Most people would agree that a defining characteristic of Christian faith is to forgive. If we were also to ask the same people if Christians are to forgive the unrepentant, the answer would again be ‘yes’. Most people can quote the cry of Jesus on the cross ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34) and the words in the Lord's Prayer in their traditional form, ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us’ (based on Matthew 6:12 and Luke 11:4). It is fair to say that the idea that forgiveness is integral to, and a moral imperative of, Christianity is part of the unconscious narrative of many people.

Jones (1995: 133, 216, 219–20) describes forgiveness as being ‘embedded’ in the meta-narrative of the Bible. To forgive is an attribute of God – part of the essential being of God – and human beings, whom God made in the image of God, are to be forgiving. By this, Jones means that human beings are to practise the self-giving love that characterises God. The corollary of this is that people are not to be unforgiving.

Given these things, the astonishing fact is that there is relatively little about forgiveness in the New Testament.

Paul the apostle mentions forgiveness only rarely – and that, despite the fact that in popular understanding forgiveness is a significant category of Pauline thought.