For if ye forgive men their offences, your heavenly Father also will forgive you [yours],
The Lord had just taught His disciples to pray, "and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." Now He goes back to that one request and explains it. His words raise a hard question. Does a Christian's standing before God depend on how he treats the person who wronged him?
The Lord is speaking here to people who already know God as their Father. That changes what "forgive" means in these verses.
Here we find an aspect of forgiveness that needs careful thought. It is not sinners speaking to God, but disciples — children speaking to their Father. The gospel tells the sinner of forgiveness full and free, because of the Saviour's blood. Nothing the sinner can do has anything to do with it. In Matthew 6:12 we have the Father's government of His family. That is an entirely different principle. He expects all His children to show a merciful spirit toward everybody. His own attitude toward people is to shape ours. "He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:45). Those who do not cultivate this generous spirit of grace cannot walk happily with the Father.
So what does an unforgiving believer lose? The answer turns on which kind of forgiveness is in view.
Verses 14 and 15 show us that He is not speaking of eternal forgiveness, but governmental. If a believer forgives others, he may count on the Father's forgiveness. When he honestly confesses his failure, the Father restores him to the joy of communion with Himself. If he does not forgive others, he cannot enjoy communion with the Father. His very attitude forbids it.
Mixing this daily forgiveness up with the once-for-all work of the cross damages both. One commentator sets them side by side, using the picture of washing defiled feet.
Sin that we indulge does interrupt communion with our God and Father. It needs the advocacy of Christ to cleanse defiled feet, by the washing of water with the word. His blood keeps its atoning power untouched. But the Spirit applies the word in answer to Christ on high, and the one who sinned repents in dust and ashes… We need and have both. We cannot do without the water from first to last, just as we have had the blood once for all. Whoever ignores, or worse still denies, this twofold provision of grace undermines redemption and muddles the truth of God.
The refusal to forgive is not one fault among many. It is a reversal of the whole ground the believer stands on.
Now the Lord singles out an unforgiving spirit as intolerable to our Father in His daily government of His sons. And no wonder. It is to go back from grace to law, from Christ to wretched self. So, as in the prayer, He urges grace toward those who may have hurt us, however painfully. He urges love too, and He commends it to us with a tender warning. Where love is missing in practice, that is hateful in His eyes.
These words sit inside the Lord's teaching on prayer. A nursed grievance and a praying life cannot run together.
If we do not forgive, we are not forgiven as children. Communion with God our Father is suspended, and we grieve His Spirit within us. To carry on as though all were well is presumption. It is insincere, and it displeases God. True prayer is communion with God. It is speaking to Him with the confidence of a heart that does not condemn us. "And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him" (1 John 3:22).
Forgiveness here is a habit to grow, not a feeling to wait for. Failing to practise it costs us something in ourselves.
We who profess to be Christians have a very important lesson to learn from this passage. It is the urgent need to cultivate a forgiving spirit. If we fail to act in grace, we are in danger of losing the sense of grace in our own souls. How dreadful when a man forgiven all his sins drags a fellow sinner before the judge over a little money!
- Grace received. The sinner's pardon rests on the blood of Christ alone, and on nothing the sinner does. That question is already settled for everyone the Lord is addressing here.
- Grace governed. These verses deal with the Father's daily government of His own children. Commentators call this governmental forgiveness, not eternal forgiveness.
- Grace refused. An unforgiving spirit is a move backwards, from grace to law, from Christ to self.
- Grace forfeited. The cost is not lost salvation. It is broken communion, a grieved Spirit, and prayer offered as though all were well.
- Grace practised. The remedy is to cultivate a forgiving spirit. Fail to act in grace, and we risk losing our own sense of the grace shown to us.
but if ye do not forgive men their offences, neither will your Father forgive your offences.
Jesus had just taught His disciples to pray, "forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." Now He returns to that one line and presses it twice — first as a promise, then as a warning. The question is obvious: does entry into God's family depend on how we treat those who wrong us?
The people listening were already followers of Jesus. That fact shapes how we read the warning.
The forgiveness spoken of in verses 14 and 15 is connected with the debts of verse 12. The heavenly Father governs His children in holiness, and an unforgiving spirit comes under His discipline. If someone wrongs us and we refuse to forgive, we will miss God's governmental forgiveness. This is not a question of forgiveness for eternity. The Lord was speaking to disciples, and for them that great matter was already settled.
Here "governmental" means the Father's day-by-day rule over His own family. Scripture keeps two kinds of forgiveness apart, and they work on different timescales.
There is a difference between God's forgiveness in the sense of not counting sin against us, as in Romans 4, and governmental forgiveness — for us, the Father's. Matthew 6:14-15 speaks in a general way about a state of soul, so it might apply to both. But the difference is very real. Justifying forgiveness (unknown in the Old Testament) is complete once and for ever, as Hebrews 9 and 10 show — "no longer any consciousness of sins". Fatherly forgiveness, though, we may need daily. We are not really called to ask for it. We confess our sins, and we get it.
A refusal to forgive is not one fault among many. It reverses the very principle the disciple lives by.
Now the Lord names one thing our Father will not tolerate in His daily government of His sons: an unforgiving spirit. And no wonder. It means going back from grace to law, from Christ to wretched self. So, as in the prayer, He urges grace toward those who wrong us, however deeply they hurt us.
What is lost is not sonship but the enjoyment of it. The closed heart shuts its own door.
Verses 14 and 15 show us that He is not speaking of eternal forgiveness, but governmental. If a believer forgives others, he can count on the Father's forgiveness. When he honestly confesses his failure, the Father restores him to the joy of communion with Himself. If he does not forgive others, he cannot truly enjoy that communion. His own attitude forbids it.
There is a slower damage too. Refusing grace to others dulls our own sense of the grace God gave us.
Without doubt, we who profess to be Christians have an important lesson to learn from this scripture. We urgently need to cultivate a forgiving spirit. If we fail to act in grace, we are in danger of losing the sense of grace in our own souls.
The wrongs we brood over often look smaller in the cold light of day. And the grudge hurts the one who holds it.
You who keep up your resentment, and brood over the offences (often exaggerated if not imaginary) of others, beware. If that is you, then though you are a Christian, you completely fail in the duty that should mark you, as unlike Christ as you can be. Need one say that you are as unhappy as you are hard? Does it mean nothing to your proud spirit — and pride like this degrades a Christian — that "neither will your Father forgive your trespasses"? Do not trifle with such a bad and proud state. Stop grieving the Holy Spirit of God who sealed you. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.
Forgiving is not squeezed out of us by threat. It is learned by looking at how God dealt with us.
As one brought to God, I have learned what God is in His ways of grace (Ephesians 4:31-32): "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." Did God come and shout against you in justice? He sent His Son to give Himself for you, and has forgiven you. There is a man who wronged me. I am going to forgive him, as God forgave me. And if I am near enough to God to do it, I will show out what we have been learning. That is the joy of our souls.
- Family, not entry. Jesus spoke to disciples whose eternal standing was already settled. What is at stake is the Father's dealing with His children day by day.
- Two forgivenesses. Forgiveness that justifies is complete once and for ever. A Father's forgiveness is a daily need, and honest confession receives it.
- Grace reversed. An unforgiving spirit is a step back from grace to law, from Christ to self — which is why the Father will not let it pass.
- Communion blocked. The hard heart forbids the very restoration it needs, and it loses its own sense of grace.
- The cure. Look first at what God in Christ forgave you. Forgiving others then flows from that, and becomes a joy instead of a duty.