INSPIRING FORGIVENESS QUOTES

What if thou hadst committed the sins of a thousand? What if thou hadst committed the sins of a million worlds? Christ's righteousness will cover, Christ's blood will cleanse thee from the guilt of all.

George Whitefield

I had the choice to either grow up and find God in the situation or become bitter. I chose to find God. And I experienced freedom like I never knew before.

Heather Mercer - Christian Aid Worker who was imprisoned in Afghanistan, 2001.

The true Christian is like sandalwood, which imparts its fragrance to the axe which cuts it, without doing any harm in return.

Sadhu Sundar Singh

We cannot be right with God when we are wrong with others.

Lehman Strauss

If a man wants God to hear his prayer quickly, then before he prays for anything else, even his own soul, when he stands and stretches out his hands toward God, he must pray with all his heart for his enemies. Through this action God will hear everything that he asks.

Abba Zeno

Forgiveness doesn't make the other person right, it makes you free.

Stormie Omartian

Do not desire crosses, unless you have borne well those laid on you; it is an abuse to long after martyrdom while unable to bear an insult patiently.

Francis de Sales

There are often bound to us, in the closest intimacy of social or family ties, natures hard and ungenial, with whom sympathy is impossible, and whose daily presence necessitates a constant conflict with an adverse influence. There are, too, enemies, - open or secret, - whose enmity we may feel yet cannot define. Our Lord, going before us in this hard way, showed us how we should walk. It will be appropriate to the solemn self-examination of the period of Lent to ask ourselves, Is there any false friend or covert enemy whom we must learn to tolerate, to forbear with, to pity and forgive? Can we in silent offices of love wash their (our enemies) feet as our master washed the feet of Judas? And, if we have no real enemies, are there any bound to us in the relations of life whose habits and ways are annoying and distasteful to us? Can we bear with them in love? Can we avoid harsh judgments, and harsh speech, and the making known to others our annoyance? The examination will probably teach us to feel the infinite distance between us and our divine Ideal, and change censoriousness of others into prayer for ourselves.

Jean Ingelow

It may be natural to seek revenge, but the Sandfords demonstrate how God can provide you with supernatural grace to forgive and be forgiven! Discussing this antidote to sin and its healing effect on damaged relationships, they share biblical insights on this pivotal characteristic---and its necessity for the spiritual growth of believers.

Heavenly Father: Teach us that love and forgiveness are essential bridges that span the chasms of resentment and bitterness. Also, teach us that feeling gratitude without expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it.

Anonymous

In the midst of forgiving comes a celebration: we see the beauty of people who quite often are considered marginal by society. With forgiveness and celebration, community [fellowship] becomes the place where we call forth the gifts of other people, lift them up, and say, "You are the beloved daughter and the beloved son."

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Forgiveness is the key which unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.

Corrie Ten Boom

If I find myself half-carelessly taking lapses for granted, "Oh, that's what they always do." "Oh, of course she talks like that, he acts like that," then I know nothing of Calvary love.

Amy Carmichael

Forgiveness is our command. Judgement is not.

Neil Strait

What then? Some one will say. We have been beguiled and are lost. Is there no salvation left? We have fallen: Is it not possible to rise again? We have been blinded: May we not recover our sight? We have become crippled: Can we never walk upright? In a word, we are dead: May we not rise again? He that woke Lazarus who was four days dead and already stank, shall He not, O man, much more easily raise thee who art alive? He who shed his precious Blood for us, shall Himself deliver us from sin. Let us not despair of ourselves, brethren; let us not abandon ourselves to a hopeless condition. For it is a fearful thing not to believe in a hope of repentance.

Cyril

But forgiveness is not an emotion... Forgiveness is an act of will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

Corrie Ten Boom

The rule is: we cannot really forgive ourselves unless we look at the failure in our past and call it by its right name.

Lewis B. Smedes

Forgiveness to letting go of a bell rope. If you have ever seen a country church with a bell in the steeple, you will remember that to get the bell ringing you have to tug awhile. Once it has begun to ring, you merely maintain the momentum. As long as you keep pulling, the bell keeps ringing. Forgiveness is letting go of the rope. It is just that simple. But when you do so, the bell keeps ringing. Momentum is still at work.However, if you keep your hands off the rope, the bell will begin to slow and eventually stop.

Corrie Ten Boom

Forgiveness is the well from which we draw the water to wash others' feet.

D. Siler

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the one that crushed it.

Anonymous

If we want other people to give us something that only God can give, we become a demon. We say, "Love me!" and before you know it we become violent and demanding and manipulative. It's so important that we keep forgiving one another - not once in a while, but every moment of life.

