Question: It is said that because of You, as Jesus Christ, we were forgiven. Does that mean You could not forgive us before then? This does not make sense.

God’s answer:

God in a kneeling position. He holds a whip with His left hand; and His right hand is on His heart.

Meaning: To understand what God means by forgiveness is to understand how God defines forgiveness. True forgiveness is to give someone an absolution, a complete and total pardon.

Absolution is the full restoration of a situation before the offense was done. However, a full restoration is only possible when the offender has truly changed his/her way. True forgiveness is the saying “it never happened.” And the only way this can be achieved is when the very reason why forgiveness is even necessary no longer exists and the offense will never be repeated.

Why is this important? Even if a person forgives another, if the person forgiven has not changed and still commits the same offense, then a clean slate is never established. It’s just a vicious cycle where the one offended keeps on forgiving and the one asking for forgiveness keeps offending.

Therefore, forgiveness is not about God letting go of his perceived anger, disappointment, hurt, etc. - that’s not even necessary. God’s forgiveness is our complete restoration as the holy children of God, the removal of everything that causes us to sin and consequently to be saved from everything that we would have had to endure as a consequence.

The consequence of our sins is not “the punishment of God” but the “natural consequence” that results from sinning. Like right now, we are experiencing the “punishment” of sin both in the kind of people we are (our character), the imperfections of our world, the imperfections in our life and the absence of a close relationship with God. The results of these imperfections are the experience of discontent, madness, suffering, sadness and misery in varying degrees.

The way He could achieve this is by putting Himself in our position, conquering what we cannot, and in the process create the path by which we can be restored to the perfect state that He always meant for us to be. This is how God forgave us. This is a kind of forgiveness that only God can give.

This is why He, as Jesus, allowed Himself to be persecuted and killed as if He was the most heinous criminal there is, so much so that he was seen as being worse than Barabbas. At that time, He carried “all the sins of the world” and was punished as such. God shouldered everything we and the world endure as a result of sin (past, present and future)... to the point of true death...and defeat it.