freeborn | ἐλεύθερος | 8r0gwg on Nostr: (Nice to meet you, Virtus) I think you're each emphasizing an important aspect of the ...

(Nice to meet you, Virtus (npub1xg4…ryqf))

I think you're each emphasizing an important aspect of the overall process/act of forgiveness (as I noted above). There is a 'heart-work' aspect of forgiveness, and there is a pronouncement/communication/judicial act aspect as well. The heart-work is necessary, it's a command, and it forces us to consider for how much we've been forgiven (Matthew 18:21ff). The 'communication' of it is also necessary, but conditioned upon the genuine request. Sometimes the offending party doesn't ask, doesn't care to be reconciled, doesn't admit they've done wrong. "As much as it lies _within you_, be at peace with all men." Sometimes it doesn't lie within us, so that 'communication' / granting of forgiveness can't happen. But it must be stored up, 'at the ready,' to pour out over the offender like a cleansing and refreshing waterfall--'that we may be children of our father in heaven.' It was to this internal aspect that I was mainly pointing in my original note: "forgiveness is setting a prisoner free only to realize the prisoner was you." That's true--but not the whole story. Forgiveness is for us, and it's for them: it's setting two prisoners free.

I appreciate Virtus's point: there _is_ a judicial aspect to forgiveness as well. We have been commanded to love one another. Justice demands that we render to each one what is due to him, namely, love. When we sin against another, there has been an injustice, that creates something of a debt--we 'owe them' an apology. "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Until we ask and are forgiven, that 'debt' hangs over our head: their forgiveness sets us free, it grants relief, it _reconciles_.

The [WCF](https://opc.org/wcf.html) is instructive here, I think:

> [XV.6](https://opc.org/wcf.html#Chapter_15). **As** every man is bound to make private confession of his sins to God, praying for the pardon thereof; upon which, and the forsaking of them, he shall find mercy; **so**, he that scandalizeth his brother, or the church of Christ, ought to be willing, by a private or public confession, and sorrow for his sin, to declare his repentance to those that are offended, who are thereupon to be reconciled to him, and in love to receive him.

Note the distilled point of this paragraph: **as** a man is bound to confess to God; **so** a man ought to be willing to confess to men; **as** he finds mercy with God upon that confession; **so** ought he to find mercy from those that are offended, upon confessing. (Both aspects are included.)