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historyb said:
interesting take esp. when Christ himself said "forgive them for they know not what they do." No repentance their yet forgivness is offered and asked for. Even in the verse I quoted it says nothing about repentance.

If someone does something wrong to me and I know it, I should offer forgiveness. However, if I don't know it than I couldn't.
It should be emphasized that biblical teaching is only rightly discerned when the WHOLE of Scripture is included, aka: the Analogy of Faith, i.e., comparing Scripture with Scripture. Failing to do so most often results in error, Along the same idea of this subject of forgiveness is that of answered prayer. It is popular among the "prosperity gospel" and "name it and claim it" crowd to refer to the following passage:


John 14:13-14 (KJV) And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do [it].


However, this is a distortion of Christ's teaching because it fails to take into account other texts which are actually commentary on that saying, e.g.,


1 John 5:14 (ASV) And this is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us:


The point here is that carte blanc forgiveness is nowhere taught in Scripture as it would be in violation of other didactic passages [Basic Hermeneutics Rule #2: The Epistles interpret the Gospels] which teach otherwise, i.e., repentance is always a prerequisite to forgiveness. As CovenantInBlood mentioned in his reply, God Himself does not and cannot forgive sins without repentance. In fact, no one is forgiven any sin if that person is not salvifically united to Christ.

I also dealt with this issue in another thread where I supplied a link to a marvelous article on forgiveness by A.W. Pink, and Christ's words on the cross, which you can read here: My reply #1 and My reply #2.

In His grace,

Last edited by CovenantInBlood; Tue Oct 10, 2006 10:28 PM.