Can God Forgive Anything I Do?

by Chika Onyenkezor
(Lagos, Nigeria)

Does God forgive every sin? Now I need God to forgive my sin of the past.

Answer: Yes, Chika God can and will forgive any sin. The really good news is that He already has forgiven your sins of the past. There is a sense in which He has even forgiven your future sins.

What most people (and even most theologians don't know) is that forgiveness, in the Bible, is translated from different original words some of which refer to the act on the part of the forgiver (the one doing the forgiving) of giving forgiveness and some of which refer to the reception of that forgiveness by the one being forgiven (the forgivee). God never withholds forgiveness from us.

He always still loves us (Think of the words of the children's song: "Jesus loves me when I'm bad even though it makes Him sad.") and wants us to understand that. The problem we have is that we have been so misinformed about the character of God that we believe He is mad at us when we sin and will not forgive and smile on us again unless we meet certain conditions.

For more details on forgiveness including what those original Hebrew and Greek words are, see the full study on forgiveness.