Henri J. M. Nouwen

To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son - how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it means to refuse God's mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.

Clive Staples Lewis

It is impossible for a man to be freed from the habit of sin before he hates it, just as it is impossible to receive forgiveness before confessing his trespasses...

Ignatius

Spoken forgiveness, no matter how heartfelt, works best when we do not demand the response we want. I mean that when we tell people we forgive them, we must leave them free to respond to our good news however they are inclined. If the response is not what we hoped for, we can go home and enjoy our own healing in private.

Lewis B. Smedes

We ought not to keep score of the number of times others have hurt us. God keeps records, and vengeance belongs to him.

Lehman Strauss

Forgiveness is God's invention for coming to terms with a world in which people are unfair to each other and hurt each other deeply. He began by forgiving us. And He invites us all to forgive each other.

Lewis B. Smedes

Assuredly there is but one way in which to achieve what is not merely difficult but utterly against human nature: to love those who hate us, to repay their evil deeds with benefits, to return blessings for reproaches. It is that we remember not to consider men's evil intention but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.

John Calvin

Forgiveness brings freedom - freedom from being controlled by the past, freedom from the emotional ties to the offender, freedom from the continual inner conflicts of bitterness and hate, freedom to become whole and enjoy the fullness of life.

Jeanette Vought

God forgave us without any merit on our part; therefore we must forgive others, whether or not we think they merit it.

Lehman Strauss

Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me.

Anonymous

Many people are afraid to forgive because they feel they must remember the wrong or they will not learn from it. The opposite is true. Through forgiveness, the wrong is released from its emotional stranglehold on us so that we can learn from it. Through the power and intelligence of the heart, the release of forgiveness brings expanded intelligence to work with the situation more effectively.

David McArthur

The most miserable prison in the world is the prison we make for ourselves when we refuse to show mercy. Our thoughts become shackled, our emotions are chained, the will is almost paralyzed. But when we show mercy, all of these bonds are broken, and we enter into a joyful liberty that frees us to share God's love with others.

Warren W. Wiersbe

We implore the mercy of God, not that He may leave us at peace in our vices, but that He may deliver us from them.

Blaise Pascal

God has cast our confessed sins into the depths of the sea, and He's even put a 'No Fishing' sign over the spot.

Dwight L. Moody

We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it.

Clive Staples Lewis

To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son - how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it means to refuse God's mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.

Clive Staples Lewis

Forgiveness is the only way to break the cycle of blame--and pain--in a relationship...It does not settle all questions of blame and justice and fairness...But it does allow relationships to start over. In that way, said Solzhenitsyn, we differ from all animals. It is not our capacity to think that makes us different, but our capacity to repent, and to forgive.

Philip Yancey

Unforgiveness is like a scratch on an old record. The song never goes on to the end, it keeps the beautiful music yet to be released unheard and all that resounds are the same old three or four chords again and again and again.

Katherine Walden

When you give up vengeance, make sure you are not giving up on justice. The line between the two is faint, unsteady, and fine...Vengeance is our own pleasure of seeing someone who hurt us getting it back and then some. Justice, on the other hand, is secure when someone pays a fair penalty for wronging another even if the injured person takes no pleasure in the transaction. Vengeance is personal satisfaction. Justice is moral accounting...Human forgiveness does not do away with human justice.

Lewis B. Smedes

Forgiveness is the oil of relationships.

Josh McDowell

Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note - torn in two and burned up, so that it can never be shown against one.

Henry Ward Beecher

I firmly believe a great many prayers are not answered because we are not willing to forgive someone.

Dwight L. Moody

Charles Williams has said of the Lord's Prayer, "No word in English carries a greater possibility of terror than the little word 'as' in that clause." What makes the 'as' so terrifying? The fact that Jesus plainly links our forgiven-ness by the Father with our forgiving-ness of fellow human beings. Jesus' next remark could not be more explicit: 'If you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.'

Philip Yancey

If I am content to heal a hurt slightly, saying "Peace, peace," where is no peace; if I forget the poignant word "Let love be without dissimulation" and blunt the edge of truth, speaking not right things but smooth things, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

Amy Carmichael

Those who say they will forgive but can't forget, simply bury the hatchet but leave the handle out for immediate use.

Dwight L Moody

If I cast up a confessed, repented, and forsaken sin against another, and allow my remembrance of that sin to colour my thinking and feed my suspicions, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

Amy Carmichael

Such phrases as "I forgive you," "I release you from retribution for your deeds," are very powerful. They are words of your power. A tremendously powerful image is that you are anointed as a peacemaker. You have the power to bring peace into your world. That is enormous power. No longer the victim, you have reclaimed your agency (and sometimes the life of the offender).

