When working through pain or suffering from an unkindness spoken or an injustice done, many folks have found comfort in the words of the famed poet Alexander Pope, “To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
Humanity often seems susceptible to erroneous thinking and acting, and this can lead to the common justification that to err is actually natural. Yet we long for consolation and freedom from the hurt these offenses bring. Through life’s lessons we gradually learn that only genuine and heartfelt forgiveness can achieve this. However, to experience the full blessing of forgiveness, a spiritual understanding of God’s nature as pure Love, and an understanding of the truth of man as the very reflection of this Love, are required.
Peter once asked Jesus, “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?” Jesus, sensing Peter’s desire to have a fixed rule for the sometimes difficult task of forgiving, replied, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21, 22).
His response prompts us to realize that forgiveness is a never-ending divine requirement, and he showed by the way he lived that no unloving response or judgment can ever pass muster in demonstrating our individual salvation, our unity with our heavenly Father. On the cross he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
This plea expressed the humble, compassionate standpoint that rises above mortal circumstances. His words spilled forth from a heart filled with forgiveness for those who were performing the most heinous crime, the crucifixion of one without fault, who had brought the healing presence of divine Love to so many. Understanding that God is Love, and that man exists to manifest Love in every way, Jesus knew his enemy was not a person or persons but an ignorance that underlay a fearful perception of his mission-—the ignorance of God and His spiritual idea.
While in the tomb, Jesus rose above the belief of being at the mercy of matter-based animosity and demonstrated that mortal resistance to the Christ—the activity of God’s love, which he so completely exemplified—could not kill him. If Jesus’ thought had at any time been tainted with resentment or self-pity, the stone would never have been rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. His compassion precluded the hardness that would have kept him entombed, that would have blocked his ability to experience the liberating grace of God at this time when it was so sorely needed.
To experience the full blessing of forgiveness, a spiritual understanding of God’s nature as pure Love is required.
And yet beyond this compassion, this tender but powerful forgiveness, there was an additional step to unfold. It was a step that would lift Jesus completely above the scorn and contempt of those who sought his life. His three days in the tomb, away from all those who persecuted him, or who clung to him personally, gave him the opportunity to fulfill his God-appointed mission for mankind. Mary Baker Eddy describes it this way in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “The lonely precincts of the tomb gave Jesus a refuge from his foes, a place in which to solve the great problem of being. His three days’ work in the sepulchre set the seal of eternity on time. He proved Life to be deathless and Love to be the master of hate” (p. 44).
Jesus knew that he, the Son of God—the Christ—had never fallen from his God-bestowed state of spiritual being, and had never been crucified by the false sense of life in matter that is antagonistic to Spirit. It was not God’s man, the pure and perfect image of his Maker, that nailed Jesus to the cross, but the erroneous material concept of man, bound to all that makes up a false mortal sense of life in matter. Jesus’ next step, his consistent embrace of man as totally unblemished by materiality, ensured his freedom from the wounds of the selfishness and hatred of mortal ignorance, and enabled his thought to ascend completely above the mortal dream.
Jesus’ understanding that Truth is real, and error unreal, had enraged the carnal mind, but it was this understanding that ultimately released him from the persecuting elements of earth. And as Jesus is our Exemplar, our Way-shower, step by step we need to emulate all that he did and taught in order to work out our own salvation. This requirement applies to every area of our lives. As Jesus exemplified pure, unadulterated forgiveness, so must we. And we must also realize that while our difficulties can seem so real within the human experience, they have no actuality in God, in divine Love. We must rise above the belief of a material creation with erring mortal personalities, and take that further step beyond materiality to the realization that we have our being in God, in Love, wherein is no offense, no hurt, no need for forgiveness. In this way we will—as Jesus proved for us in his own victory over mortality—eventually gain our complete release from pain and sadness.
Mrs. Eddy touches on this very point in her article “Love Your Enemies” in Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896. She writes: “Simply count your enemy to be that which defiles, defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image that you should reflect. Whatever purifies, sanctifies, and consecrates human life, is not an enemy, however much we suffer in the process” (p. 8).
Loving others as Jesus taught demands that we see others in their true spiritual identity, the beloved child of God; and this annihilates the torments of false material sense, thus destroying the sadness and remorse that a false material perception often fosters. This destruction of false material sense often requires great effort. The benefits of this effort are amplified in that same article: “This destruction is a moral chemicalization, wherein old things pass away and all things become new. The worldly or material tendencies of human affections and pursuits are thus annihilated; and this is the advent of spiritualization. Heaven comes down to earth, and mortals learn at last the lesson, ‘I have no enemies’ ” (p. 10).
Over the years I have experienced the challenges of dropping the often elaborate and heart-wrenching depictions of personal sense. I have learned that while we can and must rise in Love to the achievement of forgiveness, the step that finally culminates in the elimination of all hurt and sadness is the realization of the total unreality of the offense that had once seemed so real to us. Once we have surrendered to the truth that the man of God’s creating has never really been part of the illusionary dream of life in matter, we free our thought from recrimination, resentment, sadness, and so forth.
That’s true even if, during this healing process, there is a separation needed between another and ourself. Under such circumstances, we can gently trust that individual to God. And as we go our way, we need not turn our back on them, but rather we can hold them in God’s love. By affirming their true spiritual identity—their perfection in Mind, their purity in Soul, their unfallen state in Spirit—we will be releasing our view of them from the dream of mortality, and this is the highest love we can offer. In this way we will not be withdrawing our love, but lifting it to the higher, healing love of divine Love.
We learn in Christian Science that in all circumstances, “Love is the liberator” (Science and Health, p. 225). So to let go of the desire to engage solely on a human level, and instead seek to find our loved one in God, in their true spiritual being, is to let the healing, regenerating flood-tides of Love pour in. This Love is not personal or possessive, but gives all back to God, where the highest care and deepest nurturing can be found. This unselfish letting go is the epitome of living the Life that Jesus lived and loving the Love that is God, which Jesus so unselfishly manifested.
