Do you have someone you can’t forgive? Please do, because if you don’t, you are going to hell.

Not my words but Jesus’: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” Matthew 18:35

The context is Jesus telling a story of a man who owed a large sum of money to the king. He begs the king for more time and the king forgives him of all debt. But there was another man who owed a little debt to this first man and this man, rather than forgiving this second man’s debt, demands that he pays him every penny. Hearing this, the king brings back the first man and puts him in prison until he pays every penny back.

The moral of the story is that since God forgave us of a great debt we owe him, we should forgive those around us who owe us small debts in comparison. If we do not forgive them, then God won’t forgive us either.

Have you noticed that this same principle is in the Lord’s prayer?: “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” We are praying that God will forgive us only as far as we have forgiven others. If we do not forgive others, then God won’t forgive us either. That is what you are praying every time you recite the Lord’s prayer.

None of our pleas will work: “But you don’t know what he has done to me.” “You don’t understand how hurtful that was!” “I can’t ever forgive him because he destroyed my family!”

Let God open our eyes to see how great our offense was to God and yet God forgave us. It is only when we do not see how egregious our sin was to God that we think other’s offense was so great as not to forgive.

If God’s only way to wipe our debt was for His Son to die, don’t you think our debt was pretty serious?

PH