Editor's note: Enjoy this devotion from Philip Yancey and Brenda Quinn's The Bible Revealed.
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Genesis 45:1–46:34; 50:15–21
For nearly two years Joseph has conducted a series of elaborate tests, demanding things from his brothers, playing tricks on them, and accusing them. All these games provoke confusion and fear in his brothers, as well as flashbacks of guilt over their treatment of him years before.
Yet the drama also exacts an emotional toll on Joseph.
Five times he has broken into tears, once with cries loud enough to be heard in the next room. Joseph is feeling the awful strain of forgiveness. Finally, the brothers discover the stunning truth: The teenager they once sold as a slave, and nearly killed, is now the second-ranking imperial official of Egypt. He holds their fate in his hands.
Joseph, however, has no interest in revenge. Ready at last to forgive, he understands now that
you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. — Genesis 50:20
Seeing his difficult years as part of God’s big picture, Joseph is free to let go of his anger.
The brothers’ reconciliation thus opens the way for the children of Israel to become one family of twelve tribes, a single nation.
The old man Jacob, back home in Canaan, hardly knows what to believe when he hears the news about his “dead” son. But, spurred on by one last personal revelation from God, he too heads for Egypt.
A large family, a nation, a land — God promised all these to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. As Genesis closes, only the first of the promises has come true: Jacob’s twelve sons have produced a flock of children. The Bible makes plain that these brothers are no more holy than any other sons — after all, consider their treatment of Joseph. But from this starting point God will build His nation.
Daily Contemplation
What makes it so hard for us to forgive others?
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Why Forgive?
Reflection
The scandal of forgiveness confronts anyone who agrees to a moral ceasefire just because someone says, “I’m sorry.” When I (Philip) feel wronged, I can contrive a hundred reasons against forgiveness. He needs to learn a lesson. I’ll let her stew for a while; it’ll do her good. It’s not up to me to make the first move. When I finally soften to the point of granting forgiveness, it feels like a capitulation, a leap from hard logic to mushy sentiment.
Why do any of us, believer and unbeliever alike, choose this unnatural act? I can identify at least three pragmatic reasons.
First, forgiveness alone can halt the cycle of blame and pain, breaking the chain of ungrace. In the New Testament the most common Greek word for forgiveness (aphiēmi) means, literally, “to release, to hurl away, to free yourself.” If we do not transcend nature, we remain bound to the people we cannot forgive, held in their vise grip. This principle applies even when one party is wholly innocent and the other wholly to blame, for the innocent party will bear the wound until they can find a way to release it — and forgiveness is the only way.
The second great power of forgiveness is that it can loosen the stranglehold of guilt in the perpetrator. Magnanimous forgiveness allows the possibility of transformation in the guilty party. Lewis Smedes cautions that forgiveness is not the same as pardon: You may forgive one who wronged you and still insist on a just punishment for that wrong. If you can bring yourself to the point of forgiveness, though, you will release its healing power both in you and in the person who wronged you.1
Forgiveness breaks the cycle of blame and loosens the stranglehold of guilt.
It accomplishes these two things through a third: a remarkable linkage that places the forgiver on the same side as the party who did the wrong. Through it we realize we are not as different from the wrongdoer as we would like to think. “I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness,” said Simone Weil.2
Somehow God had to come to terms with these creatures He desperately wanted to love — but how? On earth, living among us, He learned what it was like. He put Himself on our side.
Daily Contemplation
Is there someone in your life whom you have been unable to forgive? Ask God to guide you in how to go about forgiving. And thank Him for all He has forgiven you.
1. Lewis B. Smedes, The Art of Forgiving (Moorings, 1996), 5–7.
2. 5. Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (Routledge, 1972), 9.
Excerpted with permission from The Bible Revealed by Philip Yancey and Brenda Quinn, copyright Philip D. Yancey and Brenda Quinn.
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Your Turn
What about you? Which person in your life is terribly hard to forgive? What happened? Bring that experience to the Lord and ask Him to speak to your heart and help you to release that grievance to Him. Pause and thank God for the mountain of things He has forgiven you! ~ Devotionals Daily