Is God's forgiveness conditional or unconditional?

I was thinking the other day about how a lot of people think that God's forgiveness is conditional because God only forgives people who want His forgiveness or ask for it. But I'm not sure this is entirely correct.

You could say that there are two kinds of forgiveness: conditional and unconditional.

They can be shown in this way: suppose a superior decided to make your life really difficult in your workplace and started being passive aggressive or even somewhat abusive towards you. Conditional forgiveness is that you'll forgive them if they stop bothering you, making your life hard, and so on. Unconditional forgiveness is that you'll forgive them even if they decide to be even more difficult towards you and don't care at all whether you forgive them.

What is God's forgiveness more like according to the above analogy?

If God's forgiveness is conditional, then people have to deserve or earn God's forgiveness in some way before they get forgiven. So God would be like someone who won't forgive a person if they won't stop their bad ways. Therefore, if God forgives us conditionally, then we have to 'step up' and get our act together before we get forgiven.

If God's forgiveness is unconditional, then we don't have to earn God's forgiveness in any way before we get forgiven. The forgiveness would always be extended, whether we wanted it be or not. Whether this forgiveness actually reconciles us to God would depend on whether we wanted to have a relationship with God.

Under the unconditional view, our relationship with God is more like a damaged friendship when one side wants to reconnect with the other side, but the other side doesn't want to at all. That is, I might want to talk to someone again, but nothing will happen if that person actively avoids me. And so the break, or split, continues, maybe forever. And, as you can probably guess, hell would be that broken connection lasting for an eternity, where someone doesn't interact with God in any way forever.

To continue with this view, you have to see the warnings in the New Testament not to do bad stuff as saying that people who do bad stuff don't really want to have a genuine relationship with God, rather than, 'If you do bad stuff, God will take away His forgiveness until you stop', broadly speaking.

Here are some verses on this:

Eph 2:1-5: "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved."

Col 2:13: "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,"

The theoretical and practical problems of grace

Suppose two people are having a conversation about tennis matches between the world's best tennis players and one person asks, "But what would happen if someone got to the Grand Final and instead of playing properly, they just stood on the court, with their arms frozen to their sides, and span around again and again? What would happen then?"

In a way I believe this is like asking, "What would happen if God saved someone and they decided they didn't really like God and wanted to live a life lacking in empathy?"

When God saves someone God's Holy Spirit is supposed to be in them and with them and God and the Holy Spirit are supposed to change, over a long time, people's desires regarding wrongdoing. So if this process is happening, then there should be no way that someone's fundamental orientation should be against God and towards hurting people.

Phil 1:6: And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. (NL)

The idea of someone undergoing this process deciding to abuse grace and embrace wrongdoing is a theoretical problem. It's not a practical problem. Just like in theory people in tennis Grand Slam finals can choose to spin around in circles instead of play, but in practice this is not a problem.

Another analogy might be if someone decided they really wanted to lose weight and someone organised a diet and exercise plan for them that would be really effective. Now, imagine they had the chance to eat chocolate cake every night and never exercise. They can do it, but they would ask themselves: should I, who want to lose weight, really eat these things and never exercise? Compare to Paul:

Romans 6:1-2: Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? (NL)

Paul points out that in theory Christians can do the wrong thing as much as they want and still go to heaven. But in practice, one, God has changed Christians' desires/wants so this is impossible and, two, if you love God and think being nice is a good thing, then why would you decide to ignore God and hurt people?

Why God can't just forgive sin

Forgiveness doesn't do a lot of things. For instance, it doesn't necessarily make people better. If I forgive someone for stealing from me, then I won't seek revenge, but it won't necessarily mean they'll stop stealing. So forgiveness won't necessarily make the forgiven person better.

This could be a problem for religious people if you need to be perfect to be with God. If you have to be perfect to hang out with God forever, then it raises the question: how is God's forgiveness going to make people perfect? If my forgiveness doesn't make someone who steals from me perfect, actually they could easily steal again, then how is God's forgiveness going to make a religious person perfect? Maybe the religious person will feel so grateful or remorseful that they'll never do anything wrong ever again. But experience teaches us that this is unlikely...

This is partly why Christianity teaches a type of forgiveness where forgiveness DOES make someone better. When Jesus died for us on the cross, God put our evil onto Christ, as well as the punishment for it. You can imagine all our badness, like a great pool of black sludge, being poured onto Christ on the cross. So "We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives" (Rom 6:6) and in return we will "be found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of [our] own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ (Phi 3:9). Luther called it the 'Great Exchange'.

2 Cor 5:21: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Isaiah 53:12: "Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

Unfortunately, Christians still do the wrong thing a lot because God has decided that what Jesus did for us will be fully manifested at a later date. Until then, "The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions" (Gal 5:7). In fact, in our present state, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8).

