The actor Tim Allen says that Erika Kirk inspired him to forgive the drunk driver who killed his father when he was only 11. Jimmy Kimmel says that Mrs. Kirk’s act of forgiveness deeply moved him and he wants to follow her example. Maybe we want to follow her example and forgive the people who have hurt us, but how are we supposed to do that?

We make a choice to do it. I suspect that Erika Kirk did not feel like forgiving Tyler Robinson, but she chose to do so. Forgiveness never happens by accident. It is always a choice—usually a choice that goes against the grain of our feelings. If we put off forgiveness until we feel like it, we will never forgive. We must make a choice to forgive, and we must act on it.

But what does that even mean? What are we doing when we forgive someone? Are we saying that what the other person offense didn’t really matter? Not at all. We overlook what does not matter. We forgive what does. We bear with people’s quirks and irritating ways. We forgive their sins (Colossians 3:13). Forgiveness always implies that something has taken place that really matters.

Does the offer of forgiveness indicate that we are no longer hurt or angry? It does not. I suspect the Erika Kirk will have to battle many emotional hours of anger and bitterness. Forgiveness is not a magic wand. You cannot swipe it over your anger or sorrow and make it go away. Forgiveness is more like a door. By forgiving, you open the door so that those negative emotions can leave. You cannot force them through the door, but in time they will often leave of their own accord (so to speak).

Does forgiveness require me to act like the offense never happened? Do I need to remain in functioning relationship with the offender? Do I need to trust the person, possibly exposing myself or my children to further injury?

No. Forgiving someone is not the same thing as trusting them. Once trust has been damaged, it may never be rebuilt, and even if it is, it will take time, sometimes many years.

Does forgiveness mean that I must forget what happened? Forgive and forget – isn’t that what people say? And isn’t that what God does? In the Book of Jeremiah, he promises to “remember their sins no more.” So, if I cannot forget, isn’t that proof that I have not forgiven?

God’s promise to “remember their sins no more” does not mean that he cannot remember their sin, but that he chooses not to remember. God does not have dementia. He will never put a finger to pursed lips and say, “Now, what was it that Shayne Looper did?” That is not what forgiveness means. He knows everything, including every sin I have ever committed, but he chooses not to recall them to my harm.

When we forgive, we are doing the same thing. We are choosing not to use a person’s sin against them to harm them. Does that mean, for example, that we choose not to report a crime against us, like Bishop Myriel did when he forgave Jean Valjean in Les Misérables? Not necessarily. It means that we do not recall the person’s crime because we want to harm them. But allowing someone to evade the punishment they deserve (and may need) could cause them (and others) even greater harm. In situations like this, we must do to others what we would have them do to us, were we in their position; and that requires wisdom born of much prayer.

When Erika Kirk forgave her husband’s killer, she was choosing not to harm him because of what he did to her. That includes harming him in her own mind: rehearsing the evil he has done, fantasizing his suffering, maliciously wanting his ruin, attempting to get other people to hate him, etc. Mrs. Kirk will need to stand upon the choice she has already made, for such thoughts will come. She will need our prayers.

There is another aspect to forgiveness, a potential pitfall about which we must be aware. When we forgive a person, we are not only forgiving what they did but also what they caused. The harm caused to Mrs. Kirk is myriad and lasting. Tyler Robinson took away the father of her children. She no longer has a husband to get up with the 3-year-old when she wakes from a bad dream. The one-year-old lacks a father to rock him and sing to him. When their daughter is 13, Charlie will not be there to go with her to the daddy-daughter dance. When she is 24, Charlie will not be there to walk her down the aisle.

These losses will come to Mrs. Kirk day after day, week after week, year after year. They are not going away. She must be able to forgive her husband’s killer for these things too, or a bitterness will grow in her that will eventually take over her life. The hurt the man caused was only beginning when the report of the assassin’s rifle faded. It will go on, a life-long reminder of what he took from her. And her forgiveness must also go on too, encompassing not only what her husband’s killer did but what he caused.

If this is what forgiveness entails, how can Erika Kirk – or anyone else – ever truly forgive? It would require something like superhuman strength and resolve.

That is exactly what it requires, and we are not superhuman. So, how can we forgive? To do what God calls us to do – whether in forgiveness or in other things he has commanded – we need a connection to God through which his superhuman strength can reach us. That connection is the Spirit—the Spirit that is given to everyone who believes on Jesus and confesses him Lord. In her own strength, Erika Kirk is incapable of living out the forgiveness she has offered. It is a good thing that she isn’t forced to rely on her own strength.

God’s strength, originating from outside us but flowing through us, is necessary to live out the forgiveness that Jesus commanded and modeled—forgiveness which we saw memorably expressed by a grieving widow on Sunday. To those who have been united to God through faith in Jesus Christ, he imparts his strength, enabling them to do what they could never do on their own.

Like forgiving their spouse’s murderer.