Yesterday (Australian time) saw the memorial service for Charlie Kirk. One of the most discussed moments was his widow, Erika’s, expression of forgiveness for the murderer.
As Kirk battles through the moment, finishing with, “that young man: I forgive him!”, the crowd rises with applause. In what was a mostly thoroughly Christian event it was clear that this was the highlight, the pinnacle. A raw expression of the gospel even when some of the accompanying material over a number of hours wasn’t quite as on-gospel-message as I would have liked it to be.
Yet what has been interesting in the 24 hours since is the number of people who have questioned how such a statement could have been made; both whether it was appropriate to offer and whether it was even possible. In the first category one such challenge will suffice to illustrate the point:
Typically this sort of response has come from the more fringe elements of the political right. For them this is not a time for what they perceive as weakness. To forgive in this context is to roll over in the face of an unacceptable evil. Here’s an appropriate response to that misapprehension of what is being stated:
Forgiveness, at least as it is understood by Christians (and the understanding and misunderstanding is the key issue here) is a strange and bizarre thing for many. At least that’s what it was like 2000 years ago when thinking Christian things was a new and novel way to approach the world. As the gospel surged across the Roman Empire it appeared to be utterly foolish to a culture that prized strength and honour. Here’s more of what the Apostle Paul has to say about that:
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
(1 Corinthians 1:26-29 ESV)
The cool kids tell me that we’re all thinking more and more about the Roman Empire every day. I don’t know about that but it does seem that we’re thinking more and more like them as we drift from our Christian foundations. That a very Christian statement should receive such responses indicates how far from our moorings much of Western culture is.
Yet this is not the only challenge that Kirk’s bold statement received. Some was much more considered. In this category I’ve followed with interest the x postings of Stefan Molyneux. He’s been asking some profound questions about the nature of forgiveness. So, for example,
The misunderstanding here (and it is a misunderstanding) comes through a lack of clarity on the language being used. When we Christians speak of “forgiveness” what exactly do we mean? For those like Molyneux, “forgiveness” appears to include the setting aside of the wrongdoing and all the consequences of it. How can this happen when only one party is currently engaged in the transaction?
And Molyneux is correct. The offer of forgiveness is an incomplete transaction without repentance by the wrongdoer. It is striking as we review the language of repentance in the New Testament that this is core. See how Jesus articulates this even as he urges us to seek for reconciliation with those who have wronged us:
Luke 17:3 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, 4 and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
Every time he comes to you in repentance, forgive him! It’s a deeply challenging concept. Yet we ought not to lose sight of what is happening here. Jesus is not simply telling us how to dryly transact with those who have wronged us, he is speaking to our motivation and heart. See how the same exchange is recorded for us by Matthew:
Matt. 18:21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
The emphasis here, pressed in by the phrase “seventy-seven times” (seven is the number of completion in Hebrew so the effect here is “infinity-umpteen times”), is that I ought to be always ready to forgive. We might say that my acts of forgiveness are to be grounded in an attitude of forgiveness. My lips speak forgiveness because forgiveness flows from my heart. Jesus urges us to always be ready to forgive; instinctively and naturally. This is not to negate the truth that reconciliation can only happen when sin is repented of. There is a great joy in someone coming to us, acknowledging how they have sinned against us, asking for forgiveness and then receiving that forgiveness and all that could then flow from it. But Jesus speaks first to us about ourselves. Have you been wronged? Stand ready to forgive.
And this was what Erika Kirk was communicating when she said those simple words “I forgive him”. What she was communicating was “I stand ready to forgive him; my heart is full of an attitude of forgiveness towards him”. This is not to say that there is nothing for the other party to do. It’s just that his actions are not currently in view. Christian maturity consistently pushes me to consider my own part in the matter and to let the other side worry about what they need to do. It is this sense of the command “forgive” that Jesus is surely using when he says,
Mark 11:25 And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
He makes no mention of the wrongdoer because the wrongdoer is not this moment in view – this is about me and how I understand myself. I cannot expect to receive heavenly forgiveness if I’m not prepared to forgive others. And so Jesus is able to command us, “forgive”, with no need for any caveat.
Nevertheless, this alone is not enough to satisfy Molyneux’s challenge. Nor, in one sense, should it be. Where does such an attitude of forgiveness come from? The answer is two-fold. We can stand ready to forgive infinity-umpteen times because not only is the same stance modelled to us, but we are freed to do so.
