Quotes About Forgiveness

God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts.

Nothing in the Christian life is more important than forgiveness-our forgiveness of others and God's forgiveness of us.

For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them.

Forgive yourself. The supreme act of forgiveness is when you can forgive yourself for all the wounds you've created in your own life. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. When you forgive yourself, self-acceptance begins and self-love grows.

Politics deals with externals: borders, wealth, crimes. Authentic forgiveness deals with the evil in a persons heart, something for which politics has no cure. Virulent evil (racism, ethnic hatred) spreads through society like an airborne disease, one cough infects a whole busload. When moments of grace do occur, the world must pause, fall silent, and acknowledge that indeed forgiveness offers a kind of cure. There will be no escape from wars, from hunger, from misery, from rancid discrimination, from denial of human rights, if our hearts aren't changed.

The rich...should beg the poor to forgive us for the bread we bring them. Healthy people sometimes feel they need to beg forgiveness too, although there is no reason why. Maybe we simply ask forgiveness for not being born where these poor women have been born, knowing that if we lived here too, our fate might well have been the same.

I will be asking for forgiveness, but hopefully I won't have to be asking for much forgiveness.

Finding a way to extend forgiveness to ourselves is one of our most essential tasks. Just as others have been caught in suffering, so have we. If we look honestly at our life, we can see the sorrows and pain that have led to our own wrongdoing. In this we can finally extend forgiveness to ourselves; we can hold the pain we have caused in compassion. Without such mercy, we will live our own life in exile.

There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world,--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blowpipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his fault into him; and when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then--they forgive him.

Forgiveness means accepting what is or what has been and becoming willing to see it differently. You cannot un-hear what you have heard or un-see what you have seen. What you can do is stop believing that what occurred has somehow left you broken, damaged and wounded. While forgiveness ain’t easy, it’s the most important inner work you can do within your mind and heart.

Christ had no interest in gathering vast crowds of professed adherents who would melt away as soon as they found out what following Him actually demanded of them. In our own presentation of Christ's gospel, therefore, we need to lay a similar stress on the cost of following Christ and make sinners face it soberly before we urge them to respond to the message of free forgiveness. In common honesty, we must not conceal the fact that free forgiveness in one sense will cost everything.

Forgiveness - this needs to be our greatest skill. The way to get good at forgiveness is: to be thankful for all the little things you see in the other person.

Forgiveness doesn't sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.

Don't we all deserve forgiveness? I hope we do; I believe we do. Forgiveness says as much about the character of the person bestowing it as the person receiving it. Learning to forgive may be the most difficult of human acts,and the closest thing to divinity, whatever you decide that is.

This is something I think that blues music, or folk music, and all those particular genres that have a perspective about life deal with - where the difficulties of life are seen as something that are very natural and nothing to be embarrassed about, and something that we all go through; something that's part of our share of humanity. And it accepts those difficulties and pain as such. I think there's a wonderful forgiveness that can come over you, if you have that perspective on it.

Forgiveness is discovering that what you thought happened, didn’t.

God is forgiving or we would not still be walking this world. But to be moral is not to need his divine forgiveness, I think.

Forgiveness is something that we are often asked to grant and very few of us ever have the roadmap of how to get from the pain that we have experienced to being able to forgive someone.

No pain will last forever. It is not easy, but life was never meant to be either easy or fair. Repentance and the lasting hope that forgiveness brings will always be worth the effort.

Friendship flourishes at the fountain of forgiveness.

A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve.

We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.

The assurance of Heaven is never given to the person. And that's why at the core of the Christian faith is the grace of God. If there's one word I would grab from all of that, it's forgiveness - that you can be forgiven. I can be forgiven, and it is of the grace of God. But once you understand that, I think the ramifications are worldwide.

Time, and the grand gesture of forgiveness, helps to heal old wounds.

Instead of jumping at the chance to be offended, choose to be amused. Rather than filling your thoughts with resentment, fill your heart with forgiveness.

To begin loving people today, we must close the door on the past. And that cannot happen without forgiveness! Forgive those who have hurt you - for your sake, not because they deserve it.

You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.

It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

Twenty-nine years ago, I came to faith in Christ after a gentleman from the Gideon's International gave me a free copy of the New Testament Bible. I started in Matthew and read all the way to Ephesians 2 when it finally clicked for me. After reading about salvation by grace through faith, I cried out to Jesus for his forgiveness and surrendered my whole life to Him. At that moment, I became a new person.

You cant legislate into existence an act of forgiveness and a true confession; those are mysteries of the human heart, and they occur between one individual and another individual, not a panel of judges sitting asking questions, trying to test your truth.

It is vain for you to expect, it is impudent for you to ask of God forgiveness on your own behalf, if you refuse to exercise this forgiving temper with respect to others.

Forgiveness is an embrace, across all barriers, against all odds, in defiance of all that is mean and petty and vindictive and cruel in this life.

I think we have such a crown jewel in the forgiveness of God, and it changes people's lives.

I do not bring forgiveness with me, nor forgetfulness. The only ones who can forgive are dead; the living have no right to forget.

True forgiveness is a self-healing process which starts with you and gradually extends to everyone else.

Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. That's why I forgive Reince Priebus, that little Greek rascal.

Forgiving presupposes remembering. And it creates a forgetting not in the natural way we forget yesterday's weather, but in the way of the great "in spite of" that says: I forget although I remember. Without this kind of forgetting no human relationship can endure healthily. I don't refer to a solemn act of asking for and offering forgiveness. Such rituals as sometimes occur between parents and children, or friends, or man and wife, are often acts of moral arrogance on the one part and enforced humiliation on the other. But I speak of the lasting willingness to accept him who has hurt us.

This all-pervading divine power of love is the ocean of knowledge, is the ocean of bliss and compassion, but above all it is the ocean of forgiveness.

The soul force we need in America today, more than any other, is the spirit of atonement. We need to humble ourselves before God and ask forgiveness for the things we have done wrong. We need to ask God to forgive us for our arrogance.

Forgiveness is beautiful and it feels good when someone gives that gift to you. But it's one thing for someone you wronged to forgive you. It was another to forgive yourself.

I am a firm believer in living as if there were no such thing as a secret. If we hide our sins and live in darkness, we will never get the healing we so desperately need; in fact, if it is hidden so well that we don't even recognize it, we may never even find forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not between me and the one who has hurt me; it is between me and the Lord.

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.

You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible.

There is unspeakable joy... for the person who knows release from guilt and the relief of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not substitute for justice.

When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge.

If Jesus forgave those who nailed Him to the cross, and if God forgives you and me, how can you withhold your forgiveness from someone else?