It is interesting to note that fond as we may be of the image of God as the sternly just punisher of sinners, that is not the picture God draws of himself.  Rather, God’s self-portrait is one of unconditional, compassionate forgiveness offered to anyone, anytime, a truly limitless mercy.

But there is in this consoling image a real challenge, a challenge to the heart of our vocation as Christians.  God’s table will be filled not only by those who have been forgiven, those who have shown kindness, but by those who have themselves offered forgiveness, those who have lived kindness.

The Father’s mercy is given not only to save us but to teach us as well.  The two are the same, really.  We cannot hope to benefit from the one if we are unwilling to follow the other.

Forgiveness is first of all an attitude formed by a couple of fairly basic facts of our faith.  God created human beings.  He created them as he wanted them to be – good, with goodness far, far beyond our own ability to perceive.  And if we truly realised that, truly believed it, it would become almost automatically impossible for us to condemn anyone.  So, the first building block in an attitude of forgiveness is a simple one: Condemn no one ever, anytime.

I don’t say that we must not judge.  I say we must not condemn.  Indeed, we are called to make moral judgements.  If an act is wrong, it must be named as such by Christians, and unmistakably so.  The point is that we must make such judgements about acts, not people.  Christ said to the woman, “What you have done is evil.”  He did not say “you are evil.”  And in that, the distinction between Christ and the pharisees is perhaps as clear as anywhere in Scripture.

Christ wanted to put an end to the act.  The pharisees wanted to put an end to the woman.  The pharisees saw the person and the sin as one and the same.  Christ saw the person as so much more than the sin.  Instead of condemning her for what she was, he encouraged her to become something more, to centre her life around what could and should be.

And so, the second principle that forms an attitude of forgiveness is also fairly simple.  It is a persistent and patient hope – readiness, a joyful eagerness to see realised in ourselves and in others all of the goodness of which we are capable.

Like any virtue, forgiveness is an act that flows from a right attitude.  If we are to practice forgiveness, we must first do something – almost anything really, a letter, a phone call, a handshake, a friendly smile, anything that will help us to begin to act as though the offence had never occurred.  That is the heart of it, to act toward those who have offended us as though they had not.    Fr Andrew