Why did God forgive our sins?

Of course. He was there to observe them disobeying him at the same moment he created them. According to the mechanism of his knowing I'm applying.Had they obeyed then he would have been there to see that to - before he created them.His observing what is happening doesn't mean what happens is determined to happen
Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Of course. All the way to your dying breath. That would depend on whether you stand before God in Christ or in Adam. If the former no, if the latter that fact will be the least of your worries.

In Adam / In Christ are positions you can occupy. Consider them conveyor belts you are placed upon. And you can only be on one or the other. The one conveyor leads to death and the other to life. To be in Adam is to be as you were born, an unredeemed sinner being conveyed along towards eternal death. To be in Christ is to be a redeemed sinner which means you have been removed from the death conveyor and have been placed, irrevocably, on the life conveyor. Once on that conveyor eternal life has already begun.To remain in Adam means you arrive before God to receive Gods judgement pronounced on you. Although I have no idea as to what that might be like and won't be finding out, the mere thought of being faced with a holy God whilst in possession of my sin makes my own blood run cold. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy - if I had one.What do you have to do to get into Christ? Nothing at all. God does all the work. If you don't get into Christ? You resisted God's attempt to get you to the point where he would place you into Christ. A practical example of such resistance would be to persist in your denial that at your core there is something disturbingly rotten about you.

Rebels have no place in the kingdom of God. This 'price you pay' is the spinners way of describing the sense behind ceasing your illegitimate rebellion. And being thankful that you aren't squashed like a bug.You ever heard about the wrath of God poured out on mans wickedness. The Bible is as full of that as it is his love. God says murder is something he doesn't like. Murder is not yellow. That Gods reason for stating something is sinful strikes you as ludicrous is neither here nor there. Your not in a position to know the full reasoning and consequences. He is.Your piddly attempt to pitch the worth of your opinion against someone who pulled the universe together would be laughable were it not so descriptive of sinful man at work.Stand back and take a look at yourself man. God didn't create paedophiles. He created the potential that people would turn themselves into paedophiles. Perhaps I was waiting around for something other than the assertion "If you know beforehand then it's a foregone conclusion". Let's play ping pong instead then: "If you know beforehand it's not necessarily a foregone conclusion" Exactly. The forgiven party doesn't have to do a thing, the forgiver pays.The only issue we are differing on is the timing of the forgiveness. It occurs after the rebellion is over - for you don't forgive people you are currently warring with. If they surrender you can either extract payment for their illegitimate deeds or you can forgive them their illegitimate deeds. God forgives the illegitimate deeds of rebels who can be convinced to surrender. He doesn't forgive the illegitimate deeds of those who refuse to surrender and fight to the death. You can't forgive dead men. You studiously avoided all reference to the rebellion picture and the place of forgiveness in it. I've repeated it for you to consider a second time round.

So were do you park that knowledge? Arrogance tends to point to oneself as the source of confidence. I point to Christ. I did nothing to get myself into Christ. Absolutely not one thing. I'm not all that sure that comprehension of all this has a whole lot to do with it. It all happens at heart level. Not head. You don't comprehend your way into the kingdom. You are placed in the kingdom by God and begin to comprehend it.I've no idea what happens with babies because the Bible is silent on it as far as I can tell. But babies have a heart too and I'm sure God sees it.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

