It’s easy to be gracious to the gracious—to those who recognize their fault and seek to make amends. It tasks our virtue less than third grade math might task a physicist.

 

But let the one who wounded us be hostile or impenitent—and we will struggle like an eight-year-old confronted with a theorem. Our greater “virtue” goes unrecognized by unrepentant sinners. We bite our lips to keep from saying what we know—that all the fault is theirs; that we were always right

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So Jesus challenges us with God’s much higher standard: “If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them! . . . Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid” (Luke 6:32, 35).

 

And so we glimpse the heart of God, who in the chaos of our stubbornness still offers us forgiveness—wholeheartedly and kindly: “Yet God, in His grace, freely makes us right in His sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins” (Rom 3:24).

 

Grace is God’s strange gift to us, and not a virtue we acquire by practice or devotion. His kindness brings about our kindness, and we forgive as we have been forgiven.

 

Receive His gift. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott