Romans 12:18 arrives near the end of a letter that has spent eleven chapters describing mercy. Paul has just called the Christian life a living sacrifice, and now he gets specific: "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone."
Notice the two qualifications. Paul does not claim peace is always achievable. "If it is possible" is a concession, not a failure of faith. Peace requires two parties, and you control only one. That is what "as far as it depends on you" means: you are answerable for your half of the ledger and no more. If someone refuses to be at peace with you, that refusal is not yours to carry. You can stop hauling it.
This matters because forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. Forgiveness is the release of a debt. Reconciliation requires the other person to come and receive it. You can release what you are owed even when the apology never comes. You can set down the invoice without pretending the transaction never happened.
Two verses later Paul says where the debt actually goes: "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord." Forgiveness is not calling the wrong small. It is trusting that God's ledger is accurate and that He will settle what you cannot. Corrie's testimony is a picture of that, not a proof of it — she asked for help, and then her hand moved, and love followed the obedience.
None of this means you must return to a place that harmed you, or behave as though nothing happened. Peace, as far as it depends on you, may look like distance held with a clear conscience and a released debt.
So today's obedience may be small. Not a feeling. A sentence. A name.
Begin with the name that surfaced while you were reading. Say it to God. Ask Him to bless that person — one honest sentence is enough. You may have to say it again tomorrow. That is not failure; that is the pattern. Obedience first, and the heart catches up somewhere down the road.
🤝Forgiveness
As Far As It Depends On You
Releasing the debt is not the same as pretending there was none.
October 13, 20265 min readNIV
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
— Romans 12:18 (NIV)
Live at peace
Today's Story
📖True Story
The service in Munich had ended, and the congregation was making its way out. Corrie ten Boom had spoken that day about forgiveness — the very subject she had carried with her out of Ravensbrück, the camp where she and her sister Betsie had been imprisoned.
As the people filed past, she recognized a face. He had been an SS guard at Ravensbrück. And now he was standing in front of her.
He told her he had become a Christian. Then he asked her to forgive him.
What happened next is what Corrie herself described. She felt anger rise in her. Her hand — the hand she would have needed to extend to him — would not move. Something in her refused. She recalled that she could not initially raise it to shake his.
So she did not reach for him. She prayed instead, silently, standing there as the crowd thinned around them, asking God for help. It was not an eloquent prayer. It was the prayer of someone handed a command she could not carry out on her own strength.
Then she took his hand.
Later she wrote that she experienced love for the man. Not manufactured warmth, not a decision to feel a certain way, but something that arrived as she obeyed. Corrie was careful, though, about what she claimed. She explained plainly that forgiveness did not mean forgetting the harm. What had been done in that camp was real. It was not to be renamed, softened, or brushed into something smaller than it was.
That is the shape of her testimony: a debt named honestly, a brief prayer for help, and a hand extended before the heart had caught up. She never presented it as one easy moment that erased the past. She presented it as obedience — and love came afterward as a gift, not as a reward for pretending.
SOURCE: Guideposts Classics: Corrie ten Boom on Forgiveness (Corrie ten Boom, Guideposts, 1972; reprinted 2026) / https://guideposts.org/articles/positive-living/guideposts-classics-corrie-ten-boom-forgiveness/ / The Forgiveness of Corrie Ten Boom (Matthew Crocker, The Gospel Coalition Canada, 2021) / https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-forgiveness-of-corrie-ten-boom/
Source citation: Guideposts Classics: Corrie ten Boom on Forgiveness (Corrie ten Boom, Guideposts, 1972; reprinted 2026) / https://guideposts.org/articles/positive-living/guideposts-classics-corrie-ten-boom-forgiveness/ / The Forgiveness of Corrie Ten Boom (Matthew Crocker, The Gospel Coalition Canada, 2021) / https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-forgiveness-of-corrie-ten-boom/
Reflection
Think About It
• In Romans 12:18, what is actually within your reach — and what was never yours to control? • Who comes to mind when you think of a debt still unpaid, and what would it look like to hand that invoice to God instead of collecting it yourself? • Corrie took the man's hand before she felt love. What small obedience might God be asking of you before the feeling arrives?
Prayer
Lord, You know who I am thinking of right now. You know what was said, and what was never said. I have carried this so long that I am not sure I know how to put it down — and part of me does not want to. I want to be the one who decides what they owe.
I am tired of replaying it, and tired of pretending it did not hurt. I cannot manufacture love for them; You know that better than I do. So I am doing the only thing Corrie knew to do: asking for help.
I choose today to hand over the debt I have been trying to collect. I believe You are just, and that nothing has slipped past You. Yet I will trust You — with the wound, with the person, with the outcome I cannot control. Lift my hand, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.
Live It Out
Name one person you are holding a grudge against — the one whose face appeared just now — and pray for their good, even if it is only one sentence. "Lord, bless them." That is enough to begin.