I love Erika, and she meant well, but forgot to heed Jesus’ words
Oct 02, 2025
“3 Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4 And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.” — Jesus Christ, Luke 17, (emphases mine).
Jesus said we should forgive people who have sinned against you IF they repent, not whether or not they repent. It’s crystal-clear.
Some folks might complain “But in other places in The Bible that mention forgiveness, it doesn’t mention the requirement for repentance”. I think that was because it was so universally understood as a requirement for forgiveness that it didn’t need to be mentioned in every case. After all, NOBODY who refuses to repent is ever forgiven by God in The Bible (I’ve read it from cover-to-cover numerous times, and couldn’t find any such case. If you think you know of one, please post it in the comments). If God doesn’t forgive folks who refuse to repent, who are WE to adhere to a different standard?
And btw, the two passages folks most often cite to justify willy-nilly forgiveness: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), and “Let he who has no sin cast the first stone” (John 8:11) are not in the earliest manuscripts, and thus should not be considered to be valid scriptures. Every good Bible will have brackets around them, or some kind of indicators that they are not considered to be original scriptures.
Unfortunately, we’ve had a steady stream of “Sloppy Agape” type pastors and teachers, who want to ignore that requirement of repentance and pretend everybody can just forgive each other into a glorious utopia without any repentance. I’ve noticed that the “wolves in sheep‘s clothing” that slip into church from time to time have a tendency to take advantage of the people who think this way.
It also occurs to me that “turn the other cheek” should never apply to the machinations of the justice system. I think that notion applies to certain interpersonal interactions we may have, but it was not supposed to be applied to governmental operations.
Again, I love Erika Kirk, and this should not be seen as an attack on her. It’s an attack on sloppy Bible-reading, and the bad Theology that springs therefrom.
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