"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you." (64, quoting C.S. Lewis)
"It is no sweet platonic ideal to be dispersed in the world like air-freshener sprayed from a can. Forgiveness is achingly difficult, and long after you've forgiven, the wound--my dastardly deeds--lives on in memory. Forgiveness is an unnatural act." (84)
"Behind every act of forgiveness lies a wound of betrayal, and the pain of being betrayed does not easily fade away." (84)
"The very taste of forgiveness seems somehow wrong. Even when we have committed a wrong, we want to earn our way back into the injured party's good graces. We prefer to crawl on our knees, to wallow, to do penance, to kill a lamb..." (85)
"Despite a hundred sermons on forgiveness, we do not forgive easily, nor find ourselves easily forgiven. Forgiveness, we discover, is always harder than the sermons make it out to be." (86, quoting Elizabeth Warren)
"'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.' At the center of the Lord's Prayer, which Jesus taught us to recite, lurks the unnatural act of forgiveness. Roman bathers urged their gods to abet human justice; Jesus hinged God's forgiveness on our willingness to forgive unjust acts. Charles Williams has said of the Lord's Prayer, "'No word in English carries a greater possibility of terror than the little word 'as' in that clause.' What makes the 'as' so terrifying? The fact that Jesus plainly links our forgiven-ness by the Father with our forgiving-ness of fellow human beings. Jesus' next remark could not be more explicit: 'If you do not forgive their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.'" (87)
"Jesus requires--no, demands--a response of forgiveness. So urgent is the need for forgiveness that it takes precedence over 'religious' duties: "'Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift.' Jesus concluded his parable of the unforgiving servant with a scene of the master turning over the servant to jailers to be tortured. 'This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from the heart,' Jesus said. I fervently wish these words were not in the Bible, but there they are, from the lips of Christ himself. God has granted us a terrible agency: by denying forgiveness to others, we are in effect determining them unworthy of God's forgiveness, and thus so are we. In some mysterious way, divine forgiveness depends on us." (87-88)
"As we can allow ourselves to let go, to break the cycle, to start over, God can allow himself to let go, break the cycle, start over." (87)
"Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God. Jesus does not promise that when we bless our enemies and do good to them they will not despitefully use and persecute us. They certainly will. But not even that can hurt or overcome us, so long as we pray for them... We are doing vicariously for them what they cannot do for themselves." (89, quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
"'Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath; for it is written, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord.'" At last I understood, in the final analysis, forgiveness is an act of faith. By forgiving another, I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am. By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness for God to work out. I leave in God's hands the scales that must balance justice and mercy." (92)
"Forgiveness--undeserved, unearned--can cut the cords and let the oppressive burden of guilt roll away. The New Testament shows a resurrected Jesus leading Peter by the hand through a three-fold ritual of forgiveness. Peter need not go through life with the guilty, hangdog look of one who has betrayed the Son of God. Oh, no. On the backs of such transformed sinners Christ would build his church." (104)
"In The Art of Forgiving, Lewis Smedes makes the striking observation that the Bible portrays God going through progressive stages when he forgives, much as we humans do. First, God rediscovers the humanity of the person who wronged him, by removing the barrier created by sin. Second, God surrenders his right to get even, choosing instead to bear the cost in his own body. Finally, God revises his feelings toward us, finding a way to'justify' us so that when he looks upon us he sees his own adopted children, with his divine image restored." (106)
"When Jesus loved a guilt-laden person and helped him, he saw in him an erring child of God. He saw in him a human being whom his Father loved and grieved over because he was going wrong. He saw him as God originally designed and meant him to be, and therefore he saw through the surface layer of grime and dirt to the real man underneath. Jesus did not identify the person with his sin, but rather saw in this sin something alien, something that really did not belong to him, something that merely chained and mastered him, and from which he could free him and bring him back to his real self. Jesus was able to love men because he loved through right through the layer of mud." (175)
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