“For if you forgive people their trespasses [their reckless and willful sins, leaving them, letting them go, and giving up resentment], your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.” Matthew 6:14-15 ->me: These 2 verses follow the Lord’s prayer and it seems that Jesus is adding more detail to this section ‘and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors’. This really drives home that none of us can escape guilt. I would almost tend to read it this way ‘since your heavenly Father has so greatly forgiven you all of your sin, through the price of the shed blood of His Son on the cross, then there is no individual who does not deserve the same type of forgiveness from you’. The parable of the King forgiving the debts of the attendant in Matthew 18:23–35 gives the perfect picture of this. If you remember the story, the King forgave one of his attendants of an obscene amount of money but then that attendant refused to forgive one of his own servants for a small amount of money they owed him (had him sent to jail until payment was remitted). The king having heard what happened, in turn chastised the attendant and had him tortured and thrown into jail himself. There can be no question, of course, that my forgiving being in proportion to what I am forgiven.
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