On a different blog, someone made this comment about the Forgiveness Quiz (see the questions here):
The difficulty I see is such a quiz, or in discussing forgiveness, is making assumptions about whether the question is in regard to God and us, or us and others – that is not apparent in the questions, but the answers depend on knowing which relationship is being talked about.
My response to this is basically, “No. It doesn’t matter if the questions are about God or us.” The first principle of Christian forgiveness is that we are to forgive others as God forgave us.
Below is an excerpt from Unpacking Forgiveness:
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God’s forgiveness for Christians is the model he expects Christians to live out. We find this principle stated more than once in the Scriptures. Jesus included this point in the Lord’s Prayer. The key word is “as.”
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. Matthew 6:12b
Paul stressed this in both Ephesians and Colossians.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:32 (emphasis added)
Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Colossians 3:13 (emphasis added)
The first thing to do in developing an understanding of how we should forgive one another is to understand how God forgives us. This simplifies defining forgiveness because the Bible says far more about how God forgives people than it does about how people should forgive people.
