Forgiveness From God's Perspective

The son said to himself,  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. - Luke 15:18-20

Those are lines from the most famous of Jesus’s parables. There's so much to say about that parable - about how the older brother is trapped in his bitterness, how the younger son can barely face his own shame and return home, and all the remarkable attributes of the Father. But today, let’s think about just one insight. It’s an old one, coming from a church leader almost a thousand years ago:

'When he was still far off,' we read, 'his father saw him and was moved with compassion, and running to meet him fell upon his neck and kissed him.' Those words seem to suggest that the father was even more anxious to pardon his son than the son was to be pardoned. He hastened to absolve the guilty one from what was tormenting his conscience, as if the merciful father suffered more in his compassion for his miserable son than the son did in his own miseries. - Guerric of Igny, writing in the 1140s AD

What if God is more interested in forgiving us than we are in being forgiven? What if God is so eager to forgive us, that at any glimpse of us heading home then God will start off running in our direction? Why might God be like that?