{"id":588,"date":"2008-08-12T22:07:21","date_gmt":"2008-08-13T02:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/2008\/08\/12\/forgiving-the-unrepentant\/"},"modified":"2008-08-12T22:07:21","modified_gmt":"2008-08-13T02:07:21","slug":"forgiving-the-unrepentant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=588","title":{"rendered":"Forgiving the Unrepentant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is possible to close ourselves to grace, both human and divine.\u00c2\u00a0 But only grace can pry open the door that has been shut in its face.\u00c2\u00a0 So God continues to give to the ungrateful and to forgive the unrepentant.\u00c2\u00a0 Christ stands before the closed door of a grace-resistant heart and knocks gently with a nail-pierced hand.<\/p>\n<p>So should we.\u00c2\u00a0 When things go well, gifts engender gifts, and forgiveness gives birth to forgiveness.\u00c2\u00a0 That&#8217;s the power of giving and forgiving.\u00c2\u00a0 When things go ill, gifts fall on hard soil, and forgiveness remains barren.\u00c2\u00a0 That&#8217;s the impotence of givers and forgivers, for they can only &#8220;knock at the door&#8221; by giving and forgiving.\u00c2\u00a0 And then they must wait . . . and knock again and wait &#8212; trusting that the Spirit of the resurrected Christ will make the seed of their forgiveness bear fruit.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Miroslav Volf, <em>Free of Charge, <\/em>p. 205<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is possible to close ourselves to grace, both human and divine.\u00c2\u00a0 But only grace can pry open the door that has been shut in its face.\u00c2\u00a0 So God continues to give to the ungrateful and to forgive the unrepentant.\u00c2\u00a0 Christ stands before the closed door of a grace-resistant heart and knocks gently with a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forgiveness","category-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","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=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}