Corrie ten Boom's Clenched Fist

In 1947, Corrie ten Boom stood in a church basement in Munich, face to face with a man she recognized — a former guard from Ravensbruck, the concentration camp where her sister Betsie had died. He extended his hand and asked for forgiveness. Corrie later wrote that her arm froze at her side. Every memory of the camp, the cruelty, the lice-infested barracks, the slow wasting of her sister's body, surged through her like a current.

She knew what Scripture demanded. She knew that harboring hatred was its own kind of prison. But knowing and doing stood miles apart in that moment. She described praying the most desperate prayer of her life: "Jesus, I cannot forgive this man. Give me Your forgiveness."

She reached out her hand. And as she did, she said warmth flooded down her arm and into their clasped fingers. The forgiveness was not hers — it was a gift that moved through her.

In Matthew 5, Jesus presses past the external act to the condition of the heart. Murder begins with contempt. Adultery begins with a wandering eye. A broken oath begins with a divided will. Jesus is not raising the bar to crush us. He is exposing how deeply we need a power beyond our own to do what righteousness requires. Corrie ten Boom discovered that power — not in her own resolve, but in the One who commands us to be reconciled and then makes reconciliation possible.