Why Forgiveness Requires a Multi-Personal God

In conversations about the nature of God and forgiveness, I’ve often heard it said that only God can forgive sins. But rarely do we stop and ask:

what does it actually take for God to forgive sins?

If we take Jesus’ life and teachings seriously, the answer goes far deeper than many realize.

Let’s start with something Jesus did regularly: teach in parables. His approach wasn’t to give abstract metaphysical definitions. Instead, He painted pictures—metaphors, analogies, and stories that revealed spiritual realities through the fabric of ordinary life. Even when asked directly, like when John the Baptist sent messengers to confirm if Jesus was the Messiah, He didn’t respond with a straight yes or no. He pointed to His works: the blind see, the lame walk, the poor have the gospel preached to them.

The pattern is clear. Jesus expected His disciples to infer truth from His actions—to understand spiritual realities by paying attention, thinking deeply, and letting those truths be revealed not just intellectually, but spiritually.

And this same pattern applies to how we understand forgiveness.

What Forgiveness Actually Involves

A careful study of Jesus’ teachings, especially His parables, reveals several foundational truths:

1. Sin is the failure to love in a properly ordered way.

2. That failure causes separation—between people, and ultimately from God.

3. This separation is what Scripture calls “death.” (This is why the wages of sin is death.)

4. Physical death is a metaphor for this deeper, spiritual separation.

5. Forgiveness, as Jesus describes it, is like the forgiveness of a debt. But when a debt is forgiven, it doesn’t just disappear—the one who forgives absorbs the cost.

6. In spiritual terms, the currency is love.

7. Our debt is the result of failing to love God as He deserves.

8. So for God to forgive our sins, He must absorb the cost—the separation—that we rightfully earned.

9. But that means that God must, in some sense, experience separation from Himself. And that is only possible if God is multi-personal.

This leads us to the cross. Jesus’ physical death wasn’t just a tragic execution. It was a metaphor—an outward sign of a much deeper spiritual reality. On the cross, Jesus bore the weight of sin, and in doing so, He experienced separation on our behalf. He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Not because the Trinity was metaphysically broken, but because in that moment, He was stepping into the full consequence of our sin: separation from God.

That kind of forgiveness—where God Himself bears the relational cost—requires a God who is more than one person. Only a multi-personal God can forgive in this way. Only within the inner life of the Trinity can separation be experienced without division, and reconciliation be offered without contradiction.

Jesus Wasn’t Just a Man with Divine Authority

Some argue that Jesus was simply a man given divine authority. But Jesus’ own actions suggest otherwise. He didn’t just wield authority—He embodied it. He didn’t just forgive sins as a prophet; He bore them as God. And in doing so, He taught us not just who God is, but how divine authority behaves.

Jesus was showing us what it looks like when God forgives: it costs something. It requires love. It requires separation. And it reveals that the God who forgives is not alone—but is eternally Father, Son, and Spirit.