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What is Forgiving? Page 2 Intuitive Description Christ said people are supposed to forgive each other (Mark 11:25)(Luke 17:3,4). Why wouldn't the same apply to God? Why would God be unforgiving if people are not supposed to be? Paul indicated that the entire purpose of Christianity is to convince God to forgive sins by murdering Christ. Why would God have more of a problem with forgiveness than humans do? The reason why humans are supposed to forgive sins is because not doing so creates a force inside of unforgiving persons, and it eats them up. It's a corruption. Why would God be corrupted in that way? He isn't. Christ wasn't. Christ said he represents God (John 10:30). Paul's assumption that forgiving is the only concern of God's stemmed from the reaction of corrupt persons. They are obsessed with other persons holding them accountable for their corruptions. Trying to get out from under accountability, they want people to forget about their sin, and they call that forgiveness. Paul carried that obsession with him, because lightning didn't have the slightest ability to change his way of thinking. If God removes sin by forgiving sin, do humans remove sin by forgiving sin? Why not? Because forgiving has nothing to do with removing sin, contrary to Paul. How could it? The sin is in the perpetrator's mind, the forgiving is in the victim's mind. There are no relationships beyond adding more sin on top of the first. The implication of the assumption that forgiving sin removes sin is that there is nothing to sin beyond the victim (or God) accusing the perpetrator and creating accountability. The fact is, sin creates forces inside of the mind of the perpetrators, and forgiving doesn't remove those forces. Christ's teaching shows that forgiving sin does not remove sin from the mind of the perpetrator. When Christ told a paralytic on a mat that his sin was forgiven, nothing happened (Mat 9:1-8)(Mark 2:1-12)(Luke 5:17-26). Forgiving didn't remove the sin. So why did Christ say the sin was forgiven? His purpose was to teach. He is the teacher (Mat 23:10). If Paul claims forgiving removes sin, and corrupt persons assume forgiving is the only concern, then why not just tell people that their sins are forgiven? Because it doesn't work, and Paul was a fraud. Forgiving protects the victims form corruption, but it does nothing to remove sin from the mind of the perpetrator. Then the Pharisees accused Christ of blasphemy, saying only God can forgive sin. So Christ had to correct their lie by showing that he was God and had whatever power to forgive God is supposed to have. There could be a question about forgiving, since it is possible to not forgive. Christ had to show that he had whatever authority was needed to forgive, even though it is not a mechanism for removing sin. There could still be a question about judgment day, which involves authority. So Christ was clarifying his authority, but he was not saying, or showing, that forgiveness removes sin. What is "the authority to forgive sin?" (Mat 9:6)(Mark 2:10)(Luke 5:24). It's having the power to not forgive sin but not using it, because it is a corruption. This question could be relevant, because people need to know whether someone who has power over them is going to hold sin against them, as corrupt persons do. Christ has the authority to forgive sin, even though moral persons never do anything other than forgive sin. The Bible and history of the universe (which is evident in life) clearly show that evil spirits end up in hell. Does this mean there is sin which is not forgiven by God? The final judgment is not a question of forgiving, it's a question of who can be saved. Pulling evil persons out of hell will not save them, because they cannot coexist with other persons. Satan does not want to be saved for that reason. He cannot coexist with the persons who he hates. Why then did Christ say, "If you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you" (Mat 6:15)(Luke 11:25)? Because people cannot overcome their sins by holding grudges and seeking revenge. Christ metaphorically (or rhetorically) referred to God as not forgiving their sins, because the point was not about God but about the responsibilities of the person. There is a background justice to this subject. The golden rule describes the justice. It says, do unto others as you would have them do unto your. Christ often used the corollary, which says, others will do unto you as you do unto them (Mat 7:1,2). This means that if a person does not forgive others, they will not forgive him. But this does not say that forgiving erases sin. It simply says that not forgiving creates another problem (or sin). Since other persons will not forgive the unforgiving person (in satan's corrupt world), the effective result is as if God were not forgiving the person. This is why Christ could summarize the net effect by rhetorically saying God will not forgive the unforgiving person. There is a tendency to refer to the large, overriding influences in life as God's work, even if they come from other sources than God, because God has responsibility for everything. Therefore, if the universe is unforgiving of an unforgiving persons, it is the equivalent of God being unforgiving, even though moral persons cannot turn on an unforgiving mechanism in their minds. So Christ appeared to be saying unforgiving persons would be unforgiven by God, but he wasn't really saying that, because God's forgiving cannot be turned on and off. Forgiving is an absence of something, so it doesn't really turn on and off. But it would appear that way to humans, because their own corruptions would separate them from God. Instead of Christ trying to describe the extreme complexities of the subject, he simplified by saying God would not forgive, while it would only be an appearance. The point is that this talk about the subtle effects of forgiving does not mean that forgiving is the mechanism for removing sin. Nowhere in Christ's teaching (or the logic of the subject) is such a claim made. It is made in Paul's fraudulent theology, and to some extent assumed by corrupt persons due to their hang-up on accountability. But it is not what Christ is saying on this subject. If God does not forgive (sort of) the unforgiving person, this does not mean that to forgive is to remove sin. It means that the person would get less assistance from God if he were not forgiven by God. Corrupters do not see the difference between total removal of sin and something else that God might do, because they close their mind to all moral truth, such as a path overcoming sin rather than a flash gimmick solving the problem. It is the assumption that a flash gimmick ends sin that leads to the assumption that forgiving ends sin. What else would forgiveness do, if a flash gimmick were the solution? If a path is involved in overcoming sin, then forgiveness is just one element of a complex process. Corrupt persons assume that the only problem they have is that other persons oppose them. So they want the opposition to go away, and they assume that being forgiven will make the opposition go away. But when there is no opposition, their sin doesn't end, because there are psychologically conditioned forces in their minds which cause them to sin. There is no way that forgiveness can cause those forces to disappear. To Page 1 of Forgiving Home