Any progression I get from the experience of being sinned against, and the eventual Eternal Salvation from all that progression, is plenty restitution for me. In this sense, Christ did pay the balance of the sinner’s restitution to me by allowing me to progress toward Salvation despite my faults and weaknessess and past sins that have been repented of. I don’t want Debbie Kibbe to hunt me down and pay me back the 45 cents she borrowed in 4th grade and forgot to pay back. No thanks.

I don’t know if everyone is assuming there is some kind of cosmic balancing scale that has to be worked out here so if you guys are privy to information of that kind that I am ignoring I do apologize. I’m new to this kind of commenting so go easy on me.

If a man builds a house, and an arsonist burns it down, all that effort is for naught. The man has to start over and build it a second time.

To remedy this situation, two things need to be accomplished – people need to quit committing arson, and the people who have suffered thereby must be made whole.

In other words, part of the atonement is an attempt to establish (socially and religiously) a law of conservation where none existed before.

They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the LORD, and their offspring with them. (Isaiah 65:22-23)

Biv, I agree with you that what’s important is the person’s willingness and fervent desire to make things right. The desire to make restitution is a great indication to ourselves and to others that we are sincere in our contrition. I am glad you brought up the Old Testament laws that require you to compensate the person by more than you took. This makes the point that if all we do is break even in giving back what we took, we still have not made compensation to the person for the whole ordeal of having something stolen in the first place. This is what I was thinking of in #10 when I said healing is not really a full restitution since it would still be better to have never been injured int he first place. To really make “complete restitution,” as you say, it seems you need to compensate the person enough that they are now glad that they were injured based on what came of it. I think such restitution does sometimes take place, as I mentioned in the OP when I said sometimes we can look at a bad thing that happened and be grateful for it due to the transformation it brought about in us. I just don’t think this is true for every bad and unjust thing that happens to us. By the way, isn’t the law of Moses awesome compared to our modern system in this respect? They guy who stole my money didn’t pay a dime of it back. This is because we don’t live by the “eye for an eye” principle, which, of course, never meant that they were to poke out eyes but that if you injured someone you must compensate them.

Blair, I have never seen My Name is Earl, but after reading the wiki entry I concur. That would have been an excellent title.

Annegb, My attempt to put a more positive spin on the post: Realizing that restitution is often not possible can liberate our ideas about repentance and forgiveness. Sometimes we beat ourselves up knowing that we can never really undo what we have done and that we can’t make it all better again. At this point, it is wonderful to consider that Christ never expected us to make everything better, but what he wants from us just for us to totally turn away from our sins, to transform ourselves into a new person who wishes not only to do better in the future, but would change the past if only it were in our power. When we can get a hold of that feeling, I think we can know that repentance is taking place within us. Maybe at times that’s still depressing, but sometimes it is inspiring to me.