Forgiveness is Condemning the Sin but Sparing the Sinner

To be just is to condemn the fault and, because of the fault, to condemn the doer as well. To forgive is to condemn the fault but to spare the doer. That's what the forgiving God does.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 141.

Human Freedom is Unlike God's Freedom

It's rather that, unlike God, we always exercise our will as beings constantly shaped by many factors--by language, parental rearing, culture, media, advertising, and peer pressure, and through all these, we are shaped either by God or by God's adversary. Often we don't perceive ourselves as shaped at all. If we are not visibly and palpably coerced, we think that we act autonomously, spontaneously, and authentically. Yet we are wrong.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 66.

What is Human Freedom?

But maybe our sense that to be free is to act under no constraint whatsoever is mistaken. We tend to think that we must be autonomous and spontaneous to act freely. Behind this identification of freedom with autonomous spontaneity lies the notion of a self-defined and free-floating person. Strip down all the influences of time and place, abstract from culture and nurture, and then you'll come to your authentic core. This core is who you truly are, the thinking goes--unique, unshaped, unconstrained.

But that's more like a caricature of a divine self than an accurate description of a human self.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 65-66.

We Give Only What We Have Already Been Given

We give only because we have first received. God gives from what is originally, exclusively, and properly God's own; we give from what is our own because God continually gives to us.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 62.

God, the Non-Receiving Giver

We are not God, so it follows that when we give, we must give differently than God does. For one thing, God is the first giver. For centuries, Christian philosophers have spoken of God as the "unmoved mover" and "uncaused cause." We can say, by analogy, that God is a "non-receiving giver." Just as God causes without being caused, God gives without having received.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 61.

Our Identity as Givers

If we just enjoy good things without passing them on, if we are blessed without being a blessing, then we fail in our purpose as channels. We are givers because we were made that way, and if we don't give, we are at odds with ourselves.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 60.

True Love vs. Self Love

But why shouldn't one live "in oneself"? Isn't that what the self is supposed to do? Not really. It's just what the self likes to do. The self will lose itself if it simply lives in and for itself. It will seek only its own benefits, and the more it seeks its own benefits, the less satisfied it will become. That's the paradox of self-love: The more you fill the self, the more it echoes with the emptiness of unfulfillment. Living in itself and for itself, the self remains mysteriously unsatisfied and insatiable. Since God creates the self to be indwelled by Christ, that self will be fulfilled only if it draws the living water from the well-spring of love's infinity and passes it on to its neighbors. The paradox of true love is exactly the opposite of the paradox of self-love: When loving truly, the self moves outside of itself to dwell with God and neighbor, and only then is it truly at home. When this happens, we have crossed over from self-centeredness to genuine and fulfilling generosity.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 52.

The Empty Hands of Faith

Faith is the way we as receivers relate appropriately to God as the giver. It is empty hands held open for God to fill.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 43.

A Posture of Receptivity

God's gifts oblige us, first, to a posture of receptivity. Rather than wanting to earn God's gifts (if we imagine God as a hard negotiator whose demands we have to satisfy) or receive them in return for some favor (if we imagine God as a patron on whose generosity we depend), we should see ourselves as who we truly are, namely, receivers and receivers only. We do that by relating to God in faith. The first thing to which God's gifts oblige us is faith.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 42-43.

Only God Can Save Us From Sin, and Only God Can Prevent Us From Sinning

Nothing we can do can either get us out of sin's hole or prevent us from falling into it. Only God can.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 37.

"We sin by trying to overcome sin on our own."

But there is no way for us to crawl out of sin's hole. Indeed, the very attempt to crawl out on our own only sinks us in deeper. That may seem a strange claim. But if God is the source of all our good, then God must be the source of our freedom from sin. When we attempt to free ourselves on our own, we deny the true source of our goodness and wrong God by claiming for ourselves what is God's. We sin by trying to overcome sin on our own.

--Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 36-37.