Article April 13, 1992 Issue

Real forgiveness: not human resolve but Christlike understanding

Cynthia Gray

We were talking about forgiveness. I was leading a voluntary Bible-study group in a home for juvenile offenders, and I had chosen the subject.

First, I gave some references to forgiveness from the Bible. Then I told them about a story I'd read in a newspaper about a Christian woman whose daughter had been murdered. She said she forgave the man. And the story said the man's life was changed by this forgiveness. He became a Christian, too, and expressed enormous gratitude for that woman's act.

In other discussions, this group had been lukewarm or even jaded. But this example of forgiveness shocked them. One said, "I don't believe it!" Another said, "She must be stupid." And another said, "If someone killed my brother, I'd get a gun and kill him."

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April 13, 1992
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