Just finished reading: “Out of the Depths: How Forgiveness Brought a Sex Offender Into the Light” by a man who fell and “Into the Depths: The cost of forgiveness will be your life” (2024) by a wife who forgave.
The man who fell submits that both easy acceptance and permanent excommunication are not good, the former creating dysfunctional communities by ignoring the woulds of the aggrieved, and the latter destroying the sinner. (For my part, I’ll add that the latter also creates dysfunctional communities.) His wife forgave him, doing neither of the above. And by that, he was saved. It even elicited repentance, he says.
The wife who forgave says she forgave he husband, and it has cost her a lot. But it’s the way of Christ, and it, she says, has made her holy.