Anonymous

Our wickedness shall not overpower the unspeakable goodness and mercy of God; our dullness shall not overpower God's wisdom, nor our infirmity God's omnipotence.

John of Kronstadt

Love means to love that which is unlovable, or it is no virtue at all; forgiving means to pardon that which is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Ask for divine help in your struggle to forgive. The God of the Judeo-Christian tradition has an ancient reputation for compassion and mercy. Try praying FOR your enemy. Don't just ask for a change in that person's heart or behavior; really pray FOR him or her. You may find it hard to find words for such a prayer, but words are not necessary to the God who knows your mind and heart. Just stand before God with that person at your side, and let God's love wash over both of you until it penetrates your heart.

Carol Luebering

When we choose to forgive the victory is attainable. When bad things happen, good CAN come out of it! Romans 8:28 declares it is so! My life declares it is so and I am not alone in that statement. So many people have looked evil in the face and said, "I will find good in this." Some times the evil and bad things are changed or converted or whatever and sometimes it is US that is changed. But ALL things work for good and can bring about change for the good.

Elizabeth Fabiani

A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.

Robert Quillen

Poor souls are apt to think that all those whom they read or hear of to be gone to heaven, went there because they were so good and holy...Yet not one of them, not any one that is now in heaven (Jesus Christ alone excepted), did ever come there any other way but by forgiveness of sins.

John Owen

None of us wants to admit that we hate someone... When we deny our hate we detour around the crisis of forgiveness. We suppress our spite, make adjustments, and make believe we are too good to be hateful. But the truth is that we do not dare to risk admitting the hate we feel because we do not dare to risk forgiving the person we hate.

Lewis B. Smedes

The Christian communities in which we live play a vital role in the business of forgiveness. No matter what the Bible says, and no matter what the bishop pronounces, it is the community that forgives the sinner and receives him or her back into fellowship or 'retains the sin' and closes the door on the sinner. The gospel story of the raising of Lazarus has some application here (John 11:1-44). Jesus brought Lazarus back to life, but it was the community that was given the job of unbinding him. You may want to reflect on the life of the community in which you live. Is it a forgiving, reconciling community which will receive back the individual who has missed the mark? How could your community be more forgiving? More loving? More an instrument of reconciliation?

Bob Libby

If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist. But since our greatest need was forgiveness, God sent us a Saviour.

Roy Lessin

Love is an act of endless forgiveness.

Jean Vanier

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love... He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities." (Psalm 103:8, 10) Can you think of one person in your life who "deserves" whatever you could dish out? On the other hand, can you imagine if we got what we deserved? But instead, God sent His Son to save us. Thank heaven we got what we never could deserve.

Anonymous

I choose peace... I will live forgiven. I will forgive so that I may live.

Max Lucado

There is no thirst of the soul so consuming as the desire for pardon. The sense of its bestowal is the starting-point of all goodness. It comes bringing with it, if not the freshness of innocence, yet a glow of inspiration that nerves feeble hands for hard tasks, a fire of hope that lights anew the old high ideal, so that it stands before the eye in clear relief, beckoning its to make it out, own. To be able to look into God's face, and know with the knowledge of faith that there is nothing between the soul and Him, is to experience the fullest peace the soul can know. Whatever else pardon may be, it is above all things admission into full fellowship with God.

Charles H. Brent

Right now, this very second, this very moment that you spend reading these words is 'new'. How you choose to be a steward of that 'new slate' is up to you. My fervent prayer is that I never take for granted that gift of 'newness' and that I do all in his power granted to me to cherish the potential of 'all things new'. Relationships strained, mistakes made, I'll bring them to the cross so I can treasure the gift of newness he grants me every day. 1 Jn 1:9 NIV "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."

Katherine Walden

Perhaps you have been ensnared by a sinful habit that you will not abandon, and your guilt is so overwhelming you are ashamed to approach Christ. Whatever the reason for your broken intimacy with God, there is good news. Jesus waits to embrace you now in the arms of unconditional, divine love.

Charles Stanley

Everything you do in revenge against a brother who has harmed you will come back to your mind at the time of prayer.

Abba Nilus

To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

Clive Staples Lewis

A man who is wrathful with us is a sick man; we must apply a plaster to his heart - love; we must treat him kindly, speak to him gently, lovingly. And if there is not deeply-rooted malice against us within him, but only a temporary fit of anger, you will see how his heart, or his malice, will melt away through your kindness and love - how good will conquer evil. A Christian must always be kind, gracious, and wise in order to conquer evil by good.

John of Kronstadt

IF we see a speck in a brother's eye, we must first see if there is a log in our own eye; perhaps that speck in our brother's eye is only a reflection of the beam in our own.

