Friends of ours have recently separated. The wife cannot forgive her husband for his wrongdoing. Can their be any chance of reconciliation without forgiveness? How can she continue to say that “she still cares for and loves her husband?” How can the heart be unforgiving and loving at the same time?
I could definitely be wrong, but my father and I have done a lot of thinking and talking about forgiveness over the last 25 years. Back in 1989, a young woman who was like a sister to me and my brothers and sisters, was carjacked and murdered. The men who did it were caught and convicted. One of them was executed. I mention this because we have had to do a lot of work to get to the point of forgiveness, and I think we have some insight into what it means to forgive.
I think the essence of forgiveness is to permanently and irrevocably renounce any right you have to demand restitution or repayment, including a debt that could never be fully repayed. If you think about how the word is used in the Gospel, particularly in the Lord’s Prayer, I think it is used precisely in that way. An important part of forgiveness is the commitment never to hold over their head the fact that you have forgiven someone. That is to say, at least in terms of your willingness to maintain good relations with the offender/debtor, it must be as if the debt was never owed, or the offense never committed.
This is not to say that you must forget that the offense was committed. For example, in the case of adultery, a spouse who has forgiven the adulterous spouse must be willing never to use the adultery as ammunition in a future argument over money, or which movie to watch on Saturday night. But they don’t have to pretend the first instance of adultery never occurred when they catch the spouse in second affair. So as long as the offender is truly repentant for their offense, the forgiver must continue to forgive.
Forgiveness is something that we humans beings must renew from time to time. As emotions related to the original offense resurface, we must make the choice to forgive that offense yet again, sometimes just because we had already chosen to do so, and we refuse to go back on our word.
So, to answer the OP’s question, there can be no real reconciliation without real forgiveness. But forgiveness can take time. Sometimes it can take a lot of time, and will come only after the offended party learns some hard lessons. Often these lessons will involve the discovery of their own need for forgiveness, perhaps even the need to be forgiven for refusing to forgive others. So, yes. She can still love her husband and at the same time not yet be ready to forgive him. The fact that she says she still loves him and cares for him is a very good sign. We are creatures existing in time, and she may simply not be ready to let go of her right to demand satisfaction for whatever offenses her husband committed against her. Help her, over time (but not too much time!), to understand what forgiveness means, and to see how true love demands at least the willingness to move toward forgiveness, even if you’re unable to get there just yet.
Another essential feature of forgiveness is that the offender must acknowledge their offense and ask to be forgiven.
If you think about how forgiveness works in our interpersonal relations, I think you’ll see that it works pretty much the same way in our relationship with God, with several notable differences, due to the fact that we are fallen creatures, and God is the perfect lover.
First, God needs no time to forgive. He is ready to forgive instantly, if we tell Him we’re sorry. Second, He has no need to renew His forgiveness, since His forgiveness is perfect the first time.
