God's forgiveness, how does it work?

God’s forgiveness, how does it work?

We know that Jesus taught his disciples to forgive their enemies seventy times seven. It is like saying that we should forgive without limit; that is countless time. It is because of this teaching and other similar teachings that people belief there is need for us to forget and forgive our enemies. We know that there are situations we can find it difficult to forgive our enemies especially when we know that they deliberately wronged us and expected us to do nothing. We know it does not always work that way. It is easier for people to forgive when they know that the wrong done to them was a mistake or that the person will not repeat it again. That is, can we truly forgive someone when we know that the person will repeat same thing over and over again?

That is why I wonder how the forgiveness of God works. A friend made a post on facebook in which he said something like this, “ I prayed to God for a bicycle he did not give it to me because God does not work that way so I stole a bicycle and prayed for forgiveness and its done.” This shows the kind of idea some people have about the forgiveness of God and it is expected that God forgives us daily or each time we pray and ask for forgiveness. Is that actually the case? God is expected to know our minds so he should know when we have a repentant mind and that may cause him to forgive us our sins. But the problem is that some people may repent today and later go back to same evil. So how does God work in such condition? Is God not expected to know the future and be able to know that same person that asked him for forgiveness will still go back again to same sin.

The point is that we have not really understood how God’s forgiveness works and we only assume, as we belief, that our sins are forgiven each time we asked. There are some schools of thought that belief that God’s forgiveness alone is not enough but also our effort to atone for our wrongs. It is obvious that under such situation one will be forced to live in such a manner that atones for one’s sins if one really wants to have a clean slate. And it is even difficult when the atonement is measured to correspond with the sin committed so one will be forced to be more conscious of the sins committed.

So how easily is it for God to forgive us especially because of the salvation by faith and the price paid by Jesus on the cross?

Those that truly belief in Jesus or are really religious no matter the religion may live in a way that unwillingly atones for their mistakes. That is their right living helps them prevent some, if not most sins.

Like the guy said on facebook, will God just forgive someone that stole or committed any other evil and asked for forgiveness or will the person need to at least return the thing he stole back to its rightful owner or make amends as a sign of repentance before asking God for forgiveness?

That is why we need to understand how God’s forgiveness works but unfortunately we may never really know but just continue to only belief in the various doctrines we accept.