If You Forgive

If You Forgive
By M.T. Clark — P-2103 | 10/24/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast
Today’s Message on YouTube:

Today’s photo of a tree in full autumn yellow against a bright blue sky, with scattered leaves on the grass and brick apartments in the background, comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this view during a lunch-break walk up Wards Lane, in Menands, NY, on October 9, 2026.

Well, it’s Saturday, praise the Lord, and I share this photo to remind us that our Heavenly Father is kind to His children in the middle of regular workdays as well as on the weekends.

A twenty-minute lunch break walk in October sunshine is not an accident. It’s a decision to separate myself from my office environment and to simultaneously exercise my body and to rest my soul. It gives me an opportunity to decompress and to release the weight of all the problems I was presented with in the first four hours of my workday.  It also gives me an opportunity to practice appreciation.  I can appreciate the fact that I am physically able to walk about the earth. I can thank God for His beautiful creation, and I can thank Him for always being with me and for all the kindness He has shown me throughout my life.  Speaking of God’s kindness,

Our series “The Beatitudes” continues today with the pointed follow-up Jesus adds to the prayer He just taught us. He tells us that the forgiveness we extend to others is tied to the forgiveness we receive from the Father.

If You Forgive

Right after Jesus finishes giving us the Lord’s Prayer, He stops to say more about one of its petitions. In Matthew 6:14-15 (NKJV), Jesus tells us:

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

This is one of the “hard sayings of Jesus” in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has just taught us to pray “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” But now He makes it clear that there are consequences for not following His instructions. The forgiveness we receive from the Father is tied to the forgiveness we extend to others.

This is a difficult passage of scripture to grasp, and it is open to interpretation to some degree but let’s be clear about what Jesus is not saying. Jesus is not telling us that we earn our salvation by forgiving people.

We are saved by grace through faith in Christ, and nothing we do or fail to do earns that gift. Paul is clear about this in Ephesians 2:8-9. What Jesus is talking about here is the heart. Unforgiveness is a wall we build in our own hearts, and the wall gets between us and what the Father wants to give us. When we refuse to forgive what somebody did to us, we are not in a position to receive what God wants to give us. Our willingness to forgive someone is a barometer of our relationship with God and whether or not we have truly received God’s forgiveness for our sins.  If we are concerned about what Jesus is saying here, the obedient Christian would feel the sting of conviction of being unforgiving to others when they themselves have been forgiven for everything they have done by God.  If we are serious about following Jesus, we would let go of our pride and forgive others.   So, this teaching isn’t about the points of legal code that must be adhered to, it is about being genuine in our faith and being tied relationally to God to the point that we very willingly do what He says.

Jesus is not saying our standing with God is in question every time we have a bad feeling about somebody. Our relationship with God is secure in Christ. Jesus is saying that unforgiveness in our hearts is a serious thing. It is not a small sin, and it is not a sin that God overlooks. It is a wall that we built, and we are the only ones who can take it down.

Let’s think about what forgiveness actually is. Forgiveness is not saying what happened was okay. Forgiveness is not pretending it did not hurt. Forgiveness is not deciding to automatically trust the person again. Forgiveness is releasing the debt. It is standing in front of the Lord and saying, “I am not going to make them pay for this anymore. I am giving this to You.” Forgiveness is a decision we make, often before the feelings catch up. The feelings may take a long time to come around. We start with the decision anyway.

Jesus knows that forgiveness is hard to do. He is the One who forgave the people who were killing Him while they were nailing Him to the cross. He is not asking us to do something He has not already done Himself.

Jesus is also not asking us to do it in our own strength. He gives us the Holy Spirit to help us. He also gives us His own forgiveness, and we forgive out of what He has already forgiven in us. We do not forgive because the other person deserves it. We forgive because we have been forgiven something far bigger.

So here is the invitation of this verse. Think of the person who is hardest for you to forgive. Jesus is asking us to bring them to the Lord and release them. You don’t forgive them because what they did to you was okay, or because you can suddenly trust them again. We forgive them because it is what God tells us to do and because holding onto the resentment and bitterness of unforgiveness is costing us more than we can afford to lose. It costs us our own ability to fully receive God’s forgiveness.

This is the hardest part of the Lord’s Prayer, and Jesus made the point twice on purpose. He knows what unforgiveness does to His people. He also knows what His forgiveness can do in a heart that is willing to let go of what it has been holding on to. We are not in this fight alone. We never have been. God is with us and He wants us to be free and assured that we are His by removing the hardness from our hearts.

May the Lord show us the people we have been holding something against, give us the courage to forgive them, and to remind us that we come from a Father who has already forgiven us. True freedom comes from surrendering all to God. So, forgive those who have sinned against you and keep on walking and talking with God.

— M.T.

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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”

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