Forgiveness sounds beautiful until you are the one who has been wounded. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus links our willingness to forgive others with our experience of the Father’s forgiveness. He is not talking about a small, optional add-on to the Christian life; He is touching the core of whether His mercy has truly taken root in us. Today’s verse invites us to see forgiveness not as a feeling we wait for, but as a response to the mercy we ourselves have received.

The Echo of Heaven’s Mercy

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.” (Matthew 6:14) Jesus is not saying we earn forgiveness by being nice. Instead, He is exposing a spiritual reality: a forgiven heart becomes a forgiving heart. When God’s mercy truly lands on us, it cannot stay contained; it echoes outward into our relationships. If we stubbornly refuse to forgive, we are revealing that we may never have really understood, or embraced, how deeply we needed forgiveness ourselves. Scripture assures us, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) God’s forgiveness is the fountain; our forgiveness of others is the overflow.

Think about how completely God has dealt with your sin: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12) No grudges. No emotional blackmail. No silent treatment. When we compare the weight of our debt to Him with what others owe us, even real and painful wrongs begin to look smaller next to the cross. The more we meditate on His mercy, the more unreasonable it feels to clutch tightly to another person’s offense. Forgiving others becomes less about them deserving it, and more about Jesus deserving our obedience and our imitation of His heart.

When Forgiveness Feels Impossible

Of course, some wounds run deep. Maybe you have been betrayed, abandoned, or spoken to in ways that still ring in your ears. Forgiveness does not mean pretending it did not matter, calling evil “good,” or putting yourself back into ongoing abuse. It means handing the right to punish and to collect the emotional “debt” over to God. At the cross, Jesus modeled this in the most staggering way: “Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’” (Luke 23:34) If He could pray that over the very people crucifying Him, then His grace is strong enough to carry you into forgiveness, even where it feels humanly impossible.

You do not have to feel ready to forgive before you choose it. Often, the choice comes first, and the feelings catch up over time. You can be honest with God about how hard it is, and still say, “I will obey You here.” The same apostle who knew hardship could say, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13) You are not asked to forgive in your own power, but in His. Start where you are: name the wound before God, confess any bitterness, and ask Jesus for the strength to release that person into His hands. Forgiveness may be a journey, but every step taken in dependence on Christ is a victory.

Living as a Forgiver Every Day

Forgiveness is not a one-time heroic act; it is a daily posture that should mark the people of God. Paul paints this picture for the church: “Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32) Kindness, tenderness, forgiveness—these are not optional extras for especially “mature” believers; they are the normal Christian life. In your home, on your team, in your classroom, in your church, you will constantly have chances to keep short accounts and refuse to let small offenses harden into big resentments. Ask yourself: Who is the Holy Spirit bringing to mind right now that I am still holding in my heart?

A forgiving community is a powerful witness in a world that runs on outrage and payback. Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35) Few things display that love more clearly than choosing forgiveness when the world says, “Get even.” Today, that might mean sending a text instead of giving the silent treatment, refusing to rehearse someone’s failure in your mind, or praying blessing over the one who hurt you. As you keep forgiving, again and again, you are not being weak—you are walking in the strength of the One who forgave you first and forever.

Lord Jesus, thank You for forgiving me at the cost of Your own blood; do not let me cheapen that mercy by clinging to bitterness. By Your Spirit, move me today to forgive as I have been forgiven, and to take whatever obedient step You are asking of me right now.

It is time for us to reconsider this matter of the church. Most people think of the church as a familiar social fact. Their attitude toward Protestantism generally is that of a matter of course, and people, even average Christians, think they are in favor of the church. They favor the church much the same as they support motherhood, decency and sanitation. It is as accepted as a convention that we never question or doubt. If anybody does question or doubt, they are considered communists or atheists. People will even pour out their money to support social convention. But I wonder how many ever sit down and say, "What is this? Maybe the church is just something that is here; it doesn't have any value and doesn't have any reason for being here." How many present-day Christians have ever searched the Scripture with a serious burden on their hearts to know what the church is? Is it simply a convention that is carried on? How many Christians have ever prayed earnestly for light from heaven about it? It seems that the average person spends more time and intellectual labor each year filling out income tax forms than he or she spends in a lifetime trying to learn from the Scriptures and from the light of the Spirit what the church is and what he or she ought to do about it. Why is it in the world? What did Jesus mean when He said, "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it" (Matthew 16:18b)? If people were to chew their pencils and walk the floor and go out for a walk and come back and work on it and search and think and discern and divide and go through all that they have to go through to make out their income taxes every year, I believe that they could come up with some wonderful answers.

They ... sought Him with their whole desire; and He was found of them: and the Lord gave them rest round about. - 2 Chronicles 25:15

One reason why the great mass of professing Christians make so little of their religion is because they are only half-hearted in it. If you divide a river into two streams the force of each is less than half the power of the original current; and the chances are that you will make a stagnant marsh where there used to be a flowing stream. " All in all, or not at all," is the rule for life in all departments. It is a rule in daily business. A man that has only half himself in his profession or trade, while the other half is dreaming, is predestined to fail. The same is true about our religion. If you and I attend to it as a kind of by-occupation; if we give the balance of our time and the superfluity of our energy, after we have done a hard day’s work - say, an hour upon a Sunday - to seeking God, and devote all the rest of the week to seeking worldly prosperity, it is no wonder if our religion languishes, and is mainly a matter of forms, as it is with such hosts of people that call themselves Christians. There is more unconscious unreality in the average Christian man’s endeavor to be a better Christian than there is in almost anything else in the world:

"One foot on the sea, and one on land,

To one thing constant never."

That is why so many of us know nothing of a progressive strengthening of our faith, and an increasing conquest of ourselves, and a firmer grasp of God, and a fuller realization of the blessedness of walking in His ways. This wholeheartedness does not mean that there are to be no other desires, for it is a great mistake to pit religion against other things which are meant to be its instruments and its helps. We are not required to seek nothing else in order to seek God wholly. He demands no impossible and fantastic detachment of ourselves from the ordinary and legitimate occupations, affections, and duties of human life; but He does ask that the dominant desire after Him should be powerful enough to express itself through all our actions, and that we should seek for God in them and for them in God. There must be detachment if there is to be attachment. If some climbing plant, for instance, has twisted itself round the unprofitable thorns in the hedge, the gardener, before he can get it to go up the support that it is meant to encircle, has carefully to detach it from the stays to which it has wantonly clung, taking care that in the process he does not break its tendrils and destroy its power of growth. So, to train our souls to cleave to God, and to grow on round the great stay that is provided for us, there is needed, as an essential part of the process, the voluntary, conscious, conscientious, and constant guarding of ourselves from the vagrancies of our desires, which send out their shoots away from Him.

It is when God comes into the Temple that Dagon falls on the threshold. It is when a new affection begins to spring in the heart that old loves are thrust out of it. To seek Him with the whole heart is to engage the whole self in the quest, and that is the only kind of seeking which has the certainty of success.