I’ve been reflecting and thinking a lot about what a friends girlfriend(Ayesha) had to say on Sunday and I wanted to raise a question or thought around this idea of forgiveness, especially unconditional forgiveness. Does the idea of “unconditional forgiveness” tell people (especially women) to forgive without change in action (by the other) to stay in an abusive relationships?

Do we get too caught up in trying to tell people that God wants to have a relationship with them "how they are now" that it leads us to do damage? I believe that we have to be extremely careful when we talk about unconditional forgiveness especially when we are doing it.

I appreciated Ayesha talking about how forgiveness is reconciling relationships and I agree that Sin should be talked about in terms of broken relationships not moral miss-steps or laundry lists of bad deeds. I agree that we should do our best to reconcile relationships with one another regardless of the horrific atrocities that we can impose on one another as human beings. But how do you tell someone who is being dominated by another human being that forgiveness should be unconditional?

How does “unconditional forgiveness” display itself in scripture?