I wasn't referring to the goodness or badness of a persons heart when I said that God sees it. The heart would be that which sits (hierarchially) at the head of a person, under it's command comes the mind and under the minds command comes the body. That you could see the produce of my heart as they manifest through my actions and cannot see the produce of a childs heart (whose mind and body are not yet in a position to produce) doesn't mean God cannot see a childs heart.Hold in your mind that fact that we are created in eternity, and that all eternal beings (and their hearts) are the same age.The very first thing I can retro-remember about the day after the night I was born-again was this deep sense that "everything is going to be alright somehow". Like really alright in a way that didn't refer to the day to day troubles I might face this day or the next. I didn't at all connect it with a prayer I had prayed to an unseen and unbelieved in God the night before. It was only over the following weeks that the connection dawned on me. Granted I had prayed to this God-of-the-Bible God. But the prayer itself wasn't a magic potion - it was a vehicle for expressing something I had become convinced of. Something a primative person in some rain forest somewhere could equally become convinced of. And something for which a suitable-to-location vehicle of expression could be provided for - by God.They too could awake with the sense that "everything was going to be alright somehow" without ever hearing more about who was behind the sense so provided to them. And how could they be expected to know, unless someone tells them - asked Jesus.Good question It's not so much a question of what you need. It's a question of what God needs to convince you. He has various tools and one of them is the written aspect of the gospel. Remembering that the world was spoken into existance and that Jesus is described as The Word, Gods word is not just any old word. A verse in the book of Romans converted a Roman Catholic monk called Martin Luther for instance.But if that's not your thing (and for many unbelievers the Bible is just dull and as impenetrable as dirty dishwater) God has other means.Punishment and reward? Well the gospel is good news. And the only thing that makes it good is the bad news it dispels - for those who believe. So you have to give the bad news as well as the good in order to present an actual gospel. It's not fair to folk to talk about "buddy Jesus and what a friend he wants to be to you". Like, if you want plain speaking about the indescribable horror that awaits those he would dearly like to save then you'll find no one talking about it more than "buddy Jesus"

Not at all moving the goalposts. Just describing where it is they are for you. You've been off singing from another hymn sheet, you see.Your surrendering is something God manages to achieve through his efforts. Given that you are brought to your knees and rendered powerless to resist any longer by his outsmarting you, you shouldn't see his forgiveness as conditional upon you doing anything. He defeats you. Then forgives you.And if he doesn't manage to defeat you? Well, you can pat yourself on the back for a job well done. You win and get what you held out to the bitter end for. An eternal existance without God.He's fair is God. He lets you have your way if you insist. Parents will love there heroin addict son but they cannot, for the good of the rest of the household, permit him to live in the family home. The forgiveness for money stolen and hearts broken awaits. But cannot be delivered until the son repents. There is no talking to a heroin addict - they can't receive forgiveness in the state they are in.Forgiveness would just float uselessly in the air until such time as its picked up by the recipient It's not remotely like saying that at all.Enough.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

No doubt I did. Except this time the 'feeling' stayed for good. That never happened before. 6 years is a long time for a feeling to persist.- Love God? I wish I could say that. Perhaps with a small part of my heart, soul and mind.What is love? Because if love is a feeling then I can say that I feel love for what God represents and for what God does for me and others. But love him himself - like I love my fiance herself? I can safely say I don't love him that way. Although that lack is a thorn in my side.I remember reading someones prayer soon after I became a believer. It went ...Lord I don't love you
I don't even want to love you
But I want to want to love you.And it fit me to a tee. 6 or so years on I can safely say that the middle line has shifted a little. There are times I do really want to love God. It's a slow process though. Sure, but slow.- Sanity dictates that you doubt as you do. The only thing that would convince you of my case would be God demonstrating his existance to you in no uncertain terms.Nothing less should do.

