What greater gift could Christians give to the world than the forming of a culture that upholds grace and forgiveness?

Does the Christian emphasis on love, grace, and forgiveness have any relevance outside quarreling families or church encounter groups? In a world where force matters most, a lofty ideal like forgiveness may seem as insubstantial as vapor.

Like grace, forgiveness has about it the maddening quality of being undeserved, unmerited, unfair.

Why God asks us to forgive: because that is what God is like.

Caught up in righteous—and wholly appropriate—revulsion over Serbian atrocities, the world overlooks one fact: the Serbs are simply following the terrible logic of unforgiveness.

Breaking the cycle of ungrace means taking the initiative. Instead of waiting for his neighbor to make the first move

Forgiveness may be unfair—it is, by definition—but at least it provides a way to halt the juggernaut of retribution.

Forgiveness is an act of faith.

By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness for God to work out.

Though wrong does not disappear when I forgive, it loses its grip on me and is taken over by God, who knows what to do. Such a decision involves risk, of course: the risk that God may not deal with the person as I would want.

I have marveled at, and sometimes openly questioned, the self-restraint God has shown throughout history, allowing the Genghis Khans and the Hitlers and the Stalins to have their way. But nothing - nothing - compares to the self-restraint shown that dark Friday in Jerusalem.

the Gospels make clear the connection: God forgives my debts as I forgive my debtors. The reverse is also true: Only by living in the stream of God's grace will I find the strength to respond with grace toward others.