For freedom Christ has set us free

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." - Gal 5:1.

One of the 'paradoxes' of Christian teaching is that loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and loving our neighbour as we love ourselves actually sets us free rather than 'enslaves' us.

So what's going on with that? Surely loving your neighbour as you love yourself is impossibly difficult.

I think a key element in explaining why it's not some kind of 'slavery' comes from the Christian view of human nature: that when God made us He made our minds like His mind in many ways (the image of God idea). One aspect of God's mind is that it is love (1 John 4:8). So our minds were designed to be just as loving as God's. Just like God fulfills His nature through love, so do we.

We don't feel our minds are really like this (in that you can be happy without being very loving), but that can be explained as a result of people being able to create their own happiness from contradicting this system, as one of the 'powers' of free will, so we can make our own happiness from other things.

The Christian 'system' gets legitimacy because when we act according to the above described view of human nature we are actually acting according to the original 'blueprints'. Because of the 'blueprint' idea God's desire for us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is not supposed to be this horrible duty we are obligated to fulfill, but, ideally, in some way 'freeing', despite its incredible cost (1 John 5:3).

Okay, this may sound nice in theory, but how does it address the arduous nature of 'love your neighbour as you love yourself'? Why should we beat ourselves up for not following an impossible standard? As the Bible says, it is, after all, impossible to follow even though it's a legitimate standard (1 John 1:8).

One point that Christianity makes is that God just wants us to accept what Jesus has done for us on the cross and doesn't want us to beat ourselves up for failing to keep an impossible, but legitimate, standard that He knows we can't meet (trying to meet it in order to please God would actually contradict the accepting Jesus part according to Gal 5:4). Because of what Jesus has done, we won't need to try hard to follow it one day, but it will, one day, come as naturally as drinking water. I think Phil 3:9 explains some of the mechanics of how this works: "[I have given up everything to] be found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ."

Two kinds of forgiveness

The Bible describes two kinds of forgiveness, one of which is a lot more 'powerful' than the other.

The first kind of forgiveness works like this: imagine a thief who keeps stealing someone's stuff - let's say John's stuff. John is so nice that whenever the thief steals from him, he forgives the thief. But the thief never changes his behaviour. John can forgive the thief all he wants, but it doesn't deal with the thief's wrongdoing. Forgiving the thief doesn't make the thief a better person.

John's kind of forgiveness doesn't do much. John's forgiveness won't make the thief stop stealing, it will only prevent John from taking revenge or seeking justice.

If God's forgiveness is like John's forgiveness then God's forgiveness won't accomplish that much. It will do something, but it won't really deal with humanity's issues.

The second kind of forgiveness is more powerful because it changes the person who gets forgiven.

The second kind would work like this: imagine that John accepted the thief's apology and somehow took away from the thief whatever it was that made the thief ignore the badness of stealing. So the thief didn't steal again (unless there was some exception that made it OK).

The Christian view is that to solve humanity's problems, God needed the second kind of forgiveness. Otherwise people would keep doing the wrong thing and apologising for it in a never-ending cycle of wrongdoing and forgiveness.

Col 2:13: "You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins."

The Bible says that for God to use the second kind of forgiveness Jesus had to die on the cross for us (Matt 26:39). God made it so that "our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ" (Rom 6:6), and "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). Some kind of 'goodness transfer' happened.

If we have free will then why is it so hard for people to change? The 'settling' aspect to free will

People often point out, if we have free will, then why do we almost always stay the same? Introverts don't suddenly wake up and become extroverts, and evildoers tend not to become saints. As people get older and more mature there is some change, but it's hardly ever a 180 degree personality shift. Yet this should be possible if we have free will.

I think something that people often miss in free will is that it involves a really strong 'settling' ability. Part of free will is the ability not to be constantly 'up in the air' about what you're going to do, but to 'settle' your choices in a certain personality trait. So instead of 'umming' and 'ahhing' about whether to be nice, a nice person can choose to 'settle' their choices in niceness, and an evildoer can 'settle' their choices in evil, so they no longer think about changing. When we choose to 'settle' our choices and not constantly go over and rethink them, those choices become our personality that our friends easily identify (e.g. extrovert, quiet, etc.)

So free will is sort of like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering up snow. We mostly decide what personality to have when we're young, and then at some point we 'settle' into a groove and almost never change - although we theoretically can.

Perhaps free will is a little bit like a train. The front of the train is a person's values. Someone might value bravery, trust, shrewdness, being outgoing, polite, etc. There would be values corresponding to every personality and character trait. Your actions follow after your values like a boxcar after the front of the train (unless you have an unwanted personality trait, somehow). If your values change, then after a long period of time your actions change in response. It may take a while, though. That is how people change.

