he goes first to confess. 

This day was a reminder that our sin does something. We need the Spirit’s conviction to wake us from our sleep instead of our sins nursing us to bed. The beauty of forgiveness is that although it is, as my student put it, “a lot harder than we think it to be,” we don’t do it alone. We have the Spirit’s help to enable us to forgive because Jesus made a way for us to follow in his path. A path too that is more victorious than the sins we trail behind.