does repentance have to be genuine? or as long as you believe in jesus' crucifixion and repent anyhow your forgiven?
and see if a crime is commited against another human being (like assault), then how can it be just to the victim if the sinner is to just walk free even if hes genuinely sorry?
well thats a QFT if i ever saw one.
am i to understand from your edit that asking for forgiveness is not required. simply belief in the crucifixion of jesus ?
I don't know what you mean by QFT, so I can't speak to that.
If you understand "belief" as some sort of head knowledge, then the answer is NO. I'm sure that Pontius Pilate believed in the crucifixion of Jesus. So, that is not what we mean. Belief is an attitude of trust, and that requires living in a relationship. In relationship things must indeed be genuine. We mean that you have to trust in the efficacy of what Christ did, that in Christ God is acting to create a new way of living. And then if one enters into that new way, it will of course be expressed in one's life. The key is that one lives out this new relationship that one has with God in and through Jesus Christ. It finds experssion in all that one does.
(Those who don't like long answers should stop right here, because it is going to get long and involved.)
The key is that one lives out this new relationship that one has with God in and through Jesus Christ. It finds experssion in all that one does. One recognizes that "God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36). This statement declares several things, but chief among them is that we recognize Jesus as Lord. This is a term that as used in this context was a direct confrontation with the empirial concept that Ceasar was "Lord of all."
The proclamation of Jesus as the Christ is to say that he is the Jewish Messiah who brings in the culmination of a new eschatological era in which God is going to set all things right. The proclamation of him as Lord is to say that Ceasar is NOT Lord. Ceasar in NOT in control of this world. God is in control. And in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, we have one who has come to reorder the systems of this world into one that reflects not the petty squabblings of people, each bent on their own various agendas, desires, and even vices. But rather we are called to live lives that give evidence of lives that place God at the pinnacle of all we give allegiance to and all we seek. God grants that when we make Jesus #1 in our lives that he receives it as making him #1.
Because we are united to one another in God through Jesus, there are to be no more divisions between us based on things like age, sex, nationality, ethnicity, or (dare I say) even creed. God is claiming all of us, whether we like it or not. Make something else in your life more important than your allegiance to God and his claims on your life (in Islamic terms, be unsubmissive) and you are resisting not just the law of God, but God himself. Those who resist are in a state of rebellion, and such rebellion will be dealt with as all rebels have always been dealt with. But lay down your arms, quit being in rebellion, and there is a place for you.
Now, what you mention about the injustice of God forgiving what I have done to another is a good question. But we have to begin by remembering that any injustice done to another person is once again evidence of our rebellion against God. We need to quit that status. AND we also need to go and seek reconcilation with those that we have hurt along the way. In our human relationship this might require reparations or even more. But in terms of our relationship with God, it means we need to get back on track with doing the right thing AND doing it for the right reason.
Curiously, despite the preaching of many evangelists, that reason is not to selfishly seek our own salvation (that is a consequence of doing the right thing, but it should not be the motivation for it); the reason we do the right thing is to glorify God and lift up his name. As we live lives fully submitted to God and his will, we bring glory to him. He is the be all and end all and ultimately the only reason for our existence. We should never make salvation about us, but should make it about God. Only when we honor and serve him, and truly live with him as the one and only LORD of our lives, can we say that we are living in the relationship with him that he wants to have with us.
So, that precludes the conditions that you speak of where a person decides that they shall "believe in Jesus" and then go about doing whatever they want. Such a person is fooling themselves. He/she is NOT a Christian. Of course, even those who truly desire to live the godly life connected with God through Christ are going to stumble and fall. It is with regard to these people that have a heart set for God, but that still find themselves not perfectly living the holy and righteous life that God calls us to, that we remember that Christ died for all of our sins. So, we remember that we are forgiven (pre-forgiven if you want), confess our sins, and repent by returning back to living holy lives offered to God. But this in no way should be understood as a license to sin, for every sin is grevious to God and is the moral equivalent of crucifiying Christ again. Christians need to understand that while God's grace is freely available to us, the act of making it available to us cost him dearly. We, therefore, cannot live as if are free to do whatever we want, for that would be to deny that Christ is indeed Lord of our lives.
