In Christian circles there’s two major viewpoints of forgiveness. One
– Jesus paid the price for everyone to be forgiven, but He doesn’t
forgive until people come to Him in true repents. Two - Jesus did more
than pay the price for forgiveness, He actually forgave everyone in human
history.
The second view has two sub-views. One – we are all forgiven, and to
make this forgiveness work, we need to accept the forgiveness. Two – we
are all forgiven and since that’s been accomplished in God’s heart
there’s no need to accept the forgiveness because God has already
forgiven us all – forgiveness is unconditional. .
As a side note this second sub view point is becoming very popular
these days because it means all mankind is saved. This means that there is
no eternal punishment, something that has gained a lot of popularity of
late.
I used to believe that Jesus forgave all mankind. All that we needed to
do was to accept His forgiveness to make it effective in our lives. But I’ve
come to believe that Jesus paid the price for us to be forgiven. Once we
repent, we then our forgiven. This places the proper emphasizes on
repentance, something that has been de-emphasized of late.