Quotes About Forgiveness

The free offer of grace extends not just to the undeserving but to those who in fact deserve the opposite: to Ku Klux Klanners as well as civil rights marchers, to P.

Does the Christian emphasis on love, grace, and forgiveness have any relevance outside quarreling families or church encounter groups? In a world where force matters most, a lofty ideal like forgiveness may seem as insubstantial as vapor.

Because of Jesus, I can never say about a person, "She must be suffering because of some sin she committed"; Jesus, who did not sin, also felt pain.

Like grace, forgiveness has about it the maddening quality of being undeserved, unmerited, unfair.

We Christians are called to use the "weapons of grace," which means treating even our opponents with love and respect.

why God asks us to forgive: because that is what God is like.

Caught up in righteous—and wholly appropriate—revulsion over Serbian atrocities, the world overlooks one fact: the Serbs are simply following the terrible logic of unforgiveness.

There is one major flaw in the law of revenge, however: it never settles the score.

it seems so unfair, to forgive injustice. I am caught between forgiveness and justice.

Law merely indicated the sickness; grace brought about the cure.

Breaking the cycle of ungrace means taking the initiative. Instead of waiting for his neighbor to make the first move

Forgiveness may be unfair—it is, by definition—but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution.

Calvary broke up the logjam between justice and forgiveness. By accepting onto his innocent self all the severe demands of justice, Jesus broke forever the chain of ungrace.

as thou hast given me a repentance, not to be repented of, so give me, O Lord, a fear, of which I may not be afraid.

forgiveness is an act of faith.

The gospel of grace begins and ends with forgiveness. And people write songs with titles like "Amazing Grace" for one reason: grace is the only force in the universe powerful enough to break the chains that enslave generations. Grace alone melts ungrace.

By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness for God to work out.

Though wrong does not disappear when I forgive, it loses its grip on me and is taken over by God, who knows what to do. Such a decision involves risk, of course: the risk that God may not deal with the person as I would want.

Church is a place where I can say, unashamedly, I don't need to sin. I need another sinner.

the Gospels make clear the connection: God forgives my debts as I forgive my debtors. The reverse is also true: Only by living in the stream of God's grace will I find the strength to respond with grace toward others.

the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt said, the only remedy for the inevitability of history is forgiveness; otherwise, we remain trapped in the "predicament of irreversibility.

if I care to listen, I hear a loud whisper from the gospel that I did not get what I deserved.

Lewis Smedes points out, "The first and often the only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness. . . . When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.

The only thing harder than forgiveness is the alternative.