forgiveness

David Augsburger in The Freedom of Forgiveness:

Authentic forgiveness is the mutual recognition that repentance is genuine and right relationships are achieved. Forgiving requires the grace to accept the other as an equal partner in the search for reconciliation and the genuineness to give repentance or to respond to another’s repentance with full trust and respect. Grace and truth, acceptance and confrontation, sacrifice and prophetic rebuke are needed in resolving alienation, injustice, or interpersonal injuries.

In forgiveness we go to the sister; we seek out the brother; we rediscover each other. That is the goal of forgiveness. It was God’s way with us, it must be our way with each other. We are to forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven us.

Forgiveness is not finally complete until the severed friendship is mended. And the new weld of forgiveness should afterward result in a deeper, stronger union than existed before!

The final step in forgiving is to do something to heal the wound until nothing remains but the forgotten scar. Forgiveness is acceptance with no exception. It accepts not only the hurt you’ve received, it accepts the one who did the hurting, and it accepts the loss caused by the hurtful actions or words. Seven times a day. In fact, seventy times seven.”

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