Yesterday we discovered that forgiving someone begins with your decision to surrender all rights to see justice done for the harm you suffered. It’s not an easy decision. Letting someone off your moral hook takes great wisdom, courage, and faith. You aren’t simply letting the matter drop; you are handing this person and your suffering over to God, trusting Him to do what is right.

If we accept that resentment is poisonous to the soul and that God demands we dispose of it, the next question is obvious: How? How can we rid ourselves of this toxic attitude? Here’s where God’s Word comes to our rescue. First, we must do something within ourselves that is painful. We must surrender our right to pursue our own justice. This is the first of two steps in forgiving someone.

I think Sir Francis Bacon had the right idea when he wrote, “Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. . . . Certainly, in taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing over it, he is superior, for it is a prince’s part to pardon.” If you have spent much time around someone who is eaten up with the desire for revenge . . .