Quotes about Forgiveness

Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more . . . and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. Philip Yancey1

My mistakes didn't destroy the image of God that was inscribed in me, so my errors can't eliminate the reason why I have value in his eyes.

People who have difficulty forgiving themselves for their past transgressions usually make one of two mistakes: they imagine their wrongdoing as being so big that it outstrips God's power to forgive, or they picture God's forgiveness as being too small to cover them. On either count, they're simply mistaken.

Jesus's death has infinite value because he's an infinite God; it was enough to cover all the sins of the world. If we say some sin is too terrible, then we're saying Jesus fell short in his mission. Grace is only grace if it's available even to the Duchs of the world. In fact," he said, straightening himself in his chair, "here's a difficult thing for us to comprehend: God loves Duch as much as he loves you and me.

It flows out of the point I just made. Christians believe that as wonderful as Jesus' life and teachings and miracles were, they were meaningless if it were not historically factual that Christ died and was raised from the dead and that this provided atonement, or forgiveness, of the sins of humanity.

Grace liberates us. Our tendency toward performance imprisons us.

The truth is that God could have forgiven my past and given me assurance of heaven and yet kept me at arm's length. He could have made me a mere servant in his kingdom household — and even that would have been more than I merited. But his grace is far more outrageous than that.

Philip Yancey was dead-on when he said that some Christians get very angry toward other Christians who sin differently than they do.79

To be cut off by the sword of injured friendship is the most dreadful of all deaths, next to suicide.

Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on.

If you pardon all the evil done to you, you encourage others to do you evil! If you give your cloak to him who steals your coat, how long will it be, before your shirt and trousers will go also?

There it is . . . Our God declares the end in the beginning. In Christ, God loved us before we loved him, caught us before we fell, forgave us before we asked, clothed us in righteousness before we realized we were naked, and cleansed us before we were aware of our filth. God called those who were enemies, aliens, and strangers his very own children and friends. And wrote the story of our life before we drew our first breath.