I should have made it clear, but I’m really only interested from those who truly understand God and the Bible. Not to sound pretentious, but you don’t understand the Bible, fren. I don’t want to make this into a sermon, but I’ll explain because I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to bash you personally so much as point out a fact. There is no “God of the Old Testament” and separate “God of the New Testament”. Again, not bashing you for thinking this because many do. I myself wrestled with this concept for a long time until I finally understood that it wasn’t God who changed, but man’s circumstances on the earth that changed. Most (if not all) human sin is directly inspired or compelled by demonic entities. That especially goes for the most egregious of sins, IE those specifically forbidden in the Ten Commandments. This is a premise, which if you don’t accept it, then the rest doesn’t make sense… Ok so here’s the thing: deliverance (from demonic entities) wasn’t available prior to Christ’s arrival. So, when a demonic entity would take hold of a person in the Old Testament, the only way to stop that sin dead in its tracks and keep it at bay..IE, keep it from spreading amongst the tribe, was to kill that person straight out. Because they couldn’t be delivered otherwise..because Christ hadn’t yet come and then sent the Holy Spirit to the earth.. men hadn’t yet been given the authority to drive the entities out. Because that authority couldn’t be given by anyone but Christ, and not until he had arrived to fulfill his mission. It’s the very reason why in the Old Testament they stoned adulterers, and yet Christ saved the adulterous woman from being stoned. It’s because just his mere presence drove that demon away and also convicted the woman into repentance. Hopefully that makes sense. There’s more to it all, but that’s the cliff’s notes version. It’s not taught in most churches because most pastors don’t even understand the Bible. Ok so back to the actual issue at hand here… My confusion on the issue of forgiveness has nothing to do with and Old Testament god vs a New Testament god. It has to do with the idea that the word says “forgive those who wrong you as God forgives you.” “As God forgives you” being the key phrase..which begs the question “well then, how does god forgive you”? According to the Bible, God will forgive those who accept Christ, confess their sins, and repent. Those three things are *required* and not optional. However, most accepted Christian theology touts that we should forgive regardless of a confession or apology from the offender in question, which is not what even God himself does since a confession and repentance are *required* by him. Did I say required? Yes, required. As in, *not optional*. So then, it seems as if God holds us to an even higher standard than himself. So either he does (which I find hard to believe), I’m missing something as it relates to forgiveness and need to learn it, or we aren’t actually required to forgive an unaccountable, unrepentant offender. My problem here is I’m not sure which of the three is the truth.