“St. Paul offers an acceptable defense for sinners: I acted ignorantly in unbelief. God is willing to forgive us our sins which we committed in the ignorance of unbelief. St Paul is giving hope to all sinners and non-believers. God is not subject to some rule of Karma which requires the justice that every sin be paid for by the sinner. God who is love forgives sins and cancels debts, enabling all of us to be in His presence and united to Him. “This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4).” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“God does not remove the consequences of our wrongs, but He assures us of His forgiveness. The good thief dies on the cross but enters Paradise because He cried out to Christ to remember him. In the same vein, the Church Fathers teach us that we must not despair of receiving forgiveness from God….Even if you are not what you should be, you should not despair. It is bad enough that you have sinned; why in addition do you wrong God by regarding Him in your ignorance as powerless…He will receive your repentance.” (Dynamis 9/3/2020, Saint Peter of Damascus)
“…sin can also be understood to mean sin which retains its force right up to the moment of death, and those who are born of God do not commit that kind of error. David, for, example, confessed to having committed mortal sin, for how else can we regard such things as adultery and murder? But David was also born of God and because he belonged to that fellowship he did not sin up to his death, because when he repented he was regarded as worthy to receive forgiveness.” (St. Bede)
“But what if I don’t even want to forgive? What do I do then? I heard a wise nun once say, “If you can’t forgive, then at least want to forgive. And if you don’t even want to forgive, at least want to want to forgive. And if you don’t even want to want to forgive, then at least want to want to want to forgive.” You get the idea. God will accept a start, even if the start is very far from where you need to be. Like the prodigal son in a foreign land, you begin where you are and start walking. And as the Father rushed out to meet the prodigal son, God will rush out to accept our small attempts to move toward forgiveness.” (Fr. Michael Gillis)
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”—obedience requires forgiving others, which is imitating Him, and being forgiven depends on being forgiving….Jesus insists on mutual forgiveness between people as a precondition of God's forgiveness. Those who do not forgive are not forgiven—period. This teaching is repeated in the parable of the unforgiving servant (18:21–35), which concludes with the same teaching. To not forgive others is to willfully flee from the forgiveness of God for ourselves.” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, Orthodox Study Bible, Matthew 6:14-15)
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