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" At the cross, God was punishing Jesus for the sins of the world. God's justice required a penalty from sinners, and in his unspeakable love, he paid the penalty himself in the person of his crucified Son. "

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" Restorative justice is not a replacement of retributive justice, but a complement. It seeks the rehabilitation of the wrongdoer and the repair of the victim's injury. "

Lewis B. Smedes

Seeks

Justice

Injury

" We are anxious in the face of our unchangeable past; we long to recreate segments of our private histories, but we are stuck with them. "

" Modern Americans suffer from a fear of judging. Passing judgment on the behavior of fellow human beings is considered an act of medieval, undemocratic intolerance. "

" To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. "

" My father was only thirty-one when he died of a heart attack, much too young for a father to die and leave his young wife with five rambunctious little kids to take care of. I was the youngest. Only a couple of months old when he died. "

" It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited. "

" In a sinful world, no community can exist for long where nobody is ever held accountable: no teacher would grade a student's performance; no citizen would sit on a jury or call a failed leader to account. "

" No one really forgives unless he has been hurt. "

Lewis B. Smedes

Forgives

Been

" Nothing enables us to forgive like knowing in our hearts that we have been forgiven. "

Lewis B. Smedes

Knowing

Nothing

" Our history is an inevitable component of our being. One thing only can release us from the grip of our history. That one thing is forgiveness. "

Lewis B. Smedes

History

Inevitable

" When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it. "

" Nobody sees reality whole; we all need others to show us the parts of it that they see better than we do. Nobody sees reality with total accuracy; we all need others to correct our own vision. "

" God is not a doormat, nor should anyone else be a doormat. "

" Sometimes I like to list the strongest arguments I can find to support a point of view I think is wrong. When I have them before me, I am up against a real opponent rather than a hypothetical one that is an easy target for me to hit. "

Lewis B. Smedes

Think

Support

" I believe that we should, on biblical grounds, tell all parents of mentally disabled children that God loves their children, regrets terribly that they are disabled, and will, when they die, carry them gently into a heavenly life where every person is forever whole. "

" The God who has the whole world in his hands has grace for the whole world in his heart. "

" The blood of Christ covers all of our sins, but each of us must do personal business with God in order to experience his forgiveness. "

" Retributive justice did not arise from any Christian principle; almost every pre-Christian society dealt with wrongdoers by causing them pain. "

" Jesus said that we should render to the state what properly belongs to the state, and though he had taxes in mind, we might reasonably infer that giving the state the job of punishing wrongdoers is one way of giving the state its due. "

" God does not give us salvation because we believe. Our believing is only the normal way of receiving the salvation he freely gives. "

Lewis B. Smedes

Believing

God

" The lies we tell ourselves are the most subtle of all lies. "

" True, the apostles did not expressly say that people will be saved only if they repent, believe, and confess. But most evangelicals assume - with good reason - that this is what the apostles implied. "

" The Holy Spirit, thank God, often enables people to forgive even though they are not sure how they did it. "

" Some people have loved ones they will not forsake, even though they are a pain in the neck. "

" Some people still have causes they will not desert, even though the cause seems lost. "

" Our society is pluralistic. We who accept the privilege of membership in that society agree to respect the people's right to live by their own religious precepts. "

Lewis B. Smedes

Society

Respect

" Common sense suggests that if no one ever judged other people, there would be no real human community. "

" As I read the New Testament, I find only one path to salvation - the path of an informed faith in Jesus Christ. "

" When we have been badly injured and clearly wronged, we make an instant caricature of the person who did it to us. We define him totally by the one wrong he did. "

Lewis B. Smedes

Wrong

Him

" The problem with revenge is that it never evens the score. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain. Both are stuck on the escalator as long as parity is demanded, and the escalator never stops. "