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Why does God Forgive us?
By Sarah Hoeck
Have you ever done something really bad? Have you ever thought that praying for forgiveness just wouldn’t undo what you did? Have you ever thought that God just wouldn’t forgive you? Why should He? We certainly don’t deserve His forgiveness.
The thing is, God doesn’t want you to feel that way. He wants you to get on your knees and ask for forgiveness. And when you do, He forgives you. But why, why does He forgive you?
Psalms 86:5 says, “For you Lord are good and ready to forgive, and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon you.” The Lord is ‘ready to forgive’ all the people who call upon Him. They repent and in doing so, hold up their part of the bargain. (And I say bargain because that’s what we humans have. We have the better/easier part of the “deal.”) Then, God holds up his part of the “bargain.” He forgives us of our awful sins. Why?
“The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy” (Psalms 145:8). God is everything anyone wants in a person. In fact, if He were a human, He would be perfect and pure. He’s loving, compassionate, merciful, slow to anger, good, kind and forgiving. All you have to do is ask Him to forgive you. You have to ask it from deep down in your heart and He will. Like it says in Acts 2:38, “Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
But still, why? We aren’t like that. We sin and we act like we’re just like everyone else. When someone does something wrong, we don’t correct them. We copy people and usually go with the flow. But God still forgives us.
Mark 11:25, 26, “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in Heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.”
So according to this verse, God forgives us if we forgive others. But He doesn’t if we don’t. So, there’s one reason why He forgives us; because we forgive others. But there must be another reason for his forgiveness.
First John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Sometimes, actually most of the time, when I repent and ask God for forgiveness, I feel like He didn’t. I feel that I’m a sinner, which I am. I ask myself, “How can He forgive me when I’ve sinned so much?” It’s a question a lot of people ask themselves. And here, in 1 John, it says that He forgives us because we confess our sins to him. But wait, there’s more.
In Luke 15, there is the parable of the lost son. You know how it goes. The son decides he wants to live his own life, a fun life. He asks his dad for his share of the money that he would have later inherited. He left home and after a while, his money ran out. He got a job of feeding pigs and even ate some of their food because he was so desperate. Finally, he decided to go home. He didn’t expect things to be like they used to be, but he did think he could get a job as a servant. But when he was walking back to his father’s house, his dad saw him. He ran out to his son and hugged him. He threw a huge party for his “lost son” that was now found.
The father forgave his son of what he did, just like that. He forgave him in the blink of an eye. He forgave him because he loved him. God is like the dad of the lost son. The dad was standing in his door, looking for his son, waiting for his son. And when he saw him, he ran out to him. He forgave his son because he loved him so much and so dearly.
God’s just like that. Actually, in fact, God is that father. He doesn’t forgive us because he has to. He forgives us because he wants to. He wants us to have eternal life. He forgives us because He loves us.
When I think about this, I feel so happy and excited inside. I mean God forgives me of the sins that shouldn’t be forgiven. He forgives me, the sinner who doesn’t deserve even a millisecond of His time. But what makes me smile the most is that he does all this because he loves me. He wants the best for me. And that is the best thing in the whole entire world. And I’m glad that he does forgive me because I want to spend the rest of my life, both physical and spiritual, with him. That’s what I want more than anything and he wants the same thing as me. i
(All verses are from the King James
Version or the New KJV)
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