A popular television psychologist said this about forgiveness: “Forgiveness is not about another person who has transgressed against you; it is about you. Forgiveness is about doing whatever it takes to preserve the power to create your own emotional state. It is a gift to yourself and it frees you. You don’t have to have the other person’s cooperation, and they do not have to be sorry or admit the error of their ways. Do it for yourself.”

Now unfortunately, a lot of Christians will agree with that kind of talk. They will agree with statements such as “You need to learn to forgive yourself” or even “You need to forgive God”. You find them saying things such as, “I’m trying to find it in my heart to forgive.”

For a people whose message includes the foundational truth of forgiveness of sins, there is a lot of confusion over what forgiveness is and isn’t. Forgiveness is not personal therapy. Forgiveness is not something you do to yourself, for the simple reason that you are not the Lawgiver. Forgiveness is not a feeling. Forgiveness is not a kind of amnesia. Biblical forgiveness is a deep and sweet reality, grounded in God’s character, which we are to extend to others.

Chapter 44 gave us one of the Bible’s clearest pictures of repentance, with Judah accepting the guilt of selling Joseph into slavery by seeking to save the youngest from a similar fate by offering to take Benjamin’s place. Since the biblical pattern is that repentance goes before forgiveness, it is fitting then that chapter 45 should be one of the greatest pictures of forgiveness.

For here we have the tender heart of God towards the repentant illustrated in Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers. Joseph was deeply wounded by these men. Moderns would say he was abused by them. They considered murdering him by leaving him in a pit where starvation would take him. They kidnapped him and sold him into slavery, criminals plying the horrid trade of trafficking in souls. They robbed him of his freedom, of his father, of familiarity, of his position, of his brother Benjamin. They took away from him precious years that could never be gained back. Directly and indirectly, they were the cause of him living as a slave, and ending up in prison in a foreign country for thirteen years.

So you remember how Joseph worked shrewdly to discover if these men’s consciences were hard. Joseph could not reveal himself to them, for risk that their repentance would not be genuine, it would simply be coerced out of fear before Joseph’s power. Joseph did not want these men feigning repentance to save their own skins. He wanted to test if they had repented, and he did so by first accusing them of what they accused him of doing, then by accusing them of lying, then by having them experience the prison life he experienced, then by testing their honesty. Finally, the greatest test of all was how they treated Benjamin, when he was shown favouritism, and when Benjamin was faced with a life of slavery in Egypt.

What Joseph found, speaking through the mouth of Judah, was that these men were deeply under conviction, burdened by sin they could not make amends for, desirous to do it over and do it differently with Benjamin, to the extent of becoming Benjamin’s protector and saviour rather than persecutor.

In other words, these men have expressed as much repentance as the situation would allow with Joseph still disguised from them. They have repented by proxy, as it were, expressing with Benjamin what they would like to say to Joseph, could they have it over again.

There is no forgiveness without repentance. And so now, because Joseph can see they have repented, he can reveal himself and extend reconciliation.

45 Then Joseph could not restrain himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Make everyone go out from me!” So no one stood with him while Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard it.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph; does my father still live?”

Look at the pathos, the affections in this forgiveness. The text says Joseph could not restrain himself, which can mean that Joseph wanted to give expression to his emotions and could not with all his attendants there. Nothing cold or reluctant here. Nothing that says that Joseph wants to make them work, and turn their repentance into an extended punishment. No, Joseph wants to forgive, and is overcome with emotion that this day of their repentance has come. He is now longing for the moment of removing his disguise, and so he orders all his attendants and officials and officers out the room.

But even so, they, and even those in Pharaoh’s house can hear the sobs of a heart overcome with joy.

And how perplexed these brothers must have been for those first few minutes, as these high Egyptian official orders everyone out and then weeps loudly in front of them, before he can get the words out.

There is nothing cold or stoic about how God forgives us. The stories He gives us in Scripture, the prodigal son, the woman in sin at Jesus’ feet, Saul on the road to Damascus, these are moments of deep affection. And we see God Himself expressing this in several places. When Jesus looks over the city of Jerusalem, we read that he wept over it. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!

If God was willing to include Calvary to obtain reconciliation with men, be sure He is not indifferent or cold about the transaction. There is joy in heaven in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repents. God does not sit in Heaven as a bureaucrat, counting the pennies of our pleas for forgiveness, until finally He reluctantly grants forgiveness. God is the Father searching the horizon for his son, God is the prophet Hosea, taking back his wife from the sordid slave market, God is the rejoicing shepherd having found the one that was lost. As Tozer said, some Christians live with this perverted notion of God, “These friends serve God grimly, as the elder brother did, doing what is right without enthusiasm and without joy, and seem altogether unable to understand the buoyant, spirited celebration when the prodigal comes home. Their idea of God rules out the possibility of His being happy in His people, and they attribute the singing and shouting to sheer fanaticism. Unhappy souls, these, doomed to go heavily on their melancholy way, grimly determined to do right if the heavens fall and to be in the winning side in the day of judgment. How good it would be if we could learn that God is easy to live with.”

Joseph pictures the heart of God, wanting to forgive, and quick to do so, when repentance has come.

