"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! - (Matt 7:9-11)
"Man Cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God," Dostoyevsky's saintly Zossima tells a woman who has committed an unspeakable crime and is afraid to die. "Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? .... Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin ..... All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner, even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God." Peter ..... asked him, 'Lord, how often am I to forgive my brother if he goes on wronging me? As many as seven times ?' Jesus replied, 'I do not say seven times; i say seventy times seven'" (Matt 18:21-22). This is not arithmetic, but a biblical way of saying, " I say infinitely." Could it be that Peter's Lord requires more of his children than he asks of himself? Could such a Lord even think of banishing his children from his forgiveness - especially "forever"? Would this not make God the greatest celestial hypocrite? Apparently even "children of wrath" find it difficult to sustain this kind of cruelty
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