Forgive Quotes

“Forgiveness, then, is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving, rather than retaliating, you make a choice to bear the cost.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“Forgiveness is often (or perhaps usually) granted before it’s felt inside. When you forgive somebody, you’re not saying, “All my anger is gone.” What you’re saying when you forgive is “I’m now going to treat you the way God treated me. I remember your sins no more.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.[13]”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“There is always a cost to wrongdoing and it must fall on someone. Either the wrongdoer bears it or someone else must. This is true even if the wrong is not something that can be measured financially. The cost may be in reputation or relationship or health or something else. To forgive is to deny oneself revenge (Romans 12:17–21), to absorb the cost, to not exact repayment by inflicting on them the things they did to you in order to “even the score.” Therefore forgiveness is always expensive to the forgiver, but the benefits—at the very least within your heart, and at best in the restoration of relationship and a witness to the power of the gospel—outweigh the cost.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

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― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“Our sin inclines us to behavior that regularly weakens and breaks relationships, but through the Spirit we are given the ability to realize—partially, never fully in this life—something of the beauty and joy of those future relationships through practices and disciplines of forgiveness and reconciliation now.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“We should be in the accused prisoner’s dock, but we put ourselves in the judge’s seat. But the Lord, who rightly sat in the universe’s judgment seat, came down, put himself in the dock, and went to the cross. The Judge of all the earth was judged. He was punished for us. He took the punishment we deserve. This humbles us out of our bitterness because we know we are also sinners living only by sheer mercy. But it also exalts us out of our bitterness because we can say: “I’ve been justified and adopted in Jesus Christ. You’ve harmed me and I will confront you about it, but you can’t take away my real goods, my deepest joys.” Then you can forgive.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“Patience is the ability to bear suffering rather than give in to it. To forgive someone’s debt to you is to absorb the debt yourself. If a friend borrows your car, totals it through reckless driving, and hasn’t any ability to remunerate you financially, you may say, “I forgive you,” but the price of the wrong does not evaporate into the air. You either find the money to buy a new car or you go without one. Either way, forgiveness means the cost of the wrong moves from the perpetrator to you, and you bear it. Forgiveness, then, is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving, rather than retaliating, you make a choice to bear the cost.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“What all these secular models lack is the transformed motivation that the vertical dimension brings. The experience of divine forgiveness brings profound healing. It is grounded in a faith-sight of Jesus’s costly sacrifice for our forgiveness. That reminds us that we are sinners in need of mercy like everyone else, yet it also fills the cup of our hearts with his love and affirmation. This makes it possible for us to forgive the perpetrator and then go speak to him or her, seeking justice and reconciliation if possible. Now, however, we do not do it for our sake—but for justice’s sake, for God’s sake, for the perpetrator’s sake, and for future victims’ sake. The motivation is radically changed.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“What is it that enables us to forgive others so radically by giving us the inner resources of supernatural humility, confidence, love, and joy? It is the atoning death of Christ on the cross.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“How long beneath the Law I lay In bondage and distress; I toiled the precept to obey, But toiled without success. Then all my servile works were done A righteousness to raise; Now, freely chosen in the Son, I freely choose His ways. To see the law by Christ fulfilled And hear His pardoning voice, Changes a slave into a child, And duty into choice.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“But Jesus, as it were, is saying: “Look around you at all these people—they can all walk. Are their hearts all filled with contentment? Are they all happy? If I only heal you, you will be overjoyed for a while, but then you will become like everyone else.” No. What the man needed was forgiveness. Forgiveness gets down to the bottom of things—to the alienation we feel from God and from ourselves because of our wrongdoing. Jesus was saying: “I want to show you that the deepest need of your nature is for me. Only I can bestow perfect love, new identity, endless comfort”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“The human need for forgiveness appears to be indelible. It won’t go away by denouncing it or trying to deconstruct it. The need I’m referring to is both a profound need to grant forgiveness and to receive forgiveness.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“Our cultural problem with forgiveness is not confined to matters of race. The #MeToo movement also struggles with the call to forgive. Many women ask: Doesn’t forgiving perpetrators only encourage abuse? The social media world also seems to be a realm in which missteps and wrongful posts are never forgiven.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?

“Our cultural problem with forgiveness is not confined to matters of race.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?