So we then imagine Joseph, through the sobs, took off the Egyptian headdress, wiped the cosmetic paint from his eyes and face, changed his voice from the rough coarse one he had used, to his own register, and now spoke to them directly in Hebrew, and said, “I am Joseph, does my father still live?”

Now he had already asked them if Jacob was alive just a day ago, but he repeats the question, and now he no longer asks about your father, but my father. He is establishing that they are family, and asking again, in case they had not been truthful. Joseph is overcome with the generous emotion of the forgiver, but the brothers are overcome with a different emotion.

But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence.

We have to sympathise with these men. In a matter of seconds, they have to come to terms with an avalanche of information. The brother they sold is not dead. He is alive. In fact, somehow, he is one and the same person as the ruler they have been dealing with all along. He has had the power to take vengeance on them, but has not. He has been disguising himself all along, leading them on, until he evoked this plea from Judah. The brother they sold, whose life they ruined, is in the position to ruin their lives, but up to this point, has not. They are shocked into immobilized silence.

And I think we have a picture here of something that awaits a future fulfillment.

And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.

In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning at Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo.

And the land shall mourn, every family by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves;

the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of Shimei by itself, and their wives by themselves;

all the families that remain, every family by itself, and their wives by themselves.13 “In that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness.

Zechariah here predicts the second coming of the Lord, the second triumphal entry of Jesus to Jerusalem. And what happens? Just as those brothers realised that the lord of Egypt was their brother whom they had persecuted, so there is coming a day when the same shock and bewilderment will overcome the Jewish people. And they will feel what these brothers felt – shock, dismay, fear, amazement and joy, that their deliverer was the brother whom they persecuted, who has forgiven them and now acts on their behalf.

Perhaps it is a picture of each of us at conversion. When Saul is on the road to Damascus, he asks, “Who are you, Lord?” And the Lord says, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” For each of us, there is something of this – the Jesus we ignored, the Jesus we mocked, the Jesus we dismissed, the Jesus we took for granted, it’s that same Jesus who is revealed to us as our Saviour and hope.

Behold the Man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
Call out among the scoffers
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished

So what do you do when the people you are forgiving are trembling with fear?

And Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come near to me.” So they came near. Then he said: “I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.

But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.

For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.

And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.

Now I want you to see five characteristics of Joseph’s forgiveness.

First, Joseph’s forgiveness was not passive but restorative. It is Joseph who now says to these immobilised men – “Come near.” Just as God says to us in His Word “draw near with full assurance of faith” “approach the throne of grace to find mercy and grace”. Forgiveness cannot completely occur until repentance has taken place, but once it has, it pursues reconciliation. Think of what effort Joseph went to elicit this repentance out of them. And even now, he calls them to not remain in that place of fearful uncertainty, but to approach him.

Second, Joseph’s forgiveness cancelled the debt these men owed him. Joseph did not wait for time to heal. Joseph did expect that feelings of bitterness would slowly change into feelings of warmth. Forgiveness is not a feeling, it is a cancellation of debt. These men owed him what they could not pay – years of his life, lost opportunity, years in prison. But Joseph had chosen to release that debt vertically before God, so his heart was free from bitterness, and now as these men repented, he could extend that vertical forgiveness to them horizontally.

Third, Joseph’s forgiveness chose to look at the injury through the eyes of providence. He says to them, “Yes, it is me – the same Joseph that you sold. But don’t think of that past event primarily through that lens of your sin against me. Think of it how I think of it – God used you to send me ahead of you. God meant me to be in Egypt.”

Three times here, Joseph says, God sent me, verse 5, verse 7, God sent me, verse 8, it was not you but God who sent me.” God planned to preserve life through my being here, and only now as we look at how God has weaved this together can we see it – God used you to send me here, so that I could become a lord of the land, and save up food, so as to preserve you and your families, so that the promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will come true. We are only in year 2 of this famine, five more are to come, so God has brought this about to save life. God has even made Joseph a kind of father-figure to the Pharaoh.

Joseph does not have the narrow focus of ‘You did this to me.” He has the broad focus of “God allowed you to do that, for a greater good.” I wonder what would happen to those decades-long resentments, the bitternesses we still bear to the family member, that relative, that teacher, that employer, that friend, that husband or wife or son or daughter, if we saw it in light of providence. Yes, so-and-so harmed me, but God allowed it, and through it God brought about something much greater, much better. Yes, he or she did that to me, but God governed it, and it was one of a chain of events that brought about salvation in my life, or greater Christlikeness, or leading me to a good church, or to a deeper walk with God. How different the bad seems when viewed through the lens of a God who governs it all for our good.

You hear about forgive and forget. And it is fine to say that if we mean that we should not use the past offences as a weapon. We don’t bring up what is forgiven as a weapon. But the word forget has a passive connotation to it. No one ever forgets deeply painful things. You should not try. Instead, you think of the past through a new lens, the lens of providence. Choose not to brood over it as an injury done maliciously to you. Instead, you widen the lens, and take in the full scope of a great, sovereign God, who rules over what moment of the day sparrows will fall, who knows the number of the hairs on your head, and you think of the past in that light.

