Forgiveness is one of those things that most people don’t understand. Christ explained forgiveness in Luke:
The rest of us needs to realize it may be us that needs to be forgiven in our difficult situations with others, all too often it is so easy to blame it on to the other person.
So sometimes we just have to forgive no matter what.
This is exactly why church discipline requires us to:
1. Go the person by ourselves and hopefully they’ll repent and everything stops there;
2. Take two or more with us so that every word may be established, and hopefully they’ll repent and everything stops there, or the two or more with us tells us we’re in the wrong and we repent, and everything stops there.
3. Take them before the church, and if they don’t repent, remove them.
If these “Bible steps” are followed, who was in the right and who was in the wrong will be thoroughly established.
So sometimes we just have to forgive no matter what.
Heb 9:22 In fact, according to the law of Moses, nearly everything was purified with blood. For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.
Luk 24:47 It was also written that this message would be proclaimed in the authority of His name to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem: ‘There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.’
It may depend on what is is. Forgiveness is a multifaceted word. I would suggest that forgiveness is not complete with out repentance. What you are not doing is not forgiving but something else? If it is forgiving, it is incomplete.
Forgiveness and repentance go hand in hand. When we see one, we should think of the other.