{"id":537,"date":"2008-06-19T22:03:39","date_gmt":"2008-06-20T02:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/2008\/06\/19\/forgiveness-and-repentance\/"},"modified":"2008-06-19T22:03:39","modified_gmt":"2008-06-20T02:03:39","slug":"forgiveness-and-repentance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=537","title":{"rendered":"Forgiveness and Repentance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Repentance is important, even indispensable, and it is indispensable because forgiveness is an event between <\/em>people, not just an individual’s change of feelings, attitudes, or actions.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of being a condition <\/em>of forgiveness, however, repentance is its necessary consequence.<\/em><\/p>\n

If they imitate the forgiving God, forgivers will keep forgiving, whether the offenders repent or not.\u00c2\u00a0 Forgivers’ forgiving is not conditioned by repentance.\u00c2\u00a0 The offenders’ being forgiven, <\/em>however, is conditioned by repentance — just as being given a box of chocolate is conditioned by receiving that box of chocolate.\u00c2\u00a0 Without repentance, the forgivers will keep forgiving but the offenders will remain unforgiven, in that they are untouched by that forgiveness.<\/p>\n

Why?\u00c2\u00a0 Because they refuse <\/em>to be forgiven. . . .\u00c2\u00a0 Unrepentant offenders implicitly say:\u00c2\u00a0 It’s wrong for you to forgive me; I’ve done you no wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Or more brazenly, they say:\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t care if you forgive or not, because I don’t care whether I’ve wronged you or not.\u00c2\u00a0 Mostly, however, they say:\u00c2\u00a0 I am too ashamed of the wrongdoing I’ve committed to repent, too afraid of the consequences that may befall me.\u00c2\u00a0 In all three cases, forgiveness is rejected. . . .<\/p>\n

That it is difficult to repent genuinely will not come as a surprise to those who have pondered the gravity and power of human sin.\u00c2\u00a0 One of sin’s most notable features is that it unfailingly refuses to acknowledge itself as sin.\u00c2\u00a0 We usually not only refuse to admit the wrongdoing and to accept guilt, but seem neither to detest the sin committed nor feel very sorry about it.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, we hide our sin behind multiple walls of denial, cover-up, mitigating explanations, and claims to comparative innocence.<\/p>\n

The accusations of others reinforce our propensity to hide sin.\u00c2\u00a0 We usually do all we can to justify ourselves, and that reaction is understandable.\u00c2\u00a0 We fear the consequences of sin.\u00c2\u00a0 We may lose a good reputation or be punished.\u00c2\u00a0 We cannot bear to face ourselves as wrongdoers.\u00c2\u00a0 We fear that the integrity of our very selves might crumble under the weight of our offense.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why we are often able to repent only when we are assured that our guilt will be lifted and charges will not be pressed against us.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, we are able to genuinely repent only when forgiveness has first been extended to us. . . .<\/p>\n

Forgiveness does not cause <\/em>repentance, but it does help make repentance possible.<\/p>\n

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, <\/em>p. 183-186<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Repentance is important, even indispensable, and it is indispensable because forgiveness is an event between people, not just an individual’s change of feelings, attitudes, or actions.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of being a condition of forgiveness, however, repentance is its necessary consequence. If they imitate the forgiving God, forgivers will keep forgiving, whether the offenders repent or not.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forgiveness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}