Extending forgiveness is a challenge. When you’ve carried the burden of unforgiveness for a length of time, it can be hard to know how to step towards forgiveness and reconciliation.
In sharing her own experiences and the story of Joseph and his brothers, however, author Wendy Alsup explores what repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation can look like, even in extremely difficult circumstances.
Read on for 20 powerful quotes from Wendy Alsup’s I Forgive You that show us what it means to forgive, and why it’s worth as believers it embrace reconciliation.
1. "The good news of Jesus gives us hope. Broken relationships are not going to be our long-term norm."
2. "Broken relationships come with a cost. We pay the cost at gatherings of family or friends. Perhaps we are not even invited to such gatherings anymore. We pay the cost when we are alone in our beds at night. We pay the cost on Sunday mornings. The loss of community—wherever it is and whatever the reason for it—hits us at a fundamental level in our psyche."
3. "Humans need community. We need to love and be loved in order to be fully human."
4. "Jesus has done all that is necessary to put an end to sin and brokenness, but that end has not yet come. We experience God’s power at work within us and between us, but there is still so much that is “not yet.” Perfect reconciliation is coming, but it has not yet come."
5. "As we become one with Christ, he prays that we would also become one with one another. Why is reconciliation with others an essential outcome of the gospel? Because it is not good for us to be alone!"
6. “We can spackle and paint over cracks in the walls of our relationships, but until the foundation is repaired, those cracks will inevitably show themselves again.”
“Forgiveness is fundamentally lopsided. The debtor gains, and the creditor loses.” - @WendyAlsup
7. "We won't all get along until we have been honest about what brought us to the place of conflict to begin with."
8. "When we look at the cross, we have a choice between defensiveness, self-condemnation, or humility. Humbly facing the weight of our sin is the response that sets us down the path to true reconciliation with God and others."
9. "Repentance is regret that turns away from the sin and walks forward in the opposite direction."
10. “The path toward reconciliation is not for those who want to avoid pain. It is for those willing to walk through the pain, believing God has called us to something better than our status quo of broken relationship.”
11. "Unreconciled conflict cannot rob us of the supernatural fruit—fruit that lasts—that Jesus harvests in our lives."
12. “Asking for forgiveness means making yourself vulnerable. Offering forgiveness does too.”
13. “Forgiveness costs the one who forgives, not the one who harmed. It costs them the satisfaction of retribution. It costs them the possibility of recouping their losses. It is lopsided. It is not fair. But it is godly.”
14. “Forgiveness is fundamentally lopsided. The debtor gains, and the creditor loses.”
15. "Our forgiveness of others isn't fundamentally about them. It doesn't flow from how they have responded to their sin against us. It flows from how God has responded to our sins against him."
16. “Forgiveness is an act of sacrifice, a willingness to take the loss without retaliation. And it is radically offensive to a world that cries out for retribution.”
"The good news of Jesus gives us hope. Broken relationships are not going to be our long-term norm." - @WendyAlsup
17. “The work of reconciliation is a two-way street: Neither offender nor offended can bear all of it. The weight of forgiveness, discussed in the last chapter, lies on the shoulders of the one who was harmed. But the weight of repairing the wrong lies on the shoulders of the one who did the harm."
18. “Forgiveness is not weakness, it is not forgetting, and it does not subvert true justice.”
19. "Not every relationship will be reconciled. It is possible to forgive those who do not see their need to be forgiven. It is possible to let go our need for revenge or payback and release the debt owed us by the one who harmed us. But full reconciliationrepairing the foundation of a relationship to be fully reconciled requires more. The foundation has to be repaired.”
20. “The words ‘I forgive you’ are not synonymous with reconciliation with the one who wronged you. But those words do equip you for peace within yourself in a way that little else can.”
Wendy shares her own story, as well as profound lessons about reconciliation from the Old Testament story of Joseph and his family, in I Forgive You. Learn more from the author in the video below.
Avery is our Marketing Engagement Specialist. She manages our global social media channels and works alongside authors to help share about their books. You can often find her sharing stories in our bookstore at conferences.
