Repentance and Forgiveness

Just some things I have learned about them:

One is dependant upon the other.  If we are to repent of our sins, we must forgive others of theirs.  It is easy, though, to believe in a different dependancy that does not exist.  Forgiving someone is not dependant upon their repentance.  In fact, forgiving someone has no relevance on their apology to you or anyone else, or on their own repentance. 

Why is that?  Because both repentance and forgiveness depend upon how active the atonement is in our lives.  If we refuse to forgive someone of their sin, then what we are *choosing* is to not allow the atonement to work in our own life.  If we choose that, then we put our own ability to repent aside.  It is an "all or nothing" thing.  Either we are allowing Christ to be an intregal part of our relationship with others, or we are not.  We cannot choose whether or not someone else allows the atonement to work in their life.  Hence, our choice to forgive and allow the atonement in has no relevance on someone else's choice to repent and allow the atonement to work for them. 

When Christ took upon him all sins, we became in debt to him.  Everyone did, in fact.  Which means that when someone sins against us, they become in debt to Christ, not to us.  They owe us nothing.  We all owe our eternal salvation to Christ.