The Christian idea of forgiveness is central to the faith, but for a long time it was difficult for me to understand. Why does God want me to turn the other cheek? We live in a society built on the pillars of justice. So isn’t revenge our right? We are told the Lord is a God of justice who wants what is right for us, so this mandate to forgive always felt inherently unfair.

I knew the standard answer: God asks us to forgive because He forgave us of much more. But that still didn’t satisfy me. I felt like I was missing something about forgiveness. Maybe the world was missing something about forgiveness. Once, while sitting in church waiting for Mass to begin, I was reflecting on all of this when the pieces finally clicked. I caught a glimpse of the profound nature of forgiveness, and it completely shifted my perspective. In this essay, I’ll attempt to explain what I saw.

Forgiveness feels difficult because it is expensive. For me to forgive my neighbour for stealing cash from me involves me making peace with the idea of losing that cash. So how easy it is for me to forgive him depends on a number of factors like how remorseful he is (if at all) and his motivations behind the theft. But arguably the most important factor is how much money he stole relative to my net worth — how much damage was done to me. If I were a billionaire and he stole $5, I wouldn’t think twice about forgiving him. If I were struggling to pay my rent and this guy stole $100 from me, he’s going to have a hard time earning my forgiveness. A large part of your ability to forgive comes from your capacity to tolerate the loss. So forgiveness is a gift you give someone else at your expense.

And why would I do that? Because God gave me the exact same gift, but on a magnitude I cannot fathom. God is perfectly just and cannot accept injustice. Our Lord is a God of justice but He’s also the God of love. Perfect justice means the devastating wound of sin needs to be healed and made right, but because of His love, He doesn't abandon us to our brokenness. So, to bridge the infinite gap that our sin created, God accepts a perfect offering of love on our behalf. Adam and Eve sinned and were ashamed of their nakedness. God covered their sin and their nakedness by slaying animals and making clothes of their skins (Genesis 3:21) prefiguring the sacrifices of innocent life that would eventually be used to pay the price of sin.

Why sin hurts God is very interesting. Morality isn’t an arbitrary rulebook we’re supposed to follow. God exists but He also insists. God is Being Itself (Exodus 3:14). And God and therefore existence has a nature. Morality is merely the alignment of creation with this nature, with existence itself. Deviating from this alignment is what we understand as sin. God isn’t a dictator; He gave us free will and wants us to choose to be in alignment. When we choose to disobey, we are not being punished or pushed away by Him. We’re the ones pushing ourselves away. We are the ones breaking communion with God. How can even a shred of evil exist in perfect goodness? How can even a shadow exist in pure light? It is logically impossible. Sin is a choice to break communion. This is why sin begets Hell, because that is the only space without God. This is why C. S. Lewis writes that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. This is also why suffering and death exist in the world we live in. Creation is good because it is in alignment with God but it was incomplete because of misalignment through sin. Atonement is necessary for the progression of creation towards perfection. Fun fact: the word atonement literally means “at-one”-ment, pointing back to that perfect communion with God.

Two thousand years ago, God Himself became flesh and dwelt amongst us. He was fully human and yet lived the perfect life, free of sin. He was the perfect lamb, free of blemish. He then offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice in the worst death imaginable and paid the cost of every sin of every human who had come and who will come. Because sin is a complete rejection of God, humanity essentially chose to separate itself from Him forever. But God is perfectly merciful. Instead of letting us walk away into darkness, He stepped into our humanity. Jesus didn't just pay a legal fine; He offered God the perfect love and obedience that we owed but could never give.

God can afford to be infinitely merciful because He is infinitely powerful. No one else could have been Jesus. It had to be God Himself. No one else could have lived the perfect life, let alone then willingly surrender it by dying such a humiliating and gruesome death just for the salvation of our ungrateful souls.

