The Quran

سابِقوا إِلىٰ مَغفِرَةٍ مِن رَبِّكُم وَجَنَّةٍ عَرضُها كَعَرضِ السَّماءِ وَالأَرضِ أُعِدَّت لِلَّذينَ آمَنوا بِاللَّهِ وَرُسُلِهِ ۚ ذٰلِكَ فَضلُ اللَّهِ يُؤتيهِ مَن يَشاءُ ۚ وَاللَّهُ ذُو الفَضلِ العَظيمِ

Ali Unal

And (rather than competing for the things of this world) race with one another to forgiveness from your Lord, and to a Garden the vastness of which is as the vastness of heaven and earth, prepared for those who truly believe in God and His Messengers. That is God’s bounty, which He grants to whom He wills. God is of tremendous bounty.¹

Verse 3: 133 says: And hasten, as if competing with one another, to forgiveness from your Lord, and to a Garden as spacious as the heavens and the earth, prepared for the God-revering, pious. The promise in that verse is to those who keep their duties to God and avoid all kinds of sins out of piety and reverence for God. So we can conclude that those who truly believe in God and His Messengers, whom this verse mentions, are the God-revering, pious ones – those who believe and keep their duties to God and avoid sins out of reverence for Him.
An important point in both verses to be noted is that forgiveness precedes Paradise because Paradise is the place of perfect purity, and no one can enter Paradise without God’s forgiveness. So, before they enter Paradise, God will clean or purify the people of Paradise of all their sins out of pure grace, and the hardships they will have to suffer from resurrection to the gates of Paradise will also serve as a means of purification.