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?
Whose forgiveness is in view
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.
What is at stake
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.
Two provisions we must not mix up
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.
Why a hard heart is intolerable to the Father
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.
The effect on prayer
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).
The habit to cultivate
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!
Summary
- 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.