Our God is a God of both grace and mercy. In the English language, grace is generally unearned, unmerited favor. Mercy is demerited favor that we receive anyway. When we have forfeited goodness, and God gives it to us anyway, He is showing mercy.
When Adam was first created, he had obviously done nothing to deserve it, so his experience of the Garden before the fall was an experience of God’s grace. After he fell, and God promised a savior, this was mercy. Adam had forfeited God’s kindness, and yet God remained kind to him anyway. All mercy is obviously grace, but not all grace is mercy.
But the reason for mentioning this is that we are called as Christians to imitate God in both His grace and mercy. When you bring a baby home from the hospital, you spend a lot of time delighting in him, long before he begins pulling his weight. That is grace. But when someone has wronged you, and asks forgiveness, or worse, has wronged you and has not asked forgiveness but needs your help with something, to extend that help is mercy.
And we are to be merciful, just as our Father in heaven is merciful. We don’t want to extend mercy because it was demerited, but that is the only way we can extend it. We don’t want to extend forgiveness because the person doesn’t deserve it—I mean, look what he did. But genuine wrong-doing is a precondition for forgiveness. When you bump into someone accidentally, you should say, “Pardon me.” When you knock him down on purpose, you should say, “Forgive me.” But we don’t want to forgive, because forgiveness is the only thing that is really called for.
Yes, amen. Well said.
A question that deserves to be addressed is, How do we respond when the offense continues?
Suppose your neighbor fences in a few feet of your property, won’t apologize, isn’t sorry, intends to keep what he’s stealing, and even argues that he’s got a good reason for doing this. You ask him to move his fence, and he shrugs and declines, and maybe says you somehow deserve to lose a few feet of your yard.
Now what’s the Christian response?
I don’t think forgiveness means tolerating the trespass. You forgive him for building the fence and being obnoxious about it , but you still expect him to fix the problem. If you stole my laptop, I would forgive you but I would expect you to give it back. If he goes to your church, I would ask them to talk to him. If he is active in some other church, I would ask if he would agree to your churches arbitrating this. If that’s not possible, I would warn him first, give him a deadline, and then ask your lawyer… Read more »
Jill,
The example was fictitious, but the principle is not at all rare. A lot of people have the idea that Christians are supposed to forgive others without any sort of expectations at all. But as Warfield said, “Indiscriminate forgiveness is the abdication of law.”
Doug has written before (if I weren’t on my phone I’d try to hunt down a recent post) about the conditions under which forgiveness can be truly effected. He says that it can’t really be transacted without repentance from the offender, but that the Christian should be prepared to forgive—should have the forgiveness all nicely wrapped and waiting by the door for when it’s asked for. But in the meantime, in your hypothetical situation, forgiveness doesn’t mean letting the offender do whatever he wants. If the neighbor is a Christian, his brother should take it to the church for judgment.… Read more »
kyriosity, as you are likely aware, the predominant position of Christians today is that forgiveness of others is required even when they are not repentant. Comments on a recent post here show that some regular commenters here are in agreement. I suggest that Doug Wilson should be very clear in reiterating his opinion when he writes about forgiveness. In fact, I just commented on his post “When Your Kayak is Small” regarding the possibility of confusion in his statements on the topic.
You can’t say everything every time you say anything or you’ll end up saying nothing. Dig out the earlier post in the Gabrielle series to see Doug’s thoughts further fleshed out.
If you are willing, let him have it; if not, don’t bother with the church, they couldn’t recognize due process any more than they could find their way out of a paper bag. The courts are too expensive, so bulldoze it down and put a fence on the property line.
These are critically important concepts in our culture today. Thankful that someone is actually transmitting this information when these concepts are fading from view in public discourse.
Please stop keeping score in your own relationships and focus on how you can reflect God’s Light through grace, mercy and forgiveness.