{"id":613,"date":"2008-09-11T23:39:31","date_gmt":"2008-09-12T03:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/2008\/09\/11\/forgiveness-mirrors-god\/"},"modified":"2008-09-11T23:39:31","modified_gmt":"2008-09-12T03:39:31","slug":"forgiveness-mirrors-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=613","title":{"rendered":"Forgiveness Mirrors God."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yet even when offenders are unrepentant, we can and should forgive.\u00c2\u00a0 There are better ways to protect ourselves than the refusal to forgive.\u00c2\u00a0 And when it comes to reminding offenders that they&#8217;ve committed the offense, we do that precisely by forgiving.\u00c2\u00a0 Recall that to forgive is to blame.\u00c2\u00a0 We <em>do <\/em>condemn when we forgive.\u00c2\u00a0 We do it gently and lovingly, but we still do it.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no question that it is more difficult to forgive when offenders refuse to repent.\u00c2\u00a0 Their lack of repentance is, in a sense, a continuation of their offense in a different form.\u00c2\u00a0 But the forgiveness is unconditional&#8230;.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s predicated on nothing perpetrators do or fail to do.\u00c2\u00a0 Forgiveness is not a reaction to something else.\u00c2\u00a0 It is the beginning of something new&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Forgiving the unrepentant is not an optional extra in the Christian way of life; it&#8217;s the heart of the thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 Because God is such a forgiver and Christ forgave in such a way.\u00c2\u00a0 And you know what?\u00c2\u00a0 We also bear the burden of forgiveness because when we are forgivers we are restored to our full human splendor.\u00c2\u00a0 We were created to mirror God.\u00c2\u00a0 Anything less is really Judas&#8217; kiss on our own cheek, a betrayal of ourselves by ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Miroslav Volf, <em>Free of Charge, <\/em>p. 208-209<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yet even when offenders are unrepentant, we can and should forgive.\u00c2\u00a0 There are better ways to protect ourselves than the refusal to forgive.\u00c2\u00a0 And when it comes to reminding offenders that they&#8217;ve committed the offense, we do that precisely by forgiving.\u00c2\u00a0 Recall that to forgive is to blame.\u00c2\u00a0 We do condemn when we forgive.\u00c2\u00a0 We [&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-613","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\/613","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=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}