Human forgiveness can be real and meaningful, but it’s often fragile—affected by emotions, memory, doubt, or changing circumstances. We may forgive and still struggle with resentment, or forgive today and reopen the wound tomorrow. In that sense, it can feel incomplete or unstable.
When forgiveness is understood as coming from God and given by God, it’s often described as:
Grounded in grace, not earned or negotiated
Objective, not dependent on human feelings
Lasting, because it rests on God’s character rather than human consistency
From that perspective, divine forgiveness doesn’t just mirror human forgiveness—it completes it. Human forgiveness may heal relationships, but divine forgiveness addresses guilt, reconciliation, and restoration at a deeper level. Some traditions would say that when forgiveness is received as a gift of grace, it becomes “solid and real” precisely because it’s not something we have to keep proving or maintaining ourselves.
Others might add that human forgiveness still matters—but it’s strongest when it flows from that divine gift rather than trying to replace it.
All that
comes apart when you think of the implications of what the Bible says. It says
God’s forgiveness is final, instant and complete even for the gravest of evils.
Some say the reason is that sin will take us to Hell if we die and we will
be there forever.
So for that reason God is so liberal with mercy.
It is not mercy to forgive anybody to stop themselves from being harmed.
Forgiveness is about the wrong done - that that.
Nobody likes God’s forgiveness if there are harmful teachings behind it. All would agree that it is judgemental to surmise that a person may be asking for an everlasting life of evil and ill-will and must be treated as a project.
If you love God and God gives you all you have then you have the right to feel abused when somebody abuses God. For one to insult your mother is one insulting the person without whom you would not exist. For one to insult your mother is to insult you for she also raised and fed you. So you should suffer more when God is mocked.
That would be an obstacle to forgiving for every sin against you supposedly insults God as well. And there are sins that just mock your God.
If you believe in God as much as you say, the list of wrongs to forgive will be forty times as long as it would be if you were atheist! It is not humanly achievable. You will stop forgiving others or forgive one person randomly and not another. That is what will happen. You will reach a state of learned helplessness regarding your forgiving side.
If religion really wants you to forgive and be forgiven for your own good then what is it representing and preaching harmful doctrines about it for?
In one sense, God's promise of mercy is
too good to be true. We consider it important that it is men who are saying he
made the promise - so if he is not the fraud then they are.