The offenses that one must forgive are the offenses that affect one personally. Everyone has their own offenders...
No one is authorized to forgive those who commit offenses against other people or against God. We are not one to forgive sins; It is an authority that only corresponds to Jesus Christ, according to his role as rescuer of humans from their offenses against God.
I think you've neglected this passage, from the mouth of Jesus:
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48, NRSVue)
If God can forgive the sins of people who committed sins against other persons but not against God or Jesus specifically, then so must his followers.
Not at all. You are confusing magnesia with magnetism.
Common humans do not have the role of being judges either... Secular authorities have their own function under a divine arrangement, so human courts are in charge of judging and condemning offenders of their own laws. Human justice reflects to some degree the justice of God.
Really? What was the divine arrangement that allowed southern Whites to lynch more than 3,000 African Americans with absolute impunity between the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877 and the 1950s when federal forces were sent back into the south to enforce the Civil Rights Act?
Human laws are that: human laws. This human world is not theocratic, but is governed by the one who has authority over it: the enemy of God in the form of a spirit who distanced our first parents from God.
Eph. 2:1 Furthermore, God made you alive, though you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
2 in which you at one time walked according to the system of things of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
He shaped the world his way, and in that way he was forced to create a justice system to control it. This system reflects divine justice to a certain extent, but evidently this is not always the case.
Rom. 13:1 Let every person be in subjection to the superior authorities, for there is no authority except by God; the existing authorities stand placed in their relative positions by God.
2 Therefore, whoever opposes the authority has taken a stand against the arrangement of God; those who have taken a stand against it will bring judgment against themselves.
3 For those rulers are an object of fear, not to the good deed, but to the bad. Do you want to be free of fear of the authority? Keep doing good, and you will have praise from it;
4 for it is God’s minister to you for your good. But if you are doing what is bad, be in fear, for it is not without purpose that it bears the sword. It is God’s minister, an avenger to express wrath against the one practicing what is bad.
No person has the authority to judge or forgive sins; ...
But Jesus actually said in Matthew 6:14-15 and Matthew 18:21-23 that his followers must forgive sins! You are injecting your own notions of justice into the actual words that have come down to us through the New Testament writings.
Both passages talk about personal offenders, not about the religious practice of some "priests" to exercise some authority over the forgiveness of others' sins.
... and although he can forgive personal offenders, that does not mean that he is obliged to forget the offenses and harms that others have done to him or his loved ones, but rather that he must not take action on his own, and should hope that divine justice will act justly to condemn all evil and abusive people. That is the hope in God of the just ones.
The Bible is full of complaints to God about injustices of evil people. All Christians who have been abused by others have the right to pray to God for justice on their behalf, or to decide whether to forget the harm another has done to them. It must always be kept in mind that the justice that is demanded in one's favor is the same that will be executed in one's own case if we do the same things we condemn in others.
Although, we, Jehovah's Witnesses, have arrangements for pastors to judge certain private matters of some brothers, they cannot make their own decisions, but this is a private process organized by pastors when necessary, not to judge about trivial issues. These pastors
must be very careful to perceive whether that person has already been forgiven by God, and discipline them reflecting the judgment that It has already been decided for or against the person by the heavens.
First something is bound or loosed in heavens, and then God's servants act accordingly. That is why they must do everything possible to understand the situation objectively before reflecting on the decision already made and not precisely by them.
That is the application of this text:
Matt. 16:19 I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of the heavens, and whatever you may bind on earth will already be bound in the heavens, and whatever you may loosen on earth will already be loosened in the heavens.”
Furthermore, that kind of process is not public nor does it refer to matters in which one yourself decides to forgive personal offenders, like in these cases about personal forgiveness:
Matt. 5:23 If, then, you are bringing your gift to the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you,
24 leave your gift there in front of the altar, and go away. First make your peace with your brother, and then come back and offer your gift.
Lev. 19:17 You must not hate your brother in your heart. You should by all means reprove your fellow man, so that you will not bear sin along with him.
Prov. 25:8 Do not rush into a legal dispute, For what will you do later if your neighbor humiliates you?
9 Plead your case with your neighbor, But do not reveal what you were told confidentially,
Luke 17:3 Pay attention to yourselves. If your brother commits a sin, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.
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