It should be pointed out that despite the 'settling' aspect to free will, no personality or character can be 'settled' outside of God's grace. If people are saved by grace alone, then personality and character traits (works) can't give anyone an advantage over others when it comes to accepting Jesus, or give anyone a disadvantage there, at any stage. So the only way someone could 'settle' their choices outside of God's grace is by rejecting it directly (Matt 12:31). You can't do such a thing any other way, because works (i.e. personality, character) do not earn (and thus do not block) salvation (Eph 2:8-9; Rom 11:6).

Also, God changes character, not personality. By definition, if something is personality and not character then it is neither good nor bad, but is simply the way someone chooses in a certain 'non-moral' area of their life. God is interested in changing our character, and will use all aspects of a person's personality to His glory in the body of Christ (1 Co 12:13-31).

Four areas of grace

The concept of 'grace' in Christianity includes more than Jesus taking our sins on Himself. There are at least four areas in a Christian's life that involve grace.

1. Grace in salvation

Matt 26:39: He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, "My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine."

John 19:30: When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Rev 21:6: And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.

These verses are talking about the idea of salvation as a gift. If you look at the way Christianity talks about salvation analytically, then it seems to have the following structure:

1) People are unable to treat others in the way that they would ideally like to be treated. It is simply impossible for anyone to do this, and it stops us from entering into eternal life with God
2) God solves this problem on the cross by Himself; we don't contribute at all to the solution
3) If you want to go to heaven you can either trust in your own goodness to get you there, or trust in what God has done for you on the cross. If you trust in the latter, then you will go to heaven

The concept of grace is closely linked to the concept of a free gift that you do nothing to earn. Salvation in Christianity is like this.

2. Grace in accepting salvation

Eph 2:4: But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.

Rom 11:6: But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

Let's say you have two friends, neither of whom are Christian, and one of them is arrogant and inconsiderate, and the other is as sweet as an angel. It would be very tempting only to talk about Jesus to the second person. That's because we tend to think that salvation is partly based on works. That is, if you're nice, trusting, considerate, don't think about things too much, and so on, you're more likely to become a Christian. One way of describing this attitude is that salvation is earned by having a good (or convenient) personality.

The passages above contradict such a view. They imply that God cares about everyone so much that He prevents a person's personality and character from getting in the way of their entering the Kingdom of God. God does this so effectively that no one receives an advantage from their personality and character over anyone else when it comes to accepting Christ. How does that work, you might ask? I don't know. But it's what scripture teaches.

3. Grace in producing works

Philippians 1:6: And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.

Heb 13:21: may he equip you with all you need for doing his will. May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him. All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.

When Christians do things that please God it is because of God's gift of His Son, because God has changed them and worked through them. So they are like a gift in that God ultimately has the credit (glory) for them.

4. Grace in God doing all the protective work regarding the faith of any Christian

1 Cor 10:13: No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Sometimes Christians can think of themselves as superior to those who have left the faith because of problems they have coped with. But this is not a scriptural attitude. No Christian protects their own faith, if the Bible is accurate. God is always the one doing the protecting, whenever someone's faith is being protected. Since Christians do not protect their own faith (according to the Bible) no one can boast about this. Every Christian will encounter challenges to their faith (which is meant to ultimately help Christians if they bear up under it), and the only thing that will keep it is taking the 'way out' that is mentioned above.

The gospel for people who are really, really nice

Sometimes it can be a bit hard to talk about Jesus to some people because in most of the situations they are in every day, they do the right thing. So when people hear from let's say, a fiery preacher that they are 'liars', 'haters', 'coveters' and other negative stuff they may think 'Well that may apply to some people but not really me'.

How should one think about presenting the gospel to a non-Christian who is an extremely nice, loving, self-sacrificial person who almost always looks out for the interests of others? I believe it has an added degree of difficulty that is not present if you are talking to someone who has done some really awful stuff in their life.

Here are a couple of important points to think about on this issue.

The first is that there are some people who are good enough to do the right thing in most of the situations which they are in every day. But this does not mean that they would do the right thing in really, really challenging situations. So when God looks at such a person, He sees not only that they would do the right thing on most days, but also that if they were put in a really challenging situation that they would fall short and do the wrong thing.

An example of this kind of possibility can be found from the Stanford prison experiment (link). When people do the wrong thing, it's often not that they are 'bad apples' as much as apples that have been put into 'bad barrels'. In the prison experiment, the professor got a group of normal college students together and gave some of them great power over the rest. The nasty results showed what can happen when people are put into extraordinary situations. A similar thing might be going on with the goodness we have every day versus what goodness we would have under a lot of pressure.

