Forgiveness can be a difficult subject can’t it? None of us like to have our mistakes or our faults pointed out and yet, as we will see, this is exactly the process that we must go through to obtain forgiveness from God. It’s not only that we need to be able to be humble enough to accept it when our faults or mistakes are pointed out, but also that we must learn to recognise these things in ourselves. We’ll come to that later however, as I want to tackle just a few questions I have come up with on this huge subject of forgiveness. These are:
- Why would I want God’s forgiveness?
- Is what I have done too bad to be forgiven?
- Why would God want to forgive me?
- How do I obtain forgiveness from God?
Before we get started on these questions however, I want to just to establish what it is that we need forgiveness for. The answer is sin, but what is sin? It is described most simply in 1 John 3:4 where it says:
“Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.”
1 John 3:4
So, sin is breaking the law, or more specifically God’s laws which include things that are morally wrong but that may not be against the laws of the land, for example having an affair. God’s laws are summed up by his son Jesus when he is asked by a lawyer which is the most important of God’s commandments:
“And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’”
Matthew 22:37-40
Jesus cites these two laws because there is no sin you can commit that does not fall into one of these two categories. So now that we have established what sin is then let’s begin to deal with these questions above: