Love and forgiveness are foundational to Christianity. If someone does not understand the workings of love and forgiveness they will not be able to live the Christian life as God intended.
Christ told us to confess our sin to be cleansed by Him. 1 John 1:9. He commanded us to operate the same way with our fellow man. We confess to God our sinfulness and a desire to be changed by Him and in response, He forgives us and changes how we think which changes how we live.
We confess our sin to the one we have offended and the one offended forgives to restore the relationship. When we confess our sin against another person it is an expression of a desire to change our behavior toward that person. When there is no confession of sin and no desire to change there can be no reconciliation with the offended party.
Our culture as a whole does not understand God's forgiveness or the need for confession to be reconciled. We have been taught by psychologists and would-be relationship experts in the church that we are to short-cut God's model of reconciling a relationship by leaving out important steps that remove guilt, cleanse from sin and restore trust to a relationship.
When a false Christian attempts to love and forgive they derail a relationship merely appearing to fix something broken when in fact, the relationship remains broken even growing worse because the necessary steps to reconciliation were not taken God's Way.
Why does our culture take shortcuts in forgiveness and love? The reason is simple since the culture is dedicated more to temporary personal feelings than they are to facts and authentic fixes they misinterpret God's word to fit their feelings. Did you know it is selfish to forgive an unrepentant sinner? Yes, I said that, when the purpose for forgiving becomes our own personal feeling of pride about how good we think we are, we are of no use to the offender in his cleansing and regeneration.
When we short-cut the gospel to make people "feel" good about themselves, either to feel good about themselves for forgiving prematurely or feel good about ourselves for making the sinner feel better about himself, we have acted selfishly.
Rather than to take the necessary difficult task of honesty and truth for reconciling with human relationships and reconciliation to God, through explaining the steps needed for repentance that lead to relationship reconciliation we have left a sinner without hope and those watching thinking no one ever has to confess their sin and never has to be sorry to gain heaven.
There is only one way to reconcile with God, which is to confess our sinfulness and desire Him to change us into a new creation.
There is only one way to reconcile with another human being and that is to confess our sin against them and desire to be forgiven by them. If there is no confession and no sorrow there is no forgiveness to reconcile.
There are those who would say "I forgive them but I can't be friends", that's because there has not been authentic forgiveness, there has been no confession or desire to change the behavior so there is no reconciliation.
To forgive God's way is the way of love.
Psalm 141:5
"Let the righteous man strike me; let his rebuke be an act of loving devotion. It is oil for my head; let me not refuse it. For my prayer is ever against the deeds of the wicked."
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