Forgiveness, and therefore love, is reserved for the mighty. But I also wonder if infinite power begets infinite love. Perhaps the purest form of love is a consequence of being all almighty. Maybe we didn’t just get lucky that an all-powerful being is also ever-loving because maybe you cannot be powerful without also going all out with your love? An ant doesn’t disrupt your daily schedule. An ant cannot waste your time or have any consequential effect on your day. Our relationship to an infinitely transcendent God is similar. Our sin grieves His heart of love but ultimately, nothing we do or say will disrupt His plans. His will be done. Ant bites hurt us but we forgive them every day. And we don’t even care about ants. Imagine how much easier it must be for our loving Father to forgive us if we just go to Him. He hates sin, but He loves us.

I also think it’s no coincidence that it is through the second person of the Trinity that God entered the world. Jesus is The Logos, The Word made flesh (John 1:14) — the same Logos through which creation happens (John 1:1-3). Logos is like the source code of creation, the essence of existence itself. The Logos entering creation as Jesus is symbolically very important because it means that He arrived personally to finish the process of creation — to make it perfect by defeating sin and therefore death and suffering.

You can also look at this as the Creator experiencing the incompleteness of creation by His suffering and death. He willingly accepted the brokenness of sin without obligation. It is an acknowledgement that creation isn’t complete yet. Injustice exists because the world isn’t perfect yet. It is an invitation for us to make peace with the incompleteness as well. We are called to participate in the completion. And part of that duty involves forgiving. Forgiving others, forgiving the world we live in and forgiving ourselves. It is a very difficult ask, but not an impossible one. The impossible ask was gifted to us by Him.

We all know that it is better to let go of transgressions than let them fester in your mind and eat away at your peace. Sometimes, acts so vile may be committed against you that they could consume and ruin your entire life. As Father Dan Reehil noted when discussing his own horrific childhood abuse, ”You can't get through it, you have to go through it, and to go through it you have to forgive.” Especially in cases like that, forgiveness may be the only way to save your own life. Your own healing doesn’t come from revenge but from forgiveness. Forgiveness means you made peace with the violation. This is not an argument against justice; people who trespass against you should be held accountable by the law. You can forgive someone but you don’t have to give them free rein to hurt you or others again. The role of justice is to protect yourself and society; it is not for revenge. You can forgive a theft but ensure the thief never steals again.

When we are called to love our neighbour and forgive those who sin against us, this is not some call to diminish ourselves or allow people to walk all over us. It is a call to become mighty. To rise so high that the transgressions of others don’t affect us. That we don’t have to think twice to forgive. Just like God didn’t hesitate to save us. Millennia of evolutionary adaptation ingrained in us a default sense of revenge — seeking an eye for an eye protected your tribe, your family and you. Our instinct for revenge is a survival strategy. God gifted us our spiritual survival and wants us to rise beyond that instinct.

You don’t have to rely completely on your own strength; you have God’s infinite strength to tap into. Infinite forgiveness was given to us and we have to share it amongst ourselves. It is not easy, but it is possible. Forgiveness heals not just the wounds inflicted on the forgiver but the receiver too. An eye for an eye results in a blind world, your only way out is to break the chain of hate.

I remember a tweet from Elon that summed this up really nicely:

This has helped me in my own life so much. I am fortunate to have had a good life so far, but like everyone else I have my own struggles and injustices to deal with. Throughout my life I’ve been wronged by others and experienced extremely bad luck. I am proud of my strength and for the most part have found it easy to forgive. But obviously, there are things too unfair for even me to forgive — did I even want to forgive? I now see those as opportunities to get stronger — physically, mentally and spiritually. I shouldn’t just be getting stronger in the gym but also in my relationship with God. Nothing seems impossible to forgive when you can look at something with peace and love that comes from Him.

I love this way of thinking about forgiveness because it shifts love from a zero-sum game—where forgiving someone means I lose and they win—to a positive-sum reality. The world becomes better and creation gets closer to perfection when you forgive. That is the profound nature of forgiveness I finally glimpsed before Mass. It encourages us to accumulate so much spiritual wealth and fortitude that we can afford to absorb the debts of others.

Forgiveness calls us to get stronger, all in the name of love.