David Watson

An elder was asked by a certain soldier if God would forgive a sinner. And he said to him: "Tell me, beloved, if your cloak is torn, will you throw it away?" The soldier replied: "No. I will mend it and put it back on." The elder said to him: "If you take care of your cloak, will God not be merciful to His own image?"

Anonymous

Who does not know what it is to rise up from a fault - perceived, confessed, and forgiven - with an almost joyous sense of new energy, strength, and will to persevere?

Sidney Lear

However many and however great and burdensome your sins may be, with God there is greater mercy. Just as His majesty is, so likewise is His mercy.

Tikhon

Gather up the stones flung at you with malice and build from them an altar of love to your Father in Heaven; fit them together with forgiveness and intercession for those who seek to hurt you.

Rick Cruz Torres

We can no longer harbor it [unforgiveness and hurt] for later use against the other person. We must surrender the wound or injustice that may have become a cherished, if bitter, possession. Letting go of this vengeful possession, we lose a painful advantage we have been savoring, but we regain the personal energy that has been dissipated as we nourished this hurt.

Evelyn Whitehead

The Risen Christ proclaimed not that we 'have to forgive,' but rather, that at last we CAN forgive--and thereby free ourselves from consuming bitterness and the offender from our binding condemnation. This process requires genuine human anger and grief, plus--and here is the awful cost of such freedom--a humble willingness to see the offender as God sees that person, in all his or her terrible brokenness and need for God's saving power. I would never tell another, 'You have to forgive.' But my uncomfortable duty as a Christian is to confess the truth, so lethal to our self centred human nature: 'Jesus, who suffered your sin unto his own death, calls you likewise to forgive, so that God's purposes may be accomplished in both you and your offender.

Gordon Dalbey

Do you think that every time you make a mistake, He is mad at you and won't talk to you...or that you must somehow make up for it?...Many Christians fail to experience real peace because they don't understand that they are righteous in Christ. Until people stop living according to the way they feel and stand on who they are in Christ, they will never find true happiness.

Joyce Meyer

Recognize that peace and forgiveness do not depend on feelings of piety but on Christ and on what He has done.

John White

Jesus embodies the rule of God in which no one is beyond God's forgiveness no matter who they are or what they have done. Endowed with the presence and power of God through by John in the Jordan, Jesus comes proclaiming that the rule of God supplants all others now. When the scribes and the Pharisees chide him for eating with the traitorous Jewish tax collectors, Jesus responds: 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.' The answer to my parishioner's burning question [about divine forgiveness] was, of course: No, you cannot be too bad to be forgiven. You can only be too good. [For example: Too self-righteous to be humble, compassionate, or receptive to God's spirit.]

Byron L. Rohrig

The obsession we sometimes have with our past sins is one of the worst afflictions of the soul, It turns us into victims of our own abuse. This obsession with the past condemns us to forced labor in a cemetery where we are repeatedly exhuming skeletons only to bury them and exhume them again.

Albert Haase

We all need love, but we need it most when we deserve it least--when we have sinned against someone, when we have made poor choices, when we have failed. In these situations, ordinary love must become extra-ordinary love.

Barbara Rosberg

A rattlesnake, if cornered, will sometimes become so angry it will bite itself. That is exactly what the harboring of hate and resentment against others is - a biting of oneself. We think that we are harming others in holding these spites and hates, but the deeper harm is to ourselves.

Eli E. Stanley

When you give up vengeance, make sure you are not giving up on justice. The line between the two is faint, unsteady, and fine...Vengeance is our own pleasure of seeing someone who hurt us getting it back and then some. Justice, on the other hand, is secure when someone pays a fair penalty for wronging another even if the injured person takes no pleasure in the transaction. Vengeance is personal satisfaction. Justice is moral accounting...Human forgiveness does not do away with human justice.

Lewis B. Smedes

Jesus embodies the rule of God in which no one is beyond God's forgiveness no matter who they are or what they have done. Endowed with the presence and power of God through by John in the Jordan, Jesus comes proclaiming that the rule of God supplants all others now. When the scribes and the Pharisees chide him for eating with the traitorous Jewish tax collectors, Jesus responds: 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.' The answer to my parishioner's burning question [about divine forgiveness] was, of course: No, you cannot be too bad to be forgiven. You can only be too good. [For example: Too self-righteous to be humble, compassionate, or receptive to God's spirit.]

Lewis B. Smedes

Scarcely any law of our Redeemer is more openly transgressed, or more industriously evaded, than that by which he commands his followers to forgive injuries.

Samuel Johnson

There is a false sense of self- protection in harboring an offense. It keeps you from seeing your own character flaws, because the blame is deferred to another.

John Bevere