Globally speaking there are three different positions we can be in w.r.t. God:- with God fully- without God fully- with/without God partially.Pointing to the simplistic, but not-all-too-far-from-the-mark example of " darkness is the absence of light, cold is the absence of warmth, evil is the absence of good" consider that this life to best reflect the latter of the three.Life: a kind of middleground, where joy and horror are constant (potentially at least) bedfellows. Us in the middle, experiencing both at a moments interval.Rather than consider Hell as literal hellfire and brimstone, as a type of torture chamber we are thrown into, you might begin to consider Hell as a place where every aspect, angle and scent of God is absent. Taken for granted, granted, but it's Gods blessing that enables all people the ability to enjoy things, he pours out sunshine on the righteous and unrighteous alike. It's his general provenance that allows us all to take pleasure in comfort, to thrill at love of sons, to find succour in companionship.To imagine the environment of Hell you only have to imagine Gods withdrawal from issuing forth in the above way. To withdraw all of himself means withdrawing that which sustains these abilities in us. For example...Your relationship with your son is based in part on an ability to place another first. That's a gift from God to you which counters what sin in you would tend towards. More than counters in this case - bursts forth and dispels what sin would have you do. If your son stays awake all night crying and annoys you, self-sacrifice steps in to repair the momentary damage. Love for him (and the thrill of enjoyment for you in loving him) can continue. What sustains you is your conscience, your patience, your ability to love him - all abilities blessed to you by God. Abilities he is under no obligation to issue to you. God owes you nothing.Imagine that ability withdrawn from you and you can only sink into annoyance and hate for your son. God and his effect on you will have departed. All that remains is sin in you, an infection tending you towards self-importance and selfishness and the demand that your enjoyment, your priorities, your quiet evening watching the footie come first.So is the dilemma answered, whereby the heaven-bound can look upon their hell-bound wives, husbands and children without being tormented by that sight. It would seem an impossible conundrum to resolve were it not for the fact that the Hell-bound will have been stripped of that element of God which formerly shone forth from them. God shining through them was what made them attractive at all - as sunlight through a stained glass window. Without light, they are a shadow of their former selves, as lovable and attractive as corpses.Shadow is that which reflects no light - for the light which shines in us all, in this life, will have departed for good. You are left on your own. In shadow, in a Hell of your own design.(Not that it is for me to say that any man is beyond redemption but I personally believe it is as possible to go past that point in this life as it is to be saved at the moment of your dying breath. I know a person who was in the team of psychologists who first interviewed Peter Suthcliffe (the yorkshire ripper) after his capture and arrest. Well experienced in his field, this unbeliever confessed to having been completely unnerved by eyes "in which the light of humanity was completely extinguished". A dead man walking?)- The people who will be lost are the people described in the Bible as "refusing to love the truth". Specifically, refusing to submit to the truth that God attempts to reveal to a person about themselves. It's not a subtle, religious thing. It's as plain as the nose on your face if prepared to admit to it. We're bad at core.Everyone will admit to failings, but the tendency is to immediately soften the self examination with ones good points. One's 'redeeming features". Take me: "He's a bit of an arrogant git, but he's a damn good engineer" it could be said by many of me. What God attempts to do is to stick with the truth alone. To concentrate on that which would keep me from being as I need to be to be in his presence. Look at the sin-infected bad, not the God-given good. But such exposure is painful for sinners. Sin within urges us to run from truth as werewolves urge to run from light.What God looks to is yearning in a sinful heart to be other than sinful. A yearning which desires to walk in goodness and light but despairs over and over again about its own love of dark thoughts, words and deeds. Religion asks a man to combat his evil lusts, to suppress them, to conquer and master them. Religion is of satan for we all know that we are not able to conquer completely. God doesn't ask any such thing - for to ask such a thing of a sinful man is to ask of him the impossible. Instead God permits man to fall evermore into depravity in order that man conclude for himself that "I am lost without God-knows-what"But it cannot be so that a man cannot refuse to love this truth about man. Man is permitted the ability to wriggle free from that which would convince him. To deny to the end that he is a hopeless sinner. To refuse to turn to the one person who can resolve his problem for him. Namely God.A man doesn't have to do anything to save himself. He need only conclude that his thirst is desparate and no more. It's God's job to lead that horse to water.- As I say, I'm pretty sure Heaven will be filled with people of all nations, pre-Christ and post-Christ, heard of Christ/didn't hear of Christ, heard of Christ per Islamic view / heard of Christ per Hindu view / etc.Your barking up a tree of the wrong kind of detail. The issue is totally personal and is between you and God. No one gets to hide behind a religion.Remember the garden and Gods request of man that he come and face God. So is it with all of us. Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Unsurprisingly, I accept your lack of acceptance.Salvation doesn't approach full frontally. Looking back afterwards you'd see that you began (assuming you ever begin) to notice an unbearable clash between that which you find yourself loving doing (if not managing to do it as frequently as you would love to) and that which you find yourself hating yourself for doing (if not managing to do it as infrequently as you would love to)- Although brought up about as far from Religion as one could hope to be brought up, the above sentiment was formulated thus to the JW/Mormons that called to my door. "What about the people who could never hear your 'truth'?" It was the swiftest way a combative young iano could conquer.These days I invite them in I don't know about other gods but God of the Bible doesn't seem to be hiding the fact he can save all men under a bushel.- Hey, ICANT. What about all the people who lived before Christ. Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel .. Abraham, etc.Can they not have been saved because they didn't/couldn't "accept Christ as Lord and Saviour"?Edited by iano, : No reason given.

