Yesterday I read Simon Wiesenthal’s book The Sunflower, recounting his concentration camp experiences and concentrating on the day he was summoned to the bed of a dying man. The man was an SS officer who had taken part in the horrible death of many Jews. He wanted to speak to a Jew, any Jew, to seek forgiveness before his death.

After hearing the man out, Simon’s response was to walk out without saying anything—refusing to forgive. The rest of the book is his wrestling with the decision—did he do the right thing? Several questions are asked throughout the book, the most important for me was whether one has the right to forgive actions done against another. In other words, “If someone sins against a person, does a third person have the right to forgive them for that sin?” Of course those I speak to say sins can only be forgiven by the person sinned against or by God alone. They would agree with Simon’s friend in the camp, Jakob, who said he had no right to forgive the man or even to consider it because those killed were the only ones with that right.

Whether he was right or not, based on his circumstances, I find hard to judge. He ends the book with the question, “What would you have done?” I am old enough to know that I cannot know what I would have done in the same situation because of the magnitude of the events. What Simon and his people were going through was horrible and the whole world was guilty to a degree.

I would contend that the man was not looking for forgiveness in the traditional sense—the removal of sins through confession and absolution—but was looking for a single Jew who would not hold him in revulsion for his crime. This, the author had every right to do and through the rest of the story he spent years wrestling with his own revulsion for the man’s actions.

When we, as Christians, are told to forgive it is for our benefit as well as the benefit of the sinner. It is also an expression of the work of Christ on mankind’s sin. I have spoken in several places about how sins against us are sins against God and his right to forgive those sins through the blood of Christ. We as Christians must come to grips with the fact that sins against us can be covered by the same blood that washes away our own sins. To refuse to forgive is to question the efficacy of Christ’s blood for forgiveness. The type of forgiveness in this book is seldom spoken of—letting go of our right, not to take offense as victim, but to take offense for another.

Forgiving those who sin against us is an admirable and beautiful act of obedience. However, when one sins against another we take offense to that and can feel justified in holding on to it. This must be released into the hands of Christ just like everything else. We must forgive the sins committed against us and forgive the sins done to others by giving up our right to hold the sinner in revulsion.

This last week I found myself thinking about forgiveness. This subject had come up in a conversation with a young woman who had recognized within herself an unwillingness to forgive. I assured her that forgiveness can be one of the hardest things we as Christians are called to do. During the discussion she made a very profound admission that if she forgives it feels as if the persons who hurt her are getting away with it. This is natural, and it was this side of the issue that got me chewing on the subject. Read the rest of this entry »