Forgiveness - It's Huge Yes, and Not Diminishing It or What It's Able To Do..., but...,

 Freedom is already the byproduct of God Forgiving us when we receive His Forgiveness by Grace through Faith in Jesus Alone, Jesus Who Is Love IS Able to run ahead and Forgive Ahead of the Offense(s), Of which Love Gives Forgiveness it's Ability. And that's how you can tell if it's real forgiveness from Love or not, because real forgiveness is born out of Love or covered in Love. But the "forgiveness" that's self generated really doesn't forgive anyone and doesn't really set us free who are doing the forgiving, especially as it focuses on the offense, but far easier to accept Love from God. And His Love focuses on God Himself and we are able to receive needed Grace for the offense, Grace for the offender, and everyone else too. And also God can cause Greater Good and Greater Fruit by His Power and Love than could have happened if the offense had never happened etc..., He kind of one ups anything the enemy does, but with God, He like Ten-Ups stuff. Hopefully you are familiar with The God we are talking about. Job knew This God, and so did Paul.

  When you're praying for the other party at your own expense rather than complaining about them, when you're Loving the offender more than you're hating the offense, when you're letting God in more than you're regretting what you've lost, then Grace is likely come in to be your sufficiency, and that's usually a pretty good sign that you have had some experience with God's Grace and Forgiveness in such a way that you know you didn't change yourself, and in fact you had tried for a long time, and God had to do it for you and in you all by Himself, and you had get to the point where you gave it to Him, you yielded and He gave you more Grace, and then more. That's when we really get the message, when we realize this for all the other people too, that they can't fix themselves either, and that they too need to let God do it for them just like He did for us. But it's not a forced thing. not by us and not by God. That's when Love has to kick in, because we can't make any positive changes with force, but by Love, and that can take a long time, that's why Love Suffers Long..., because it has the ability to, whereas our flesh screams and runs when pain is realized. But Love Loves them "Through" the mess. That's when we realize that we can't change them any more than we could change ourselves, and so we depend more on God for them just like we had to learn to depend on God for ourselves and our own development. So anyway, it's God Who Works in us to Will and To Do for His Good Pleasure. So sometimes it takes a long time for God to get to us that when we let Him take us through that process, that we're far more satisfied and things work out a whole lot better when we leave Him in charge and we stop trying to take the wheel. Works out better for us and for everyone else too. 

 So when God gets a hold of us and gets to us His forgiveness, since it didn't come from us then it can have it's perfect work in and through our lives and that kind of Love moves us and moves others in ways that simply choices or human forgiveness would not be able to move. God's Love and Forgiveness is by His Spirit and is an act or function of God, and flows from or out of Love.

 Real Forgiveness is born out of Love, and is a byproduct of God Loving us in such a way that we have let Him in, and He is making Himself at Home, (in a good way). So when God said that if we don't forgive others, He won't forgive us, that really means that we haven't really received His forgiveness yet to the extent that Grace is involved as a Free Gift of God. So if we're having trouble forgiving others or ourselves, that usually means that we're barking up the wrong tree, because we're trying to do in our flesh by our own choices in our own strength by the Law, something that is Spiritual and comes from The Spirit of God to us and through us. So the problem of un-forgiveness is about the same as unbelief, the self will trying to be God instead of letting God be God. And is most likely that we see ourselves or others as somehow "earning" something or trying to "earn" something from God and that's impossible. Or maybe it's because of justifying self rather than letting Jesus justify us by Himself. These only frustrate the Grace of God and puts that Grace at arms length rather than it taking over the space. And keeps Grace from running the race because we keep pushing Grace away trying to run the race ourselves in our own strength. Ask Paul about how cool it is to just let Grace run the race. Paul knew he didn't deserve anything good from God. So it is with all of us. The Only Exception is Jesus Who didn't deserve anything deserving of what He got and what was given up by Him, yet He became sin for all of us, so that we could have all His Life in exchange. So when we let Him (Jesus) in, He begins to set some things right on the inside and then as He does that more and more, we find that the good stuff starts to flow more and more and as a consequence, we begin to see that less and less thought is going into making things happen because The Holy Spirit is continuing to focus our eyes on Jesus and we begin to realize that He's The Amazing One, and that He couldn't leave us the way we used to be, all dressed in grave clothes and having our own coverings which were rags and stained bloody at that. And over time we begin to notice that we're not who we used to be, but not of ourselves, we're finally changing for the better..., because of Jesus inside..., Then we realize there's hope for anyone and everyone else because He Lives. And when we accept Jesus Offer, we get everything, Forgiveness, Salvation "From" you know what, as well as Salvation "To" Heaven and "with" Jesus Forever.