Repentance and forgiveness

Last year, I wrote a theology essay on the relationship between repentance and forgiveness, and particularly our human repentance and God's forgiveness. I chose the topic for a number of reasons:

• Repentance and forgiveness are deeply significant for any relationship that includes an imperfect person, which is almost every relationship. The relationship between repentance and forgiveness determines how offenses are dealt with and how reconciliation is achieved. This is important for any relationship, and especially a relationship as important as the one between us and God.
• I've wanted to look more deeply at the topic of repentance for years, because I'm not convinced we use the language the way the Bible does.
• I'm often uncomfortable with our attitude in church to confession - both my own attitude (feeling like I need to dredge up sins to confess) and the perspective conveyed from the front - this topic has big implications for how we view confession.
• Lots of work on the relationship between repentance and forgiveness looks only at human-human relationships (e.g. Jewish and Christian responses to WW2, forgiveness in Rwanda, in South Africa after apartheid), but not nearly as much covers the dynamic between God and humans (surprisingly!).
• I wanted to think about how saying sorry and reconciliation work in my own family, because sometimes I wonder where the line between grace and justice is - how much do you insist that sorry is said after something wrong is done, how sincere does 'sorry' have to be, how do you measure sincerity anyway, when do we overlook an offense, etc.
• The topic has implications for urban culture, and especially urbanites who want to start following Jesus. Given the huge unpopularity of 'repentance' and even language about 'sin' in urban culture, it's not very attractive to call people to repent.

I really enjoyed the essay, and it's impacted my thinking a lot since. I thought I'd re-live the essay by blogging through it. I'll post the entire thing at the end, if you prefer reading a more academic version (with footnotes) or all in one hit.