Quotes about Forgiveness

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.—ROMANS 12:18

IF IT IS POSSIBLE, AS FAR AS IT DEPENDS ON YOU, LIVE AT PEACE WITH EVERYONE. Most people prefer to live peacefully with others, but when there are conflicts, many wait for the other person to make the first move. Problems inevitably arise when both parties wait for the other to take the first step.

Community is like peace in that it is a result instead of an action. Peace results from acts of justice and behaviors of love. Community also emerges out of loving behaviors—like compassion and an embrace and forgiveness — and out of acts of justice.

Jesus is teaching a kingdom perspective on how to deal with those who have sinned against us. Since the kingdom is a world of reconciliation, kingdom people are to forgive.

He's staring into the face of fellow Israelites who don't know the grace of enemy love and who want to appeal too quickly to the lex talionis or who want to become judges like God (7:1—5; cf. Jas 4:11—12). Moreover, that same audience needed to hear that forgiveness is the way kingdom living works. Those who genuinely love others forgive. Those who don't are not kingdom people.

Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us (leading us to faith and worship), we have to see it as something done by us (leading us to repentance)." And: "As we face the cross, then, we can say to ourselves both 'I did it, my sins sent him there' and 'he did it, his love took him there.

when we peer into our own hearts, we will have sufficient cause — even laughably ridiculous cause — to see our own sin and be humbled before God. That will lead us to an other-awareness that our fellow disciples and humans are like us, sinners in need of mercy, grace, forgiveness, and patience. This reversal of the proclivity to be gods creates on our part a tenderness in our perception of the sins of others.

Forgiveness is difficult at the personal and pastoral level, and the twofold reason is because Jesus was so forceful about its necessity for his followers and we find forgiveness so demanding and difficult.

Instead of striking back, which would be both justifiable and equal retribution and a part of Moses' "no mercy" law, Jesus creates an almost laughable scene of grace: "turn to them the other cheek also." This is how Jesus did respond (Matt 26:67).

But their peace will never be greater than when they encounter evil people in peace and are willing to suffer from them."48

No, his repentance parts the water so that our (weak) repentance can stand up in that water.

To love enemies breaks through the self barrier into divine space.