Unforgiveness Opens the Cell Door
"For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." — Matthew 6:14-15
The Most Reliable Question
Anyone who has prayed with many people about long-standing affliction eventually learns to ask one question first.
"Do you have unforgiveness toward anyone?"
It is asked first because it produces results more often than any other question. Time after time — with chronic pain, with addiction, with depression, with conditions that had persisted for decades — the answer is yes, and dealing with it is the turning point.
A woman with rheumatoid arthritis for fifteen or twenty years, badly flaring. Asked about unforgiveness, she said yes. She was willing to forgive. A short prayer of forgiveness followed, then a request for the pain to go.
Five weeks later she reported no arthritis pain at all. Her doctor had retested her and found no arthritis in her body — and, remarkably, no sign that she had ever had it.
Another woman could not see well enough to read. She had unforgiveness toward a man who had assaulted her violently years earlier. She chose to forgive him. Within minutes she was reading print from four feet away.
Why Forgiveness Carries So Much Weight
Jesus attached extraordinary consequence to this one thing.
He put it in the prayer He taught — "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" — and then, of all the lines in that prayer, He circled back and expanded on only that one:
"For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." (Matthew 6:14-15)
That is the plainest possible statement of a conditional relationship. And remember what unforgiven sin does: it constitutes a legal right for spirits of discipline to operate in a life.
So follow the chain. Unforgiveness held → your own sins remain unforgiven → the legal rights attached to them remain in force → discipline continues.
Unforgiveness does not create one open account. It leaves every other account open too.
That is why it is the first question.
What Forgiveness Is Not
Four clarifications, because false definitions keep people bound.
It is not saying the offense was acceptable. It was not. Cancelling a debt is an admission that the debt was real.
It is not a feeling. You are not waiting to feel warm. It is a legal act — the release of a claim.
It is not reconciliation. You can forgive someone you will never see again and should never see again. Forgiveness is unilateral; reconciliation requires two.
It is not the removal of consequences or of protection. Forgiving an abuser does not mean giving them access.
Point to Ponder
Holding one person's debt can hold every account in your life open.
Verse to Remember
"For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you." — Matthew 6:14
Question to Consider
Which of the four false definitions above has been the reason I could not forgive?
Today's Practice
Take the list you made yesterday.
Beside each name, write the reason you have not forgiven them. Be exact. You will usually find one of these:
Forgiving means saying it was okay. I don't feel it, so it wouldn't be genuine. They have never apologized. Forgiving means letting them back in. If I forgive, no one is holding them accountable.
Now answer each objection with what you learned today. Write the answer out. Forgiveness is a release of my claim, not a verdict that the act was acceptable. It is a decision, not a feeling. It does not require their participation. It does not restore their access.
Now pick one name — start with a small one, not the hardest — and say out loud: "Lord, I forgive ________ for ________. I release the debt. I am not collecting anymore."
Notice what happens in your chest.
Prayer
Father, I have been holding debts, and I have been holding them for reasons that seemed honorable.
I have thought that forgiving meant excusing, or pretending, or letting someone back in to hurt me again. Correct that in me.
I release what I have been trying to collect. Not because they deserve it — they may not — but because You cancelled eighteen billion for me without waiting for me to deserve it.
Where I cannot yet do this, make me willing. Where I can, help me do it now and mean it from the heart. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
It is the first question asked because it is the most common door.