Is it scripturally defensible to claim that the Cross handles our sin(s) against God but does not do anything about our sin(s) against other people? And that even God’s forgiveness of our sin against Him does not preclude the possibility of rehabilitative action on His part, even punishment? (Restitution would be impossible, of course.) Is this a good way to avoid the pressure to forgive and forget or forgive quickly or superficially and a good way to keep perpetrators from getting off easily and without restitution and without reconciliation and without humbling?
This thought occurred to me while praying the Lord’s prayer on my walking way up Enterprise Drive to pick up Éa’s bag from Organic Climbing. It is tangentially inspired, I’m sure, by Rutledge’s The Crucifixion and by Denhollander’s piece on how penal substitutionary atonement informs how abusers and victims should be handled.