we forgive those who trespass

We are forgiven, that we may be like Him who forgives us.

When dealing with overly critical people, try to see past the arrows to the struggles that launched them.

Sometimes we must try to view the actions of those around us with forgiveness. We must realize that they are going on the only road they can see.

Politics deals with externals: borders, wealth, crimes. Authentic forgiveness deals with the evil in a person's heart, something for which politics has no cure.

by denying forgiveness to others, we are in effect determining them unworthy of God's forgiveness, and thus so are we.

two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God's unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people. . . . We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that's not the way we live. The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions.

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.

Paul Tillich once defined forgiveness as remembering the past in order that it might be forgotten—a principle that applies to nations as well as individuals.

Paul Tillich once defined forgiveness as remembering the past in order that it might be forgotten

Legalism lowers, rather than raises, God's standards. Loving your neighbor as yourself, caring for the poor, bringing about justice, forgiving enemies—none of these reduces to a set of rules. Indeed, any list of rules narrows the breadth of what God wants done in the world. It moves the emphasis away from dispensing God's grace to sinners toward a pointless competition with pseudo-saints. It makes faith petty and irrelevant, not something that urgently matters.

forgiveness must be taught and practiced, as one would practice any difficult craft.