About Forgiveness, not Punishment

Atonement, Forgiveness, God, Jesus 0

The cross is not what God inflicts in order to forgive; the cross is what God in Christ endures as he forgives. This is an essential and enormous clarification! At the cross the Son does not act as an agent of change upon the Father. Orthodox theology has always insisted that God is not subject to change or mutation. Rather, God is immutable. Thus the cross is not where Jesus changes God but where Jesus reveals God. On Good Friday Jesus does not save us from God; Jesus reveals God as Savior! We don’t have to imagine the Son pacifying an angry Father in order to understand Good Friday as the epicenter of forgiveness.

— Brian Zahnd, The Wood Between the Worlds, p. 16

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 20, 2025

The Immensity of God’s Grace

Forgiveness, God, Grace, Universalism 0

What sin could be more damnable than the murder of God’s only begotten Son? What crimes could compare to crying out for his death, driving the nails into his wrists, mocking his pain, and then abandoning him to his cross? Yet at that very moment, with his last few breaths, Christ proclaimed their forgiveness — even as they were still murdering him.

Why hasn’t this become the lens by which we interpret everything the Bible has to say about the afterlife rather than pagan myths that we don’t even understand? Why doesn’t the immensity of God’s grace capture our imaginations in the same way as eternal divine vengeance? Why do we work so hard to defend the idea that in order for the gospel to be “good news” for us, it must be a curse for others?

— Derek Ryan Kubilus, Holy Hell, p. 45

Photo: Bull Run Regional Park, Virginia, March 29, 2024

Why Limit God?

Forgiveness, God, Grace, Redemption, Universalism 0

But does the defeat of sin within the person take place only in the temporal realm, within time itself, while we live in this body? Why should it? If we are beings who live on after death, like the Bible seems to say, what makes us think that God limits the bestowing of eternal grace to one time period? Why can’t God extend the offer of grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation through Jesus even at judgment — when all will be laid bare, when all persons will see the extent of their sin and the extravagance of God’s love? If the effectiveness of Jesus’ work on our behalf extends even beyond the grave, that means that no one is ever beyond grace.

— Sharon L. Baker, Razing Hell, p. 107

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, August 5, 2023

For Ourselves

Forgiveness 0

Forgiveness isn’t something we do for the person who’s hurt us. It’s something we do for ourselves, so we’re no longer victims or prisoners of the past, so we can stop carrying a burden that harbors nothing but pain.

— Edith Eger, The Gift, p. 177

Photo: Donnersberg, Germany, November 8, 2003.

People Who Love Poorly

Forgiveness, Love 0

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.

— Henri Nouwen, You Are the Beloved, p. 264

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, August 30, 2021

Again and Again

Compassion, Forgiveness, God, Love 0

This morning I meditated on God’s eagerness to forgive me, revealed in these words: “As far as the East is from the West, so far does God remove my sin” (Psalm 103:12). In the midst of all my distractions, I was touched by God’s desire to forgive me again and again. If I return to God with a repentant heart after I have sinned, God is always there to embrace me and let me start afresh. “The Lord is full of compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy.”

It is hard for me to forgive someone who has really offended me, especially when it happens more than once. I begin to doubt the sincerity of the one who asks forgiveness for a second, third, or fourth time. But God does not keep count. God just waits for our return, without resentment or desire for revenge. God wants us home. “The love of the Lord is everlasting.”

— Henri J. M. Nouwen, You Are Beloved, p. 87

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 19, 2021

Outdoing Sin With Love

Compassion, Forgiveness, God, Jesus, Love, Universalism 0

The church was meant to be an alternative society in the grip of an altogether different story line. Restorative justice is used in new Zealand as the primary juvenile justice model, and the Catholic bishops of New Zealand have put out very good statements on it. We see this alternative model of justice acted out in scripture — famously in Jesus’s story of the Return of the Prodigal (Luke 15:11ff.), but almost always in the prophets (if we can first endure their tirades). God’s justice makes things right at their very core, and divine love does not achieve its ends by mere punishment or retribution.

Consider Habbakuk, whose short book develops with vivid messages of judgment only to pivot at the very end to his “Great Nevertheless!” For three chapters, Habbakuk reams out the Jewish people, then at the close has God say in effect, “But I will love you even more until you come back to me!” We see the same in Ezekiel’s story of the dry bones (Chapter 16) and in Jeremiah’s key notion of the “new covenant” (Chapter 31:31ff.). God always outdoes the Israelites’ sin by loving them even more! This is God’s restorative justice.

— Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 184

Photo: Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness, Scotland, July 11, 2003

Casting Out Fear

Forgiveness, God, Jesus, Life, Redemption 0

I lived this story for years. I preached it. I fully bought into this narrative of an angry God needing to be placated. I understand the reason it works and the crushing effect it has on us when we embrace it, and I know how disorienting it is to be compelled to cling to a loving Creator while simultaneously being taught to be terrified of what that Creator wants to do to you if you don’t cling correctly. It hasn’t happened in an instant, and I can’t quite say how I got here, but I am simply living in a different story now. I still have God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit — but I don’t have fear anymore the way I used to. That isn’t to say that I don’t have “the fear of the Lord” that the Bible speaks of, that awe and wonder that recognizes my smallness and God’s indescribable scale and beauty. In fact, my view of God is as expansive and reverent and breathtaking as it’s ever been. It just isn’t defined by the rigid Christian narrative of my childhood that says I am an enemy of God at birth.

If God is God, then God is intimately aware of the path you’re on. God sees your striving, your desire to know, your efforts to love better, and so even when these things take you from tradition or orthodoxy or surety, there can be peace there and trust that God is present. Looking at the long, meandering road you’ve been on, how can you possibly define some precise pass-fail in all of that? If you feel the table of your hospitality expanding, if you feel the container you had for God being shattered, if you yourself are being drawn to something deeper than the religion of your past, that is the pull of God. It is the extravagant, barrier-breaking, tradition-transcending heart of Jesus that is demanding to be yielded to. To the gatekeepers and the finger pointers, this surrender to God will look like rebellion. They will demand guilt for the conclusions you’ve come to and repentance from the path you’re on. you will need to be steadfast and rest in the love that casts out all fear. They will snicker and condemn and dismiss. They will name this heresy. They will call this a mutiny. To you, it is a progression.

— John Pavlovitz, A Bigger Table, p. 166-167

Photo: Sunrise, South Riding, Virginia, March 16, 2015