From the Lord's Prayer:
... and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Forgiveness is a sign of strength, not of weakness. It is anger, not forgiveness, that damages one's happiness, and so weakens him. But forgiveness makes the victim happier. A Shakespearean character once said, "The quality of mercy is not strained. It is twice blest. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
This portion of the prayer, recall, is sometimes translated as "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." This alternate translation sheds some light on its meaning. When we "trespass," i.e. sin, we place ourselves in debt to the one against whom we have trespassed -- whether it be a friend or an employer or the government or God Himself. Point of fact, God is ultimately the victim of any and every sin we commit.
When I sin against you, you have at least a theoretical right to expect me to make it up to you somehow. If I steal some of your money, you have a right to expect me to pay it back, for example. Forgiveness, then, means not just saying, "It's okay," to someone after they hurt you in some way. It means we are in a position to require someone to somehow make up for their injury against us, and we do not.
That is what the Father does. He is in a position to expect us to make all kinds of stuff up to Him. The debt we owe to Him is more than we could ever afford, more than we could accomplish in an eternity.
Yet He forgives us. Christ takes onto Himself the burden of our wrongdoing against Him and His Father.
But if we cannot give the gift of forgiveness ourselves, then we will not be disposed or prepared to receive it from God. For to harbor anger is to insist on debts that we believe are owed to us. And those debts weigh on us needlessly, preoccupying us with other people's need for our forgiveness, rather than our need for God's forgiveness. Only by forgiveness can we jettison those burdens to ourselves. It is not easy, of course, and we need God's grace to do it. But then again, perhaps that is why his part of the prayer comes right after our petition that God give us our daily bread.
Forgiveness and reconciliation are closely linked but they are not the same thing. Forgiveness only takes one. I can forgive a person his debt to me without him even knowing or believing that a debt is owed. But reconciliation takes two. In reconciliation, he must recognize that a debt is owed, and ask forgiveness for it -- at which point it is granted. That's reconiciliation. And it is what God wants for us. His forgiveness is the easy part. What He wants is for us to recognize the debt we owe Him, and place ourselves at His mercy and trust Him. When we do that, He will always forgive us.
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