So when God looks at us He sees our failures in situations that haven't occurred yet, and which may never occur, but which still apply to us because it's how we would act. We shouldn't be willing to do the wrong thing in these not-yet-occurring situations, but we are. Thus, if you hate someone, you are a murderer in a situation where you have absolute power. If you lust after people other than your spouse, you are an adulterer in a possible situation. If you are tempted to lie, you are a liar in a possible situation. So God sees these potential sins, and thus we can be sinners in a pretty big way but about potential stuff rather than actual stuff.

A second point to remember is that one way you can talk about the gospel is that we are all horrible sinners and so on, but another way is a lot gentler. The point of the gospel was ultimately to get humans to hang out with God and be perfectly happy forever. Happiness in heaven is about experiencing the happiness of God. See Psalm 16:11; 36:8-9, and Romans 14:17 which says: "For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." If someone isn't willing to meet God's standards then it's hard to see how they could have access to God's happiness in the Holy Spirit. It would be hard for that person to live with the Holy Spirit, and for God to live with that person, if they don't want to meet God's standards. So the deal is: not being willing to meet God's standards = you can't experience God's happiness through the Holy Spirit, and so you can't go to eternal life.

God's standard is perfection as shown by the life of Jesus (not our own idea of perfection), and the only way to meet that standard is to accept that you can't meet it and that you need God's help. When Jesus died for us "our old self was put to death on the cross with him" (Rom 6:6a) and "It is no longer I who [faces situations where I cannot avoid sinning] but Christ ... living in me [who faces those situations and will always do the right thing]" (Gal 2:20a). Thus, anyone can meet God's standards because Jesus can do everything related to meeting God's standards in someone who accepts him, and so they don't have to worry about it at all as long as they genuinely trust Jesus.

So the gospel doesn't have to be about how everyone is a horrible, horrible sinner necessarily. Although I think that we usually overestimate how good we are, so maybe we are worse sinners than we think, even the really, really nice non-Christian. Presenting the gospel can be more like, "Well I know you're a really, really nice person, but getting to heaven isn't about being really nice. It's about being willing to meet God's standards, which is a perfect standard. Because eternal life consists in experiencing God's happiness in the Holy Spirit. And you can't experience God's happiness in the Holy Spirit if you aren't willing to meet God's standards, because the conflict between you two will be too great (or something like that). However nice you are, this is a situation that can't be gotten around. So to make it to eternal life you either need to meet God's standard, or accept you can't meet it and that Jesus took all of our wrongful intentions towards others onto himself on the cross."

A definition of grace

Christians often talk about how grace means that we don't and can't 'earn' our way into heaven.

Eph 2:8-9: "Because by grace you have salvation through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is given by God: Not by works, so that no man may take glory to himself."

Rom 11:6: "But if it is of grace, then it is no longer of works: or grace would not be grace."

Think about it. What does it mean for salvation not to depend at all on works? Are 'works' involved in salvation if people who don't care about philosophy at all are more likely to go to heaven - because they experience fewer doubts?

Are 'works' involved in salvation if someone is more likely to go to heaven should they be an incredibly trusting person who accepts whatever religious texts say? And if someone who is very cynical is less likely to go to heaven because they automatically doubt religious authorities?

Are 'works' involved in salvation if someone who is very nice is more likely to accept Christ, because following Christ is more appealing to them? Whereas someone who is an arrogant jerk is less likely to accept Christ?

My answer to all these questions is 'Yes'. I've thought about it a lot and I think that if these situations really occur then salvation has to partly involve works. Otherwise being philosophical, being cynical, and being a jerk makes it less likely you will get to heaven = salvation is partly of works.

So where does that lead us?

I think that if grace is completely grace, that this is the right definition of grace:

Grace: free will is involved, God wants everyone to go to heaven, and our personality and character traits don't put an obstacle in our way when it comes to getting into heaven, and don't give us an advantage over anyone else in that area, at any stage.

And yet, I should add, some people don't make it into heaven.

I'd rather not take Calvin's explanation given passages like Eze 33:11; John 3:16; Matt 23:37; 1 Tim 2:3-4; 2 Pet 3:9 and so on.

If you don't take Calvin's route then grace is hard, very hard, to understand from a philosophical point-of-view. I think this makes grace a lot like free will. Which makes sense if grace involves free will.

No one can get very far in explaining how 'can do otherwise' free will works. But we know that we have free will intuitively, we can act as though we have free will, and we could surely know how free will works through the Spirit, as a form of spiritual knowledge (1 Cor 2:12-14).

Similarly, we can know what grace is intuitively (like free will), we can act on the basis that we are saved by grace, and we can know how grace works through the Spirit, as a form of spiritual knowledge. But I don't know exactly how the definition I gave above (plus some people don't make it to heaven) makes sense from the point-of-view of philosophy.