David Bowden and Mart Green

4 min read ⭑

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

Unlearn: God forgives, but he doesn’t forget. God has grace but still holds a grudge.

Learn: God forgiving is God forgetting. God’s grace cannot hold a grudge.

I used to be absolutely terrified to hold someone else’s baby. Growing up as the youngest in my family, I somehow made it into adulthood without ever holding a newborn. How to cradle a tiny human never entered my mind until, as a young adult, all my friends started having kids. When visiting friends at the maternity ward, I would use my wife’s giant love of holding babies as an excuse not to volunteer. She had younger sisters, was a babysitter and volunteered in her church’s nursery growing up. She had lots of experience; I had none.

When we had our first son, I was so anxious to hold him. I remember when the nurse took my flailing, weak, premature firstborn son and handed him to me for the first time. I was terrified. But as soon as he entered my arms, I knew I was his father and I knew how to keep him safe. Before long I was doing the one-arm “dad hold,” where my son’s head lay in my palm while his body dangled sleepily on my forearm. Within days, I was a pro.

Now, of course, I’ve held my babies for hundreds of hours. It became second nature. Experience changed me. My experience of holding my own baby has shaped me into someone who can happily and skillfully hold the fussy, hungry or sleeping newborns handed to me by family and friends.

Forgiveness is experienced. When we experience God’s category-breaking forgiveness, it changes us. God’s forgiveness makes us forgiving people. Though forgiving others may feel at first like an inexperienced young man being asked to hold a baby, the new life God gives us through the experience of his forgiveness shapes us into a people for whom forgiveness is second nature. Hand someone a baby and you’ll know whether they’ve experienced parenthood. Hand someone an offense and you’ll know whether they’ve experienced forgiveness.

Can you extend the kind of grace God has extended to you? Can you forgive as you’ve been forgiven? Can you give grace without holding a grudge?

In a long section of his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches about hypocrisy. He points out people who give to the needy only to satisfy their own need for praise. He talks about people who honor God in public prayers to receive their own honor. He calls out people who fast to focus on God in a way that makes sure others focus on them (Matt. 6:1–18). Hypocrites are not people who try to do something and fail. Hypocrites are people who say they are doing one thing while doing the opposite.

The tragedy of hypocrisy is that it doesn’t let us experience the good news of who we are pretending to be. Hypocritical giving does not give us the freedom and joy that accompany generosity. Hypocritical prayers do not give us the sweetness of God’s presence in the quiet places. Hypocritical fasts do not give us God’s far superior sustaining nourishment. Hypocrisy is a cruel way to be human. We do all the required actions of religion but experience none of the benefits of the relationship.

Jesus teaches that we can be forgiveness hypocrites too. We can claim that our worst sins have been forgiven by God, but we will not forgive the worst sins people commit against us. We warn ourselves of this tendency every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). Jesus expounds on this request directly after teaching his disciples how to pray it. “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” (Matt. 6:14,15). Forgiveness hypocrisy is real.

If we refuse to offer forgiveness to others, we may be refusing God’s offer of forgiveness to us. What we do when someone harms us, owes us or injures us exposes what we believe God does when we do wrong to him. Our long memories and short fuses tell us what we think about God. We believe he is quickly offended and never forgets. After all, that’s the way we are. When we refuse to forgive others, we are saying that we believe we have been refused. We are repeating the story of unforgiveness we have told ourselves. We’ve refused to experience God’s category-breaking forgiveness, so others can’t experience it through us. We can’t forgive others, because we believe God has not really forgiven us.

Jesus is not saying that if you don’t perfectly forgive you can’t be perfectly forgiven. He is not saying that if you can’t let go of every last grudge before you die, he’ll forever hold a grudge against you. He is saying that experiencing God’s forgiveness creates forgiveness in you. Your forgiveness isn’t proving anything to God, but it’s proving everything to you. God’s forgiveness of our sins does not come from our forgiveness of others. Our forgiveness of others comes from God’s forgiveness of us.

This is why one of the ways we experience God’s forgiveness of us is in our forgiveness of others. When we forgive those who have deeply wounded us, we learn that God forgives us no matter how deeply we may wound him. When we forgive offenses we once thought impossible to forgive, we learn that there is no offense the love of God finds impossible to forgive.

There is nothing you can do to disqualify yourself from God’s forgiveness. Do you believe that? Can you forgive like that? The more you do, the more you will learn God’s grudgeless love for you.

David Bowden is the co-founder and executive director of Spoken Gospel, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people encounter the gospel in every corner of Scripture. As a spoken word poet, his online videos have been viewed more than 10 million times. David is an author with books such as Rewire Your Heart and Learning to Be Loved. He lives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, with his wife, Meagan, and two sons, Ezra and Eli.

Mart Green is the founder of Mardel Christian & Education. He is the ministry investment officer for Hobby Lobby, a family business founded by his parents, David and Barbara Green, and he serves on the company’s board. In January 2005, Christian Retailing named Mart one of the top 50 people who have most shaped and impacted Christian retail in the last half-century. Mart has been married to his wife, Diana, for over 40 years. They have four adult children, three children-in-law and 13 grandchildren.

Taken from “Learning to Be Loved” by David Bowden and Mart Green. Copyright © 2024. Used by permission of Zondervan.

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