Mostly Tired of Self?

"If you're a Christian mainly because you want to be changed, that's a problem. If you've given your life to God mostly because you are tired of yourself and want to be a different person—well, that may suggest you're merely using God to fix you. That's not faith. That's not love of God. That's love of self."

Mark Galli, 'Point of Crisis, Point of Grace' in Christianity Today, Jan 21, 2010.
Read in: Redemption by Mike Wilkerson, p79

"Just Stop It" Won't Do

"When you become entangled in habitual sins and addictions, "just stop it" just won't do. You may be able to exert your willpower for a short time, resisting urges to indulge your sinful desires. But trials and temptations always return to find you in a moment of weakness, often in the very moment of weakness where you have fallen to temptation hundreds or thousands of times before. To stand firm in that moment takes more than the chanting of Bible verses, more than willpower, more than disgust at the filthiness of the sin. For the Christian, these moments are tests of faith. Do you really believe God? Do you really trust him?"

Redemption by Mike Wilkerson, p153

The Gift of Forgiveness

"Forgiveness is a gift that God means for you to receive and then pass along to others. It may be the most costly gift you ever give; yet, precisely because it is so costly, it is also one of the clearest ways you can show God's love as his image bearer."
Redemption by Mike Wilkerson, p80

"Biblical forgiveness is a gift given to someone else, not a favour to oneself."
Redemption by Mike Wilkerson, p82

Absorption

"A helpful way to think about forgiveness is absorption. Imagine you're in traffic, and another driver swerves into your lane, cutting you off and forcing you to hit the brakes to keep from crashing into his bumper. What do you do? If you flip him off and slam on your horn (not for safety, mind you, but for payback), you offend everyone else around you. They have to tolerate your road rage on top of the usual stresses of commuting. Furthermore, maybe the guy who cut you off didn't mean anything personal by it—he just needed to move over quickly to make his exit. But you, in your swearing, definitely meant something personal against him. You have refused to absorb the offense and in the process have compounded the sin.
    Absorption, says Cheong, "is at the heart of forgiveness, since it involves the ability to deal with the pain in a way that it will not be passed on to anyone else." Or, as Tolsoy put it, to forgive is to "swallow" evil and prevent it from going further."

Redemption by Mike Wilkerson, p81
Quoted: Cheong, Towards an Explicitly Theocentric Model of Forgiveness; and Leo Tolstoy, The Complete Works

A Few Notes On Forgiveness

"When people say, I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself,' they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important to them than God's."
Original quote: Tim Keller, Counterfeit God's, p148
Read in: Redemption by Mike Wilkerson, p79

"As David Powlison says, "So often when people feel remorse for what they've done wrong, it is a remorse against their idealised self-image, a remorse in their own eyes, and a remorse against what other people think about them," not remorse for what they've done in God's eyes."
Read in: Redemption by Mike Wilkerson, p79

"It is the height of self-centredness to think your sin somehow offends you (or anyone else, even) more than it offends God."
Redemption by Mike Wilkerson, p79

"...you may feel unforgiven because you haven't honestly confessed your sin to God. In this case, you feel unforgiven because—in a sense—you are unforgiven. As Wolf says: "Without confession I will remain unforgiven—not because Gd doesn't forgive, but because a refusal to confess is a rejection of forgiveness. Refusing to confess, I refuse to make forgiveness my own through confession of wrongdoing and joyful gratitude over it not being counted against me."
Redemption by Mike Wilkerson, p79
Free of Charge by Volf, p154

Paying in Advance

I've recently be reading through the Lord's prayer and been thinking about the model of forgiveness that God gave us. One of the things that hit me is that for all of us alive in the present day, Jesus prepared for our sin thousands of years in advance. Before we had done anything good or bad, committed any offence against God, he was ready and able to forgive.

It struck me that we should perhaps attempt that same model of forgiveness. When sin is committed against us, it shouldn't be such a surprise sometimes. On some level it should be expected. We should know what's required and be ready to pay the price. It shouldn't take days, months, years before the penny drops and we realise what we've missed.

I guess it's another fine balance. Trying to avoid being cynical by expecting sin, and yet being ready and willing to forgive when it happens.