Forgiveness and God's Grace

The Bible does say "forgive, and you will be forgiven" (Luke 6:37-38) and "forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Matthew 6:12). However, these teachings are commonly misunderstood as causal statements - "if/then" statements. What these statements emphatically do not teach is that God's forgiveness depends on our forgiveness of others.

If God only forgives us as and when we forgive others, then we are earning God's love, mercy and forgiveness - a conclusion which is antithetical to the gospel. We are not in a position to earn any of God's free gifts - we can not cause him to act in our favor because of some meritorious action we perform. Further, if we can only "expect" God to forgive us if and when we forgive others, then we will never be completely forgiven by God.

These two statements (in Matthew and Luke) are not suggesting that our forgiveness of others earns us God's forgiveness, but rather that our acts of forgiveness are evidence that we have been forgiven. The grammatical construction of these two verses should be as follows: “Forgive, since you have been forgiven” (Luke 6:37-38), and “as you have forgiven us our debts, we should also forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). One cannot truly forgive others unless and until one has completely accepted God's forgiveness. We may truly forgive others because we are forgiven. That's not to say that "lower levels" of forgiveness (a human level of forgiveness) can’t take place apart from God's forgiveness in our lives - but the ultimate forgiveness we are enabled to pass on to others, God's forgiveness, is attributed only to him. We cannot truly give unless it has been given to us - we cannot truly forgive unless we have been forgiven.

There is another misconception some Christians have of forgiveness. God allows for us to separate the act of forgiveness from further actions we take. That is, we are able, by God's grace, to forgive someone while at the same time discontinuing our relationship with them. Christian forgiveness does not mean that we must subject ourselves to the same situation that led to the grief and pain in the first place. If, for example, a wife has been battered by her husband, and he seeks forgiveness - she may, by God's grace, eventually completely forgive him - but that forgiveness does not include returning to live with him. She may determine that her husband simply cannot behave in any other manner, and at this stage, apart from God's intervention which her husband may or may not accept, he is an abusive person. God does not expect us to return to abusive situations - the scene of the crime, as it were.

We must always remember that nothing we do can earn us God’s forgiveness and love. We gain salvation by a choice to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. There is nothing we do physically to earn salvation. Our “good deeds” don’t count at all. Likewise, there is nothing we MUST do in the act of forgiving another person in order for God to forgive us. Rather, we can only really forgive another BECAUSE God has freely forgiven us.

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