Have you ever struggled to forgive someone?

It's something that we all have to deal with from time to time, maybe even often.

But beyond the emotional challenge of forgiving someone who's sinned against us,

sometimes we wrestle with deeper questions, even theological ones.

If I forgive someone, does that mean I'm excusing their sin?

Is forgiveness at odds with justice?

And does true forgiveness necessarily entail a full restoration of the relationship?

These are important questions that deserve thoughtful answers,

and that's why I'm excited for my interview today with Erica Allen.

Erica serves as vice president of Bible resources at Crossway, and as the author of Crossway's ESV prayer

journals, simple guides designed to help Christians study foundational scripture topics over the course

of just six weeks. Topics like forgiveness, the gospel, humility, and faith. Let's get started.

Well, Erica, thank you so much for joining me again on the Crossway podcast today.

Thanks, Pat. So when it comes to this topic, the topic of forgiveness, I think it can be tempting to jump right into our need for forgiveness, you know, and why that's the case because of sin, or all the passages in the Bible that call us to forgive other people as Christians.

And we're going to get into some of that in a little bit.

But you open this new devotional prayer journal

that you've written in a different way, in a different spot, and with a different focus.

I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about how you started.

Absolutely.

Forgiveness is so, it's one of those topics that we think is so basic, and we've got a good grasp of it.

And it's kind of, you know, forgiveness.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, got that.

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