If you do not forgive...

...you will not be forgiven?

¹⁴ “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, ¹⁵ but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition (Friendship Press, 2021), Mt 6:14–15.

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What the heck does this mean? Some thoughts…

This is placed in the greater Gospel of Matthew, and more specifically on the heels of the Lord’s Prayer, where the concern is how we are to live as the bride of Christ - as the church. In the Lord’s Prayer we get a clear picture of the synergistic horizontal and vertical dynamic we live within.

The prayer begins vertically, “Our Father, in heaven…” - us and God.

But it eventually moves to the horizontal, “May your kingdom come on earth…” - around me, on my plane.

These are the two aspects of the Christian life, and they work in a complementary fashion. Vertical forgiveness is sought from above as we offer horizontal forgiveness to our left and right. The two forgivenesses are meant to grow together as well. As I realize more the vertical forgiveness of God to me, I find more forgiveness for those around me, and as I realize more forgiveness to those around me, I more greatly come to understand and realize the forgiveness I receive from God.

Sadly, as much of the Church has turned to an individualistic salvation, we have lost the balance of horizontal and vertical. The Christian faith is made to be very individualistic (vertical) and centered on me and Jesus. The horizontal is disconnected from the vertical, and the horizontal often lags behind the vertical or is neglected entirely.

This is likely because the horizontal is seen as the realm of “works,” and in Reformation teachings, the necessity of works to the Christian faith was lost. Synergism was denied, and the horizontal turned “optional.” Since the Reformation, the church has been fearful, or at least uncertain, about how we speak of balancing the vertical faith with the horizontal works.

The Church makes confusing what Jesus places simply as complementary parts that make up his holistic disciples.

I believe the way we fix the confusion is to take back the Christian faith from the economy it has been turned into. An economy not far removed from the setup at the temple where Jesus flipped tables and ran out the animals. An economy that lacks the holistic healing and lifestyle that Jesus invites us to.

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What happened is that we, as a Church, turned forgiveness into a “dry” legal term that has come to be understood in terms of an economic exchange. With this, we have destroyed the beauty of Jesus’ crucifixion to make it, at the core, also a simple, dry economic exchange of blood for fury - God’s fury and Jesus’ blood.

But the Kingdom of God is not about economic exchange to preserve a “fair” balance of crime and punishment and blood and forgiveness.

If we think of the Kingdom in terms of economy and fairness, we will not understand it - we won’t get it, and our faith will be crippled. We will not understand it because the Kingdom is not fair. The Kingdom is like a vineyard owner who pays everyone the day’s wage they all needed even if they worked but only for an hour.

God is not hung up on fairness, and his Kingdom does not operate on fairness.

God is Love (agape), and Love is not economical.

Paul tells us that Love keeps no record of wrongs.

Love is relational.

And the Kingdom of Love is relational, and a key - the key - to relationship is forgiveness.

The Kingdom operates on fairly owed debts being forgiven. Wrongs that are fairly deserving of payback are let go. Fairness is “given up” in order for loving relationship to exist and flourish in the middle of all kinds of errors we make, wrongs we commit, and various needs we have.

Forgiveness removes the obstacle of tit-for-tat, debtor-and-collector relationships and maintains everyone on equal footing with each other.

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The word for forgiveness in the above passage comes from the word meaning to release or free someone from something that otherwise has them tied up. With this idea in view and considering the relational nature of the Kingdom, we could paraphrase Jesus’ words:

v14: “If you release others into loving horizontal relationships with you, you will also see the heavenly Father releasing you into loving vertical relationship with him.

v15: However, as the horizontal and vertical are synergistic, if you refuse to release people into loving horizontal relationships with you, if you want to keep living a life in unforgiveness, you will find that your Father in heaven will let you place yourself into unforgiveness.”

How often do we read an action of God and automatically ascribe it to punishing judgment, even anger, righteous anger?

Again, we have often been trained to go right back to the God of economics, who trades wrath for blood.

But what if God, like the Prodigal’s father, is really just acting gently and lovingly to let us do what we want?

In other words, we know - even “secular” counselors know - that forgiveness brings release from a burden we carry or something that eats us up inside. It brings release to both the forgiver and the forgiven. And, to the extent I do not forgive, I am choosing to carry a weight with me and fester an illness inside of me.

But I have free will, and if I decide that I do not want to live in the health of forgiveness, Jesus is saying that God will not force his forgiveness on me.

And this is a good thing!

To live an unforgiving life is a horrible life, absent of God’s love, unplugged from our Creator, surrounded by broken relationships, and missing the holistic vertical and horizontal life we were made to have.

And when we choose an unforgiving life, the things we refuse to release others from will also bind us. In this state of sick, captive existence, God says that he refuses to let us fall into the deception that we are ok.

We are sick and captive, and God will not let me suffer from feeling like my vertical life is just fine when I am captive to untreated cancer running through the horizontal half of my life.

God is a holistic God, and I don’t get to mix and match to have a great vertical relationship where I am released of everything in the up and down while holding onto everything to my right and left.

God will not let me feel healthy when I am filling myself with disease.

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It is not to a punishing, economic exchange that God ties horizontal forgiveness to vertical forgiveness, but it is to my benefit that he sets as opposing choices forgiveness and unforgiveness. And I must choose one or the other to base my entire - vertical and horizontal - life around.

Personally, I have chosen forgiveness! I am not perfect at it, and a war may play out through the rest of my life between Love and unforgiveness, but thank God he will not allow me to exist peacefully with him vertically while maintaining horizontal unforgiveness. Thank God he will not let me feel okay when I am simultaneously refusing to release others and thereby holding myself captive.

For my good, for my health, for my soul, Jesus says - to paraphrase him in this passage once more, “As you forgive, you will experience forgiveness, but to the point you choose to be an unforgiving person and hold yourself in bondage, the heavenly Father will not deceive you by allowing you to rest in the peace of forgiveness.”

God does not punish us into submission, he does not break our arms, he draws us with his love and his invitation into a relationship. And to the point we wish to stay outside of his love and relationship and live in unforgiveness, he will relent, tearfully, and allow us to sit there - in unforgiveness.

To refuse to let me live in an unholistic imbalance of unforgiveness and forgiveness is my loving Father’s refusal to deceive me when I am choosing poison. Praise God!