Category: God

We are so familiar with the Parable of the Prodigal Son that we forget part of the message, and that is the response of the elder brother.  As I read and reread Scripture it seems evident that God is far more loving than we are, and for more forgiving.  We do not want God to forgive our enemies, but Scripture teaches us that all God wants is for us to repent, to say, “I’m sorry, Father.  Forgive me,” as the Prodigal Son does when he comes to himself and recognizes the extent of his folly and wrongdoing.  And the father rejoices in his return.

Then there’s the elder brother.  We don’t like to recognize ourselves in the elder brother who goes off and sulks because the father, so delighted at the return of the younger brother, prepares a great feast.  Punishment?  A party!  Because the younger brother has learned the lesson he has, in a sense, already punished himself.  But, like the elder brother, we’re apt to think the father much too lenient.

— Madeleine L’Engle, And It Was Good, quoted by Carole F. Chase in Glimpses of Grace, p. 144-145

There are no unforgivable people.

Should we forgive even those who refuse to repent?  Consider once again God’s forgiveness, which serves as a model for ours.  There are people who think that in relation to God, repentance comes before forgiveness.  But that can’t be right.  God doesn’t angrily refuse forgiveness until we show ourselves worthy of it by repentance.  Instead, God loves us and forgives us before we repent.  Indeed, before we even sinned, Jesus Christ died for our sins.  God’s forgiveness is not reactive — dependent on our repentance.  It’s original, preceded and conditioned by absolutely nothing on our part.  We can do nothing to become worthy of it for the same reason we can do nothing to earn any of God’s gifts.  Before we do anything, before we even exist, God’s giving and God’s forgiving are already there, free of charge.  God doesn’t give and forgive conditionally.  God’s giving and forgiving are as unconditional as the sun’s rays and as indiscriminate as raindrops.  One died for all.  Absolutely no one is excluded.

Why should we forgive unconditionally and indiscriminately?  We don’t do it simply because a law demands we do so.  We forgive because God has already forgiven.  For us to hold any offender captive to sin by refusing to forgive is to reject the reality of God’s forgiving grace.  Because Christ died for all, we are called to forgive everyone who offends us, without distinctions and without conditions.  That hard work of indiscriminate forgiveness is what those who’ve been made in the likeness of the forgiving God should do.  And . . . that hard work of forgiveness is what those who’ve “put on Christ” are able to do.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 179-180

The scandalousness of God’s indiscriminate forgiveness hits us even harder when we are called on to imitate it.  When we need to forgive, most of us, perhaps unconsciously, feel entitled to draw a circle around the scope of forgiveness.  We should forgive some, maybe even most, wrongdoings, but certainly not all.

Maybe we think unintentional offenses are forgivable, and deliberate ones are not.  But how would we draw the line?  How intentional would the offense need to be?  If the offense were truly unintentional, there would be something to be sorry about but nothing to forgive; it was just an accident.  Or maybe we think small offenses are forgivable, and horrendous ones are not.  But again, where would we draw the line?  An offense is an offense and has as much right to be forgiven as any other, which is no right at all.  No line separates offenses that should be forgiven from those that should not.  There are no unforgivable sins.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 178-179