Our modern Christian culture has distorted forgiveness to fit the psychology of our day. We are told to forgive when the offender confesses and is sorry. We are not told to forgive those who are not repentant.
Luke 17:3-4 "…3Watch yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4 Even if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times returns to say, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
There are those who would say that we do not have to ask forgiveness to those we have offended because David said to God; "you alone have I offended." While it is true that we must confess to God first we must also confess to those we have offended in order to reconcile the relationships that we broke.
Matthew 18:15-20
“If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”
No one grows in holiness without confession of sin. And, relationships are not mended without humility and the desire to show the offended one that we love them too much to allow them to think we hold them in such low regard.
1 John 1:9
"9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
We forgive as God forgave, when there is confession. A relationship cannot be mended when one party refuses to admit they were offensive.
Sadly, in our day most people are too prideful to admit they have been offensive and will fight when approached by the one they offended to resolve a problem.
It is not surprising that so many preachers spend more time on forgiveness than they do on confession of sin because secretly in their hearts they want to bypass the need for admission of guilt. What they do not understand is that having to humble ourselves in confessing our offense it grows us making us unlikely to do the same sins again.
This is why we do not see people change, they will not confess, and they sweep their offense under the rug only to emerge later again and again and again. They reoffend over and over again expecting their victims to just "let it go."
In 2 Timothy 3:4-5 God tells us to stay away from such people, they are brutal and unrepentant with the ability to cause frustration in their victims leaving them unusable for the Kingdom of God. Bad company corrupts good character and we must avoid them.
1 Corinthians 15:33
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