Healing the Hurt

My primary tumor continues to grow and is causing me growing dis-comfort.  It’s a matter of time before it invades other organs and causes complications.  Until then, I will try to be as useful as possible by helping Hannah and her family.  I mentioned last month that one of my greatest sources of joy is in experiencing God’s mercy, by receiving it and giving it.  I want to expand on that with a few stories.

                She betrayed her husband and brought shame to her family.  Her dark sin was exposed to the light of day.  The law keepers - the scribes and Pharisees, dragged the guilty sinner before Jesus and bravely announced, “This woman has been caught in adultery, the very act, and the Law commands us to stone her; what do you say?” (John 8).  The finger that wrote the 7th commandment on Mt. Sinai, “Do not commit adultery”, was now writing in the sand.  The legal authorities persisted, and Jesus said, “Woman, I forgive you, but these men are right.  You have committed a crime and now you must pay the consequences.  Proceed gentlemen.”

                Ok, we know that’s not what Jesus said.  But if He had said that, we would have marveled at His forgiveness, but understood the need to uphold the law.  After all, He had given it.  There may be certain situations where a repentant believer should turn himself over to legal authorities, but here Jesus is pointing us to a vital truth.  All of us are guilty of sin against God worse than any sin man commits against another.  All of us deserve eternal condemnation.  However, under the new covenant of grace, Jesus shows us a much better way to handle grievous sin and a repentant sinner.  “I do not condemn you; go your way, and sin no more.”  Jesus, the author of compassion, is showing us that love shown through mercy is a far greater motivator for change than any retribution achieved through the law.

             We know him as The Prodigal.  Demanding an inheritance, he rebels against his father and leaves for the wild ways of the wayward.  The Bible calls it “loose living” (Luke 15:13) and conjures up ideas of parties, prostitutes, and promiscuous deeds.  But then he “came to his senses” and repented.  He turned away from his wickedness and turned back to his father, ready to demonstrate the fruit of his repentance through servant labor and a contrite spirit.  But the father listened to the counsel of his oldest son who required that the younger make reparations as proof of his repentance.

                Ok, we know that’s not what the father did.   The father saw the genuineness of his repentance and rejoiced, “This brother of yours was dead and has begun to live; he was lost and has been found.”  The father knew that showing mercy to the repentant is the greatest healer toward the pain of wrongs suffered, both for the victim and the perpetrator.  That’s why Jesus said, “If your brother… repents, forgive him.  And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him” (Luke 17: 3-4).  The greatest healer of emotional pain is granting mercy – choosing not to enforce the consequences a repentant sinner deserves.

          She was a woman of the night (Luke 7: 37, 39), who showed her repentance by breaking a bottle of expensive perfume, and kneeling behind Jesus, began anointing His feet with the perfume and with her tears.  Jesus said to her, “Woman, your sins, which are many, are forgiven.  But we are in the house of a law enforcer, and you must turn yourself over to him to face the consequences your sins deserve.

              Ok, once again, we know the latter part is not what Jesus said.  Instead, Jesus taught that he who is forgiven little, loves little; but he who is forgiven much, loves much (Luke 7:47).  Knowing the magnitude of God’s loving mercy toward our own evil depravity enables us to extend loving mercy to others.  And to the woman He said, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”  Here again, Jesus is teaching us that the greatest motivator for a repentant sinner to stay repentant is to show mercy – to lift the shame of condemnation his sins deserve and permit him, in his repentance and growing faith, to “go in peace.”

There are other stories and verses we could appeal to, but the theme is the same.  When faced with a sin, even a grievous one, the pathway toward healing is mercy.  No doubt situations pop into your mind about how can mercy be granted when the repentant sinner caused so much anger, hurt, and trauma?  To which God could reply, “How dare you think that you are angrier and more hurt over what that sinner did to you.  I had to watch every time he sinned until my forbearance could take no more.  I slammed that sinner to the ground and whipped his back until his skin hung as threads of scarlet flesh.  Then I grabbed him by the neck and hurled his lacerated back against a piece of splintered wood.  There I took those hands and feet that were guilty of so much evil and I nailed them to a cross.  In naked shame for all to see, I made him suffer for hours the most agonizing pain and it pleased me to do it (Isaiah 53: 10-11) until he finally died.  So, you don’t need to be angry anymore, for the man you despised is now dead, and I did it.

"Now, a new man has come to Me with a new heart, which I gave him, and a desire to follow Me (Ezek.36:21-27).  I will take the burnt ashes of that old man whom I killed and form a new man.  Same name, same face, but I will place my Spirit in this new man in a way he has never had before, so he can walk in my ways and be the kind of person who will honor Me.  My wrath against the old man has been spent.  As I have shown mercy to the repentant new man, I ask you to do the same” (Matthew 18:33). 

Paul was guilty of many heinous crimes against Christians (Acts 8:3, 9:13).  Rather than requiring him to pay the consequences for his many evil acts, God, through the cross of Christ, had mercy on him and granted him repentance (Acts 26: 9-20).  By receiving mercy, Paul learned to give it: “forgive each other, just as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

Corrie Ten Boon knew the power of mercy.  Imprisoned in a German concentration camp during WW2, Corrie suffered the horrors her fellow Jews also experienced: starvation, disease, intense heat, severe cold, beatings, and all manner of cruelty.  She watched her beloved sister, Betsy, die at the hands of heartless German soldiers.  Following a miraculous release, Corrie discovered the power of mercy to overcome her anger, hurt, and trauma from the many sins of her abusers.

Then came the ultimate test.  Two years after the war, while visiting a church in Munich, after preaching a message on forgiveness, Corrie was approached by a bald man in a gray overcoat and a brown hat in his hand. He smiled and bowed politely.  Corrie immediately recognized him as a former overseer, one of the most cruel punishers in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, an SS officer.  She remembered the shame with which she, her poor sister Betsy, and other women walked naked in front of the guards, and in front of this man. Corrie writes of a deep inner struggle: “Here he stood against me with an outstretched hand, and I heard his voice: “Fraulein, how nice it was to hear that God casts all our sins into the depths of the sea, and remembers them no more.”

He was talking, and Corrie, who had just spoken so confidently about forgiveness, stood and fought for strength, unable to reach out her hand to him.  Should she tell of the unspeakable trauma he had caused?  Should she demand that he confess his many crimes to the legal authorities?

“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your speech,” he continued, “and I was a warden there. But since then I have become a Christian and I know that God has forgiven me for all the cruelties that I have committed. And yet I would like to hear a word of forgiveness from your lips, Fraulein. Can you forgive me?”

Her sister’s slow, horrific death resurfaced in Corrie’s memory. 

The man stood with outstretched hand, asking for mercy.  It only lasted a few seconds, but to Corrie they seemed like an eternity. She continues, “Jesus, help me,” I prayed to myself, “I can reach out to him, and that’s all I can do on my own, but You give me the right feeling.” Corrie, the former prisoner, held out her hand to him, the former camp guard. “I forgive you, brother… with all my heart.” She later wrote: “I have never felt God’s love so keenly as I did in that moment. But even then I understood that it was not my love, but God’s.  I tried to love, but I didn’t have the strength to do so. But here the power of the Holy Spirit was at work, and His love conquered.”  God’s love and compassion demonstrated through mercy is the great healer.