"Quibbling over terms". Is that what we're doing? And here I had thought we were fellowshipping together in love, trying to get a better understanding of forgiveness as our Lord and the apostles taught it.
Jesus clearly stated that he did not condemn her, before asking her to sin no more. I cannot find any statement which affirms that He forgave her. Perhaps you understand the two as having more or less the same meaning. It is wonderful not to condemn. It is wonderful to let go of ill feelings toward a person. It is wonderful not to even have any ill feelings, as was the case with the Amish toward the man who shot their young daughters. It is wonderful to show love toward an offender's family as the Amish did. It's just that I don't see any of these actions as "forgiveness" is the sense that Jesus and Paul used the word. I see the forgiveness which they taught as a response to repentance, resulting a complete restoration of relationship with that person --- or if there never was a relationship with the offender, then regarding him as one would regard any other stranger, not counting him as an enemy or viewing hims with suspicion.Steve7150 wrote:A couple of things struck me, first the women caught in adultery
"Women where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you? She said, "no one Lord." And Jesus said , "Neither do i condemn you, go and sin no more." John 8.11
Jesus first forgave her and then asked her to repent.
Yes, Corrie spoke about "forgiving" the guard. She said it was the hardest thing she had ever done. He had become a Christian brother and held out his arms to embrace her. She couldn't move for several seconds, and then she accepted his embrace. Prior to that incident she was very angry about what he had done to her sister. In a moment, she let go of all that anger toward him. She used the word "forgive" because that is the common understanding of the term.Although not in the bible, i think Corrie Ten Boom said that forgiving is tantamount to freeing a prisoner, yourself.She had forgiven her Nazi guard at a concentration camp.
How do we know that is the meaning?In the NT there are instances of forgiveness mentioned by itself and other times with repentence. I think we have to be careful about only forgiving if the sinner is repentent because as Jesus said "he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone" meaning we all have sin yet we will not forgive someone's else's sin?
There was an article in the Reader's Digest some years ago written by a Jewish Rabbi who believed that it is morally wrong to forgive an unrepentant person. He gave a clear-cut example (which I will try to relate as best I can from memory). In a particular town, a young man had committed atrocities with some of the young women there. If I remember correctly, he raped and murdered several of them. He never repented of his offenses. But the young people of the town erected huge signs in several parts of the town which read, "WE FORGIVE YOU, JOEY!". Now what message did that send to unrepentant Joey? The author believed that it sent that the message, "We don't really mind what you did, Joey!" He would then feel encouraged to repeat his crimes with impunity. The town people didn't really mind!
