Is There Anything God Can’t Forgive?

God can't forgive a grudge I am holding against you. I have to do that. And God can't forgive a grudge you are holding against me. You have to do that. To know God's forgiveness, I must choose to live in it.

Yes, there is. And it’s really very simple.

God can’t forgive a grudge I am holding against you. I have to do that.

And God can’t forgive a grudge you are holding against me. You have to do that.

God can’t forgive our grudges, because he doesn’t own them. I can’t forgive your mortgage, or your credit card debt, because I don’t own that debt. Only the bank can forgive that debt. Similarly, God can’t forgive the grudge I hold against you, because he doesn’t hold it. For God to forgive the grudge I hold against you, God would have to force my will, which is something he won’t do. It would be like me forcing the banker at gunpoint to forgive your mortgage. God won’t do that.

Instead, he commands me to forgive you in the same way he has forgiven me. Colossians 3:13. He then leaves me the decision whether or not to obey him.

But this doesn’t mean that my decision has no consequences. In his model prayer for me, usually called the “Lord’s Prayer,” Jesus taught me to pray:

Forgive us our debts,
    as we also forgive our debtors.

Matthew 6:12 (WEB)

Immediately after teaching his disciples this prayer, Jesus told them that unforgiveness would have exactly the consequences the words of the prayer suggest:

For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Matthew 6:14-15 (WEB)

Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father, who is in heaven, may also forgive you your transgressions. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your transgressions.

Mark 11:25-26 (WEB)

In saying this to me, Jesus is not saying that his Father is a mean and angry God who is stingy about showing me his forgiveness. No, Jesus is saying something pretty obvious about me: To know God’s forgiveness, I must choose to live in it. If I won’t give forgiveness, I also won’t be able to receive it.

Next: God highly values reconciliation

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Note to My Readers (in English version only): This post is written simply and in the first person because it applies mostly to me. I am presently agonizing over how to handle a long-term situation in my own life, in which some people who have been, and still “should” be, close to me, seem to me to be acting as though I no longer exist. I’m not aware at this point what I did wrong to earn being forgotten, but my unawareness may be relevant only because it shows me to be even more culpable. Throughout my autistic childhood, I was constantly in trouble for breaking social rules I didn’t understand, and, more often than not, the rules weren’t explained to me by those outside my family who punished or shamed me–I was simply told that I “must” or “should” already understand what I had done wrong, and, if I didn’t there was “something wrong with” me. I suspect my present situation is another instance of this. I have done something wrong that I “ought to,” but don’t, appreciate. But, because I “should” already know what I did wrong, I am simply shunned without further explanation. So I now need to know how to apply forgiveness in a continuing painful situation and accept being set aside as a nobody, while keeping the right attitude toward people I love and while avoiding complaining or becoming manipulative. I may also learn from the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit what I did wrong, and what (if anything) I can now presently do to resolve the offense, although I won’t put such personal details in this blog. The series about forgiveness that will follow over the next few weeks will be presented as simply as possible, one small bite at a time, in the first person, because I’m the one who has to swallow it!

A question about being forgotten

Index to the New Series / Índice de la nueva serie