Forgiving doesn’t magically evaporate what is owed. If I loan you ten dollars and you refuse to pay, the money doesn’t mysteriously appear back in my wallet when I forgive you. Think about it. For Christ to forgive us, he had to absorb the emotional pain — the shame and humiliation of bearing our sins. When we forgive, we must absorb costs as well. We must say, “I see the cost of forgiving you, and I accept it.”

It happens every day. A husband refuses to forgive his wife, because she just can’t see all the sins he ascribes to her. A wife won’t reconcile with her husband until he fully endorses her view of reality. A marriage teeters on the brink of ruin because one spouse has marked the other’s motives as irredeemable.

Some use the marriage escape hatch, calling it “irreconcilable.” It’s so sad, but they had irreconcilable differences. The word is trivialized when used this way — emptied of its moral freight. In Scripture, the term “irreconcilable” has ugly teeth. In 2 Timothy 3:1–9, Paul gives a list of the various ungodly people who will roam the world in the last days. The Greek word aspondos is used in 2 Timothy 3:3 to identify those who are “corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith” (2 Timothy 3:8).

The word describes someone who nurtures a “hostility that admits of no truce” (Pastoral Epistles, 174–175). It describes a person who is grudge-holding, unforgiving, and implacable. The irreconcilable person buffers his bitterness; with sophistication, he insulates his resentment from others’ reach. This state is dangerous to our faith, our families, and our marriages.

Such a person claims to be a Christian, a faithful parent and spouse, but resists reconciliation and contends he’s obeying God as he does so. In the church, few people are more vulnerable to spiritual harm than those aggrieved persons who spiritualize their bitterness. Such a person has likely believed one of three diabolical lies.

1. “I Can’t Forgive You Until You Confess All the Sin I See.”

In 2 Corinthians 2:5–11, a man sinned in a serious way. The sinner repented sincerely, but the Corinthian church wouldn’t accept his repentance. So, Paul stepped in and made an appeal on his behalf. He told the Corinthians that they should “reaffirm [their] love to” this man. They should forgive this man as he requested (2 Corinthians 2:8).

The man’s repentance must be accepted “so that [they] would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs” (2 Corinthians 2:11). Here’s the point: one of the enemy’s evil devices, one of the many schemes he employs, is to convince believers they don’t need to forgive repentant sinners.

When we fail to forgive, the sticking issue is often our estimation of the offender’s confession. We assume the other party isn’t genuine, that they haven’t yet achieved the full measure of authentic repentance. We’re suspicious, thinking we’ve X-rayed this sinner’s heart and discerned insincerity. Then, just like the Corinthians, we block the sinner’s attempts at reconciliation.

2. “I Can’t Forgive You if It Costs Me.”

In Matthew 18:21–35, Jesus tells the story of a servant whose master forgave him an enormous debt. Right away, this man encountered a colleague who owed him a smaller amount. Instead of passing along the forgiveness he’d received, he enforced the penalty and threw the second servant in prison.

With this incredible example, the Savior teaches us that forgiveness absorbs at least two costs.

First, a spouse must say, “I’m not going to punish you.” There’s not a married person among us who hasn’t mentally prosecuted our spouse and delivered the verdict spoken by the unmerciful servant: “Pay what you owe” (Matthew 18:28)! For true forgiveness to happen, a spouse must sometimes deny an understandable instinct to exact vengeance on their mate, and instead release them from punishment, placing their sin under the atoning blood of Jesus.

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