That delivers you from brooding. It delivers you from keeping a record of wrongs. It delivers you from bringing it up as a weapon. It delivers you from torturously trying to forget what you will never forget. Look at the sins done against you through the eyes of Romans 8:28, and you will take the sting out of it.

Fourth, forgiveness seeks to restore the relationship.

“Hurry and go up to my father, and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph: “God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not tarry.

You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near to me, you and your children, your children’s children, your flocks and your herds, and all that you have.

There I will provide for you, lest you and your household, and all that you have, come to poverty; for there are still five years of famine.”’

“And behold, your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my mouth that speaks to you.

So you shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that you have seen; and you shall hurry and bring my father down here.”

Joseph is now working actively to protect his father and his brothers. He tells them to go up to Jacob, explain to him what has happened tell him to come down to Egypt, before the famine claims his life. Under his care, they will have preferential treatment, and will be, quite literally the best cared for people in the whole of the Middle-Eastern world. They will settle in Goshen, which is probably a Hebrew word and was likely an area on the eastern edge of the Delta.

So he assures them that it is definitely him, and tells them to tell Jacob that they have seen the power and glory he has in Egypt, that it is not a ruse, and that this should motivate Jacob to leave the ancestral homeland and come down to Egypt.

Forgiveness desires that the relationship be restored. He does want to quarantine his brothers, or keep them at arm’s length. Instead, he wants them near.

When we forgive, if there has been true repentance and true horizontal forgiveness, it then gives us the opportunity to rebuild the friendship, rebuild the marriage, rebuild the relationship. Now that is not always possible – sometimes the person has died or moved away. Sometimes the person has not been able or willing to acknowledge the wrongs done. Sometimes enough differences exist that make separateness without bitterness the better part of wisdom. But in other cases, particularly with someone you live with or must work with, the idea is to move closer.

Finally, in the fifth place, forgiveness expresses affection.

Then he fell on his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck.

Moreover he kissed all his brothers and wept over them, and after that his brothers talked with him.

There have been tears and talking, but no touching up till now. But now Joseph embraces his younger brother with vigour, and his brother, who had never harmed him, weeps for joy. He kisses each of his brothers, expressing tenderness and kindness. And now, look at the result: “after that his brothers talked with him.” Twenty years earlier, they could not speak peaceably to him. A few minutes earlier, their tongues were paralyzed by shock and fear, but now, with such thorough and complete forgiveness, they are opening up, the breach is being healed, though it will take some more years, and even the death of Jacob to convince them that all is truly forgiven.

I wonder how often a couple that was close to resolving a conflict in marriage would have resolved it if some tenderness was expressed, some affection which reassured the other. Or how often has the discipline of a child left a bitter taste in the mouth, because even after there has been verbal expressions of repentance and forgiveness, it was not closed off with expressions of affection.

Joseph’s forgiveness was restorative, it cancelled the debt, it looked on the past through the eyes of providence, it sought to rebuild the relationship, and it expressed affection.

Perhaps we might look at Joseph, and say, how did he forgive? We know he extended forgiveness because they had repented, but how did he experience that forgiveness?

Here is the biblical secret of forgiveness. Forgiven people forgive. We know that Joseph was an exemplary man, but for all that, Joseph was still a forgiven sinner. Joseph was aware of sin in his life. Indeed, the holier a person becomes, the more acutely he senses his own sin. Joseph was undoubtedly one of those people who would have called himself ‘the chief of sinners’ precisely because he lived so blamelessly that his conscience was very sensitive to sin. And as such, he would have been acutely aware of how rich and deep are the mercies of God.

Joseph could forgive the R10 000 debt his brothers owed him, because he was aware always of the R100 million debt that he owed God which God had forgiven him. People who know the Gospel of forgiveness know it is the greatest contradiction to rejoice in being forgiven and then withhold it from others. That’s why Jesus said in the Lord’s prayer, if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you yours.” It is why He said to the hard-hearted Pharisee, Simon, about the woman kissing his feet and wiping them with her tears and hair. He said, “The one who is forgiven much, loves much.” That woman was deeply aware of her sin, and deeply grateful for forgiveness.

For this reason, the person who refuses to forgive is immediately under suspicion as an unbeliever. A Christian may struggle to forgive. A Christian may find it painful and vulnerable and scary to forgive. But through all that struggle, the logic of a true believer is: how could I, who have been forgiven so much, withhold forgiveness from another? The unbeliever who only knows the Gospel in theory, but not in heart experience, cannot do so, because he has never experienced forgiveness.

You know how you forgive? Not by trying to feel that what was done to you was not so bad. Not by trying to feel better. You meditate on the Cross. You meditate on what you did to God, and what He did for you. As Ephesians 4:32 says, “Be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” And rising up from that freedom, you free others. You work to restore, you release the debt, you think of it in terms of providence, you rebuild the relationship, you express tenderness.

No, we do not forgive to create our own emotional state. We forgive for the glory of God, to extend the effect of the Cross, to live out the Gospel, to be free of bitterness, to love our neighbours. That’s what a forgiven sinner like Joseph did, and that’s what we can do.