Which Comes First - Repentance or Forgiveness?

On Facebook and Twitter recently I asked the following: Is repentance a prerequisite for forgiveness or the result of forgiveness? Followers of Jesus are not of one mind on this.

Here's part of the reason I ask. In the Christian Bible there is a story about the one called Jesus of Nazareth traveling through a particular Judean town - Jericho. Passing through a crowd of people who have gathered around him, Jesus picks out a particular man and invites himself to be a guest for dinner at that man's home. What Jesus did was scandalous in his culture at that time, for two basic reasons. First, the man was Jew working for officials of the Roman Empire to collect revenue for Rome. He had become rich by way of bleeding money out of his own people to feed the demands of their occupiers. Tax-collectors represented betrayal and idolatry. No one wanted association with them. Second, table fellowship carried a strong social message at that time, in that place. To dine with someone signalled approval and acceptance of that person. A collective gasp would have accompanied Jesus' public desire to share a meal with this worst kind of a sinner.

Notice, Jesus' gesture to the man came first. The tax-collector's remorse and repentance followed, as a reaction to the uncommon grace extended by Jesus, and the forgiveness implied therein. If we who follow Jesus are to be like Jesus, what does that say about the conditions and the sequence with which we offer forgiveness to others?

I'll see you around the next bend in the river. Plan to be on an actual river for an early autumn float this Friday.