“By not forgiving, I chain myself to a desire to get even, thereby losing my freedom. A forgiven person forgives. This is what we proclaim when we pray ‘and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.’ This lifelong struggle lies at the heart of the Christian life.”- Henri Nouwen, […]
“The heart dresses up vengeance as if it were justice: ‘It will be perfectly fair and just — I will simply hurt them just as they did me.’ But that is seldom what happens. . . . Soon the mask of supposed justice falls away and the face of revenge is revealed.”- Timothy Keller “You […]
“If you have a God who is nothing but wrath, and if you have little understanding of what happened on the cross, you’ll be a driven person. You’ll try very hard to be moral . . . but you will always feel unworthy. It will be hard to grow into a loving person, because fear […]
“The concept of substitution may be said, then, to be at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. . . . Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which […]
“Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Anger and love are inseparably bound in human experience. And if I, a flawed, [narcissistic], and sinful woman can feel this much pain and anger over someone’s condition, how much more a morally perfect God who made them. Anger isn’t the opposite of […]
“Modern people struggle with the idea of a wrathful God who condemns, yet [in John 3:16-18] the Bible puts condemnation in proximity to the most famous verse on love. . . . Indeed, the Bible tells us that in God, not only are [his love and anger] not in tension, but they are meaningless apart […]
“But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says, ‘Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly what it was before.’ But excusing says, ‘I see that you couldn’t help or […]
“There is nothing more astonishing than to realize that even the prophets called by God to tell Israel about their sin and the coming judgment could not avoid speaking in the most moving way about God’s grace and mercy. The message of the prophets, then, is that no amount of human evil and recalcitrance can […]
“Let us wonder! / Grace and justice / Join and point to mercy’s store. / When in grace through Christ our trust is, / Justice smiles and asks no more.”- John Newton “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice […]
“If you say, ‘I must stop doing this thing, because it will get me into trouble,’ then you are not really sorry for the sin itself but for the consequences or results of the sin. You are not sorry because it grieved God but because it grieved you or others. This means that as soon […]
“God is not merely sad nor merely angry — because he is not merely holy nor merely loving. He is angry over the offense and violation of sin but mourning over its effects over what it is doing to the creation and the human race he loves. It is important for our purposes to see […]
“There are frameworks of thought within which forgiveness can find no home. Forgiveness entered the world along with the recognition of divine and human worth . . . of rights. of duty, of guilt. It cannot occur when those are not recognized.”- Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice in Love “[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. […]