“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” – Luke 6: 36-37 (New Revised Standard Version)

Forgiveness is probably one of the main topics of the Christian faith. As American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr put it: “We must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

And we are saved by the Grace of God, not through our works or deeds, as the apostle Paul says in almost all of his letters. But forgiveness is not only a gift to us, it is also a task. We are called to forgive as we are forgiven – to pay it forward, you could say.

When it comes to God we like to be forgiven. We might not even recognise how much forgiveness we need, as we like to think in relative terms when it come to our own behaviour.

For most of us, it is so easy to find someone else who did something worse than we did: “I might be speeding with 45 or even 50 kmh, but look how fast that guy is!”

We easily see the speck in our neighbour’s eye, as Jesus Christ put it in the Sermon of the Mountain (Matthew 7:3) but pay no attention to the plank in our own eye. We all make mistakes, we all hurt others, we all disappoint God. That is why we need God’s forgiveness.

We all lack the glory we should have with God. If loving God and our neighbour as ourselves is the highest commandment, how often have we failed to love, if we are honest. So yes, we depend on forgiveness when it comes to our God. We also depend on the forgiveness of others, and that we may forgive.

The problem with this kind of human forgiveness though is the hurt we feel. When we get hurt, the hurt is there and does not go away easily.

Let’s face it. When people do us wrong, it is like injury. It hurts, and it hurts even more when it is somebody we care about who did it. Fred Rogers, known to many just as Mr Rogers, once said: “Forgiveness is a strange thing. It can sometimes be easier to forgive our enemies than our friends. It can be hardest of all to forgive people we love.”

Hurt people hurt people. It seems to be natural. It seems to be the right thing from a human point of view.

Before we go to forgiveness, let us just think for a moment about the pain. There are many forms of injury.

And it never feels good, because it hurts. Whether it is physical injury, like when a hard object or a fist hits us, or whether it is the kind of hurt that wounds our inner core, our soul, like through a hurtful word, betrayal of any kind, neglect, and so on.

I am sure we all have our own stories of hurt.

Some hurt happens accidentally, because something unexpected happened, with nobody – not even ourselves – to blame. Accidents happen, sometimes with and sometimes without anybody at fault.

Maybe we or someone else were not careful.

Some hurt is unintentionally, however, some is intentionally, some is from neglect, and some is because of too much care, a worry that can suffocate another person.

All of these hurts are real, and I think it is important to recognise that. The pain is real. It is easy to see that a broken arm hurts, but broken trust or a broken heart can hurt just as much.

Rejection hurts, whether you applied for a job, or sought a person as your partner, or wanted to be part of a team.

If something is taken from me, whether stolen or withheld by someone in power, or because of violence, it hurts. When a person we loved and cared for, like a child or grandchild, is taken from us, the loss can feel unbearable.

I think it is important to be aware about that. Forgiveness does not say, bad things never happened, and it does not say that there was or is no hurt. The hurt is there, but forgiveness is an individual’s decision no longer to allow that hurt to continue.

Sometimes forgiveness is the offer for a new beginning, to refurbish the relationship, like when God forgives us. However, it also can mean to take away the power the perpetrator had over me or to leave an abusive relationship.

Actress Sarah Montana once said in an interview: “Forgiveness is designed to set you free. When you say, ‘I forgive you,’ what you’re really saying is ‘I know what you did. It’s not OK, but I recognise that you are more than that. I don’t want to hold us captive to this thing any more. I can heal myself, and I don’t need anything from you.'”

Forgiving others can be one of the best ways to healing. Once we identify where our hurts come from, the only way to really let go of them is to forgive.

Forgiveness does not necessarily mean there are no consequences of negative behaviour. Crimes, for example, carry a sentence. While a judge can be merciful in his ruling by giving probation, there is still a consequence, though it is milder.

When a perpetrator shows remorse and repents, it is easier to forgive, because the perpetrator recognises the consequences. Sometimes we might have to forgive, even though the perpetrator is stubborn or in some cases no longer around.

People who have suffered from abuse or neglect in their childhood might come to forgive their abusers, not so much for their abuser’s sake, but for their own sake and their children. Because hurt that is not forgiven may cause more hurt. Hurt people hurt people.

There is an interesting sentence when God gave the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:5b-6 (NRSV): “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

That is what we can observe in family systems, for example when it comes to divorce or child abuse. Lack of love, like neglect or abuse, often continues in the next generation.

Even parents who may have said they would never do or say what their parents did, might catch themselves doing similar things once in a stressful situation.

In a stressed state of fight or flight, we often react without thinking but revert to what we have learnt. That is why it is so helpful to learn new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving and it takes a conscious effort to overcome the hurt and to forgive.

Martin H Padovani gives in his book Healing Wounded Relationships a good synopsis of forgiveness: “When we forgive a former spouse we do that primarily for our own sake and for our own healing.

“It doesn’t mean we won’t experience painful feelings about a former spouse at times. It doesn’t mean we have to take the former spouse back or be reconciled with him or her. Forgiveness doesn’t mean we condone the wrongs done by the other. Rather, forgiveness means we are able to let go and move on with our lives.”

Then it is not a forgive-and-forget approach, but a forgive-and-don’t-repeat approach. It is replacing the hurt with new love through forgiveness.

• Karsten Decker is a German theologian with a double degree equivalent to an MTheol and MDiv. He studied in Marburg (Germany), Knoxville (USA), and Toronto (Canada) and comes from a united church of Lutheran and Reformed Churches. He was the pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Bermuda from 2010 to 2017, and after returning from Germany is now the temporary pulpit supply at Centenary Untied Methodist Church in Smith’s