Love
Love is complicated and entails many qualities: unconditional, joy, eternity, sacrifice, peace, love, saved, Jesus, everlasting, truth, grace, mercy, Spirit, salvation, sin, faith, kindness, compassion, affection, etc. In a form of Call and Response: God initiates love by extending love to us and that enables us to respond by returning that love to Him and then also extending that love to others. Love entails faith because the circumstances of life may obscure all the ways in which we are loved (by God or by others) but faith allows us to rest in God and be thankful for that love. If we love God then we will love his other image-bearers (love your neighbor as yourself).
References: 1 Corinthians 13:4-7; Matthew 22:37-39
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is an act of love. When we forgive, we deliberately and intentionally release the weight of a wrongful act that we commit or that someone committed against us. Forgiveness is not constrained by whether the act was intentional or not. Not forgiving wrongful acts allows hate, resentment, guilt or other ill emotions to weigh within us causing harm to our bodies and/or our souls.
If we receive forgiveness for an act we have done, that does not mean that we do not suffer consequences. God intends consequences to be discipline and not punishment, however that does not mean that consequences imposed by humans do not include punishment. God saved Israel from slavery in Egypt, but because most of the adults did not accept God’s offer of rest in the Promised Land, those adults suffered the consequences of not resting in that land, rather they died in the wilderness. Israel did enter the Promised land, but it was the next generation.
Note: God did not break his promise when the adults who left Egypt did not enter the promised land. This is what God promised: * Abram will become a great nation and that all peoples on earth will be blessed through him. (Gen 12:1-3) * that Abraham’s offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky (Gen 15:4) * that Abraham’s descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, enslaved, mistreated and that the fourth generation your descendants will come back to Canaan. (Gen 15:13-16) * Abraham would be father of many nations, kings would come from him, Canaan will be an everlasting possession (Gen 17:4-8) * covenant reaffirmed: (Gen 22:17-18) * covenant reaffirmed to Isaac (Gen 26:2-5) * covenant reaffirmed to Jacob (Gen 28:13-15; 35:10-13) then God told Moses that He will bring Israel out of Egypt and bring them to the Promised Land (Ex 3:7-10, 16-22; 6: 6-8).
References: Ephesians 4:32 32; Colossians 3:13; Matthew 6:14-15; 18:21-22
Transcendent Touched 