The reference to rebellion merely indicated the timing of the forgiveness. That is, transgressions forgiven after the rebellion has been crushed. By all means complain that the timing be otherwise and to your liking. Not that I see how that in any way negates forgiveness as it happens to be made available. Nor that the forgiver is the one that pays for the transgression,Your position seems to consist of a rebel demanding forgiveness whilst at the same time desiring to continue on with the fight. Does that not strike you as an impossible thing before breakfast?Forgiveness always does involve the forgiver paying - in our realm and Gods. By all means provide any commoner garden example of forgiveness whereby the forgiver doesn't end up paying for the 'offence'/effects of the 'offence' - and I'll eat my hat.Gods existance outside time merely refutes the common objection which attempts to implicate God in our free choices (which I'm assuming fallen man does have only for the sake of argument).

The rebellion will be finished one way or the other so 'after' isn't precise enough a termForgiveness comes to those who God manages to squeeze a surrender out of. After they surrender the rebellion is over and forgiveness follows. It is worth noting that surrender is something achieved due to Gods action. God (in a manner of speaking) getting a grip and squeezing so hard that a person is compelled to yell "I surrender" is not that person paying so much as a red cent.For those who manage to evade Gods grip? Their rebellion ends at their death - they fought to the very bitter end and there is no forgiveness available to them. Only Gods wrath. God is wrath as well as love Legend.- Rebellion began with Adam. Forgiving Adam his sin could only occur after Adams rebellion was over. Perhaps that happened - if so, that's a matter for God and Adam. That doesn't resolve Adams offsprings problem however - anymore than my rebellion ending solves the problem for any future children I may have.- And so it is with faith alone salvation (not that there is any other type). There is nothing to be 'put up' anything for the forgiveness. God gives it for free, there being nothing one has to do to get it (see surrender being squeezed out of you above - which eliminates notions of surrender being something you have to "do")'Getting it' is an ongoing affair too. I don't need to "do" anything to retain my righteous-in-Gods-sight-position before God. In Gods presence I shall be - irrespective of what sin I commit between now and the day I die.- I'd say unable - and for a very simple reason. There is the case of the window breaker insisting on paying for the window himself. Would you agree that the window breaker is entitled to attempt to pay for the damage himself? That God can't go around forcing people to accept his paying their bills?Certainly, his doing so would be incompatible with this notion of free will which we're (I'm assuming) assuming exists for the sake of argument.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Not at all.You could attempt to convince the window breaker that his actions are evil;, to show the damage, to show the injuries, to show the waste. A person can be brought to realise that evil resides in them without resorting to the measures you describe. Of course a person can refuse to be convinced and will be eventually beaten to death by the house owner. The window breaking will cease one way or the other; either you'll be convinced to stop or the house owners patience will run out and he'll come an beat you to a pulp.Gods sovereignty and reign are the prime concern here - not your life or where you spend it in eternity. Do you not think that Gods just wrath will be as satisfied pouring itself out on you in Hell as his love would be pouring itself out on you 'in Heaven'. Wherever you end up Legend, God is satisfied.- It's not 'if you don't believe in God'. It's 'if you won't believe God'- Seeing as no one can accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour without Gods action enabling them to accept that, I can't see any place for your doing anything. His action enabling you is his doing. You do nothing.Besides, it's after the point of your being saved that you believe in Christ as your saviour. Maybe only a moment after, even.Deciding your going to accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour off your own bat won't achieve a person anything. No more than me calling myself Dr. iano makes me a doctor.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

1) Grace (an exclusively Christian position)2) Works (all world Religions operate thus, including works based Christianity)3) I'm not sure that this is a Christian position

Dovetail is the preferred term