First, the model. The Apostle Paul puts it this way:
Romans 5:7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Christ’s forgiveness-winning death is pre-emptive. Jesus didn’t wait for a critical mass of humanity to say sorry before he went to the Cross. One might say he had an attitude of forgiveness towards us long before we repented. The Cross is Jesus’ prototype for Erika Kirk’s “I forgive you”. It demonstrates, in the words of T.F. Torrance, that God is for us long before we are for him. Here is the heart of the good news of Jesus. Forgiveness is freely available for all those who turn to Christ and is declared to them before they turn.
Next, we see that we are freed to forgive.
Paul, a little later in Romans, urges us to have lives transformed by the gospel (Rom. 12:2). The first tranche of application of this transformed life is how it plays out in our relationships. We are still to hate what is evil (Rom. 12:9) but to respond to that evil in an extraordinary way when it spills over into the way others treat us:
Rom. 12:18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
I am urged to do whatever I can to have the best possible relationships with others. Note carefully the foundation of this: I don’t need to take revenge (and am therefore free to forgive, setting aside the just payment of a relational debt) because God is the one who will look after that. If there is any vengeance to be had, it’s God’s. If there is any right expression of wrath against wrongdoing, God will handle it. He will ensure that the bill is paid and so I no longer need to collect.
And the bill will be collected. There is no doubt about that. One of the ways it is collected is set out as Paul continues:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.
Romans 13:1-4
Paul is deliberate in his language. Having told me to personally forgive those who wrong me, leaving room for (and relying on) God’s wrath, he then shows me one way that God’s wrath is executed – through the civilian authorities. The magistrate is God’s servant, carrying out his wrath. And here is the answer to both Molyneux and the hardline right-winger. When Kirk speaks words of forgiveness she is not setting aside justice for her husband’s assassin. No, as a Christian, she is relying upon God’s chosen means of punishing him. The gunman will, I am sure, be convicted in due course and probably face the death penalty. This is all, the Scriptures teach us, not just instituted by God but his means of carrying out his deserved wrath.
Kirk’s offer of forgiveness is not a setting aside of such justice – it is an affirmation of it and a reliance upon it. She knows she does not need to avenge herself because she has left room for God’s wrath.
Of course, beyond the temporal lies the eternal. There is a further day of judgement to be faced for both Erika and Charlie’s murderer. Erika is ready for that day. She has received Jesus’ “I forgive you” with repentance and known the sweetness of being reconciled to the one she has wronged. Christ has paid for her sins on the Cross. God’s wrath has been dealt with there. Is there any doubt that she longs for the man who killed her husband to know the same joy?
The language of forgiveness used to be well understood in Western society. Not so much now. If Kirk’s funeral leads to a renewed comprehension, not just intellectually for the detractors and the questioning but personally for them and so many more, then that would be a wonderful thing. “That young man: I forgive him” might just be Turning Point for many. Christian, let’s do our part to make sure as many people as possible understand it fully. In every way.
Excellent. Many thanks.
I may have missed something fundamental in your explanation David, but I don’t see logically how “I forgive you” can be considered as “I stand ready to forgive you”.
The latter as demonstrated in your explanation requires repentance prior to forgiveness, the former requires that repentance has already been demonstrated, which it has not?
You appear to be trying to square a circle of what Ms Kirk meant to say, based upon your understanding of the New Testament. Perhaps, just perhaps, she herself did not require the act of repentance first?
hi Alan. I don’t think those two things stand at odds. Yes, the willingness to forgive does not rest upon the wrongdoer first repenting – it’s a general stance that Erika (I think it’s Mrs, not Ms) Kirk demonstrates to us.
I’m simply pointing out that for the full transaction to occur there is more needed from the wrongdoer themselves. None of this, however, negates the stance of forgiveness.
Perhaps it’s semantics. But it’s the NT tension – we stand in a position of forgiveness ready and willing to grant it at the moment it is asked for.
A good point Alan. It’s easy, even understandable, to get caught up in the emotion of such an event – the public grieving and public display of a widow grieving (although maybe a little unseemly). Unseemly it certainly was to have the hate-laden words of the President clash with those of the widow, for his own agenda. But the right to free speech is right up there with the rights to be insensitive and stupid.
And such an event should be free to be filled with emotion but any analysis thereafter needs such better reasoning as you brought. Even a simple google enquiry to define Forgive makes the distinction between the emotional “stop feeling angry or resentful or wishing to punish towards someone for an offence, flaw or mistake” and the actional “cancel (a debt)”. And our American friends at all levels of society certainly need better reasoning now than is typically on display in public to survive the upheavals already present and still approaching.
PS. I’ve recently stumbled upon the youtube posts by American Pat Kahnke under his banner of Culture, Faith & Politics. He has a very interesting & relevant backstory and very well argued positions in response to Charlie Kirk, MAGA and the phenomenon that is Trump.