Forgiveness

We must be willing to receive God's forgiveness. Matthew 18 tells us that God will forgive us only as we have forgiven others. This is not merely so that we get our just desserts. One who has not learned to forgive others is incapable of accepting someone's forgiveness of himself. We must accept God's forgiveness if we are to enter heaven, for it is only through His mercy that we may be worthy of His presence. If we have not learned to forgive, however, then how can we understand His forgiveness of us? We will hold our sins to ourselves and not let Him take them away, because we do not understand how or why He would want to. We must learn to forgive others--allow God to teach us how--in order to allow God to forgive us and remove our sins from us as the east from the west.