The Clause That Frightens People, Read Slowly

I have watched more sincere people be frightened by one line in the Gospels than by anything else I know of, and it is the line right after the prayer.

A woman on my porch said it to me almost in a whisper. She said: I do not think I am forgiven, because I have not forgiven her.

She was not being dramatic and she was not looking for reassurance. She had done the arithmetic honestly. She had read the words, she had looked at her own condition, and she had come to a conclusion about herself that she had been living under for about six years.

And here is what I want to say before anything else, because six years is a long time to carry a thing that may not be what you think it is. That clause is not doing what she thought it was doing, and reading it slowly is most of the work.

Read what it says

Here is the line, and I am not going to shorten it or soften it.

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:14 and 15, King James Version)

That is a serious sentence and it stands. Nothing I write is going to make it say something else, and anybody who explains it away is not helping you.

But look at what it is describing, because there is a difference between a condition and a symptom that most of us were never taught.

Jesus tells a parable about this later, and the parable is the commentary. A servant is forgiven an enormous debt, walks out, and takes a fellow servant by the throat over a small one. And when the master calls him back, the question is not about a rule.

Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? (Matthew 18:33)

Even as I had pity on thee. The problem in that story is not that the man failed to complete a step. It is that the pardon he received had not reached him. He walked out of that room the same man he walked in as.

You are dealing with a description of what a received pardon does rather than a fee it charges, and Matthew 18 puts the whole weight on the compassion that had already been shown to the man, and that part belongs to the Holy Spirit, who does that reaching in a person rather than a person achieving it by deciding.

What that clause is not

Three things, and I want them plain.

It is not a transaction. Nobody in Scripture buys pardon with pardon, and if it worked that way the servant in that parable would have been settling an account rather than being asked a question about his heart.

It is not about a feeling. Nowhere does that clause say you must feel warm about the person. Forgiveness in Scripture is closer to releasing a claim than to producing an emotion, and a person can do the first while the second is nowhere in sight.

And it is not a single act you either performed or did not. The woman on my porch had been treating it as a switch, and had checked herself against it every day for six years, and found herself off every time.

You have not been failing a test, and Scripture describes this as something that grows out of a pardon rather than a gate in front of one (Ephesians 4:32). That work is the Spirit's, and He does that growing on a timescale that is His.

And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32)

Even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Past tense. The forgiving in that sentence comes out of something already completed rather than reaching for something not yet given.

What to do when it has not happened

So here is the practical part, and it is smaller than people expect, and it is the only thing I have ever known to move this.

Say the person's name out loud to God. Once. Without deciding anything about them.

Not I forgive her, if that is not true, because saying a thing that is not true in front of God is not obedience and He is not fooled by it.

Not a report on how far along the road anybody has got.

Just the name, said to Him, out loud, and then stop.

You are permitted to bring a name without a verdict attached, and Scripture never once requires a person to arrive before they may speak (Luke 23:34), and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the work in the months after a name has started being said.

And notice what Jesus Himself prays from the cross. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. He does not say I forgive them. He asks the Father to. That is not a technicality. It is a person handing something upward that is genuinely too big to be handled at ground level.

I should say the honest part. Some of what people are asked to forgive is very large, and where there has been real harm the forgiving does not mean returning to the situation or trusting the person again, and those are separate questions that no article settles.

You are not required to be unsafe in order to be obedient, and Scripture never once puts those two together (Ephesians 4:32). The same Spirit is the one who separates a release of a claim from a return to a room.

And if this has taken somebody somewhere darker than sorrow, where being here at all is the question, that is beyond an article. Tell a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or call the 988 crisis line, in the United States. Going is strength.