Hebrews

“The certainty and completeness of God’s mercy [is] the magnet of confession . . . we run to his arms with our sin-sick hearts because we know there is grace sufficient, boundless, and free already there. We repent because we are forgiven, not to gain forgiveness . . . we are forgiven because he was forsaken, not because our contrition is adequate . . . we are cherished children of God despite our constant waywardness and the inevitable inadequacy of our confession.”

—Bryan Chapell

  “Absolution is neither a response to a suitably worthy confession, nor the acceptance of a reasonable apology. Absolvere in Latin means not only to loosen, to free, to acquit; it also means to dispose of, to complete, to finish. When God pardons, he does not say he understands our weakness or makes allowances for our errors; rather he disposes of, he finishes with, the whole of our dead life and raises us up with a new one.  He does not so much deal with our derelictions as he does drop them down the black hole of Jesus’ death. He forgets our sins in the darkness of the tomb. He remembers our iniquities no more in the oblivion of Jesus’ expiration. He finds us, in short, in the desert of death, not in the garden of improvement; and in the power of Jesus’ resurrection, he puts us on his shoulders rejoicing and brings us home . . . The work of redemption is done entirely by the redeemer, and not at all by the redeemed.”

—Robert Farrar Capon

“What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness.  I have nobody to forgive me.”

—Margaret Laski