Quotes about Forgiveness

Today the logic goes something like this: 'Calling a ruler Son of God is out of style. No one really does that nowadays. We can support a president while also worshiping Jesus as the Son of God.' But how is this possible? For one says that we must love our enemies, and the other says we must kill them; one promotes the economics of competition, while the other admonishes the forgiveness of debts. To which do we pledge allegiance?

So even as we see the horror of death, may we be reminded that in the end, love wins. Mercy triumphs. Life is more powerful than death. And even those who have committed great violence can have the image of God come to life again within them as they hear the whisper of love. May the whisper of love grow louder than the thunder of violence. May we love loudly.

Perhaps one of the most powerful things the contemporary church could do is to confess our sins to the world, the humbly get on our knees and repent for the terrible things we have done in the name of God.

My concern is, How do we deal with evil without becoming it? If we aren't careful, our "justice" can be as bad as the crime itself. Yet

If we remove the cross, we are in danger of promoting a very cheap grace. Perhaps it should make us uncomfortable.

When we see the crucifixion as a legal transaction in which Jesus "paid the bill," we run the risk of cheapening the work of restoration at the heart of the cross. After

we now are invited to extend that same grace to others. We are to be like God and forgive. We are to see people who do evil with the possibility that they can be healed. And we are to extend to them the same grace God extends to us. We are all victims of the crushing power of sin, and all in need of liberation.

In court, as the judge considered the sentence of the police officer, the woman spoke boldly: "He took my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give, and he needs to know what love and grace feel like—so I think he should have to come to visit my home in the slums, twice a month, and spend time with me, so that I can be a mother to him, so that I can embrace him, and he can know that my forgiveness is real." We

There are so many people who are longing to be brought to life, who know all too well that they have done evil and long to hear not only of a God who embraces evildoers but also of a church that does the same.

It is an altar call to the world, an invitation to see a new kind of Christianity and to hear the confession of a church on its knees asking your forgiveness for the mess we have helped create. And it is an "alter" call to the church, to alter our vision from the patterns of this world and create new ways of living.

If we believe terrorists are beyond redemption, then we can rip out half of our New Testament since it was written by a converted terrorist who became an extremist for grace.

True generosity is measured not by how much we give away but by how much we have left, especially when we look at the needs of our neighbors. We have no right not to be charitable. The early Christians taught that charity is merely returning what we have stolen. In the seventeenth century, St. Vincent de Paul said that when he gives bread to the beggars, he gets on his knees and asks forgiveness from them.