Mt 6:14–15 (ESV) “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Mark 11:25 (ESV) “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”
I have driven in many places, but nothing quite prepared me for South Sudan just after it claimed independence. There were roads, and there were vehicles, but what there was not, in any meaningful sense, was a shared standard. The only standard that seemed to exist was to avoid hitting the vehicle directly in front of you. Everyone was operating by their own judgment; there was no such thing as the correct side of the road. You drove your own line and hoped others were watching. The result was controlled chaos at best and a genuine threat to your survival at worst. I remember thinking that this is what a world without an agreed standard actually looks like. Not freedom. Just danger dressed up as freedom.
Jesus comes back to His statement in verse 12 for a reason. Of everything He just taught in the Lord’s Prayer, this is the one He goes deeper into. He presses past debts into even smaller grievances: trespasses. The Greek word here means false steps, transgressions, deviations from the right path. It’s like a step taken across a boundary that should not have been crossed. It is not a head-on collision. It is the car that drifts slightly toward the center line. The driver who hesitates one second too long after the light turns green. No real damage done, technically. But your reaction might suggest otherwise. And if you have ever been in a car with me when someone does that, my wife will confirm, my sanctification process is actively at work.
The point Jesus is making is sharper than it first appears. When you hold a standard against someone else, you are declaring the standard you want applied to yourself. Every time you refuse to forgive a trespass, large or small, intentional or accidental, you are setting the terms for how God will handle yours. That is the structure of verse 12, and Jesus returns to it here without softening it. “But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
That sentence creates real theological tension, and it deserves a direct answer rather than a dodge.
This is not teaching works-based salvation. Justification before God is by faith alone, through grace alone, in Christ alone. That is not under discussion here. What is under discussion operates on two levels. The first is the evidence level. The one who has genuinely been justified by grace should be characterized by a forgiving spirit. Ephesians 4:32 says to “forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you.” Colossians 3:13 says to “forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.” The person who has genuinely grasped the magnitude of what was done for them at the cross cannot maintain sustained, willful, unrepentant bitterness toward another person. The inability to forgive is not just a sin. It is evidence of a heart that may not have genuinely received the gospel or, at least, its full impact.
The second level is the fellowship level. Even for the genuine believer, willful unforgiveness creates a barrier in the prayer relationship with God. It does not sever the salvation relationship. But the man who comes to God asking for forgiveness while nursing a known, deliberate unforgiveness toward another is praying in bad faith. He is asking God to do something he himself refuses to do. The road runs both ways, and he is swerving into the oncoming lane.
C.S. Lewis drew the line that most people miss. In his Essay on Forgiveness, he wrote: “There is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says, ‘Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you, and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before.’ But excusing says, ‘I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it; you weren’t really to blame.’ If one was not really to blame, then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense, forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites.”¹ Then he closes it: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”²
That is the standard Jesus sets. Not the South Sudan standard, where everyone runs their own line and hopes for the best. The standard of a Father who absorbed the full penalty of every trespass you have ever committed and asks you to extend that same release to the person who wronged you. Consider what was forgiven on your behalf. The Bible describes our deserved penalty in hell and the resulting gnashing of teeth in anguish. That was the sentence that stood against you. Jesus took it. The question He puts back to you is what you intend to do with the debt someone else owes you now that yours has been canceled.
Jesus is not adding a new condition to salvation here. He is revealing what genuine reception of forgiveness looks like from the inside. A forgiven person forgives. It is not the cause of their forgiveness. It is the evidence of it.
The roads in South Sudan were dangerous because no one agreed on a standard. The man carrying unforgiveness is running the same road. He is operating by his own line, his own terms, his own judgment about who deserves what. And every time he prays the Lord’s Prayer while holding that position, he is asking God to drive by the same rules he is.
Who in your life are you withholding forgiveness from, and what standard are you inviting onto yourself by holding it?
What would it look like today to release the verdict you have been carrying and hand it to the only Judge qualified to hold it?
Stay on Mission
FOOTNOTES
¹ C.S. Lewis, “On Forgiveness,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 1949), 178–179.² C.S. Lewis, “On Forgiveness,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 1949), 181.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
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