The grace we receive in forgiveness gives the grace to be forgiving.
HT: @challies
Tag Archives: Forgiveness
The Cost of Forgiveness
The Cross is not simply a lovely example of sacrificial love. Throwing your life away needlessly is not admirable — it is wrong. Jesus’ death was only a good example if it was more than an example, if it was something absolutely necessary to rescue us. And it was. Why did Jesus have to die in order to forgive us? There was a debt to be paid — God himself paid it. There was a penalty to be born — God himself bore it. Forgiveness is always a form of costly suffering.
Tim Keller, The Reason for God (New York, NY: Dutton, 2007), 193.
The Perspective Which Allows Us To Forgive
If we realize how vast is the debt we owe to God, we shall make a very moderate estimate of the injuries inflicted upon us by others, and if we are persuaded that God has forgiven us all the debt we owe Him, we shall not find it very difficult to forgive the injuries we have suffered from others.
Forgive and Forget? Really?
Nor is forgiveness forgetting. Forgetting is more a result of a short memory or subconscious suppression, while forgiving is an act of the will, a difficult and disciplined decision to love the sinner while hating the sin.
Peter Marshall in Marshall Shelley, Well-intentioned Dragons, p. 145
Growth in Character
Growth in character occurs to the degree that we accept being forgiven as greater than life itself. If the gift is not what I see but how I am seen by God, then my gratitude knows no limits. It can grow immeasurably as I suffer through the loss of illusions, the death of dreams, and the shattering of success.
To Forgive Is Divine
To forgive is to set a captive free — and discover the captive was you!
Rockwell L. Dillman in K. Neill Foster and Douglas B. Wicks, eds., Voices on the Cross, p. 48
Glorifying God’s Mercy
Our fall afforded Him the opportunity of showing that in the destruction of sin He could not only manifest His justice, but also glorify His mercy in remitting and forgiving sin, without infringing upon His righteousness.
What Is the Extent of God’s Love?
It is arrogant to say that what I have done and what I am is greater than God’s capacity to love.
Anthony Campolo, It’s Friday, But Sunday’s Comin’, pp. 40-41
Our Only Contribution to Our Salvation
The only contribution we make to our justification is our sin which God so graciously forgives.
Life Is Worship 