Doctrine · The Life of Grace
Forgiven, and Forgiving
Every command in the Bible to forgive somebody else is attached to a sentence about what God already did for you — and the hardest verse in the Bible on this subject is the one that puts them in that order.
What God Does With Sin
— the ground floor — and it is the larger half of the subjectTHE ARTWORKVan Hemessen paints the moment at the top of this page that most retellings skip: not the servant being forgiven, but the servant with his hands already on the man who owes him a hundred pence. The forgiven face and the throttling hands belong to the same person, which is the whole point of the parable Jesus told.
The Bible never describes God’s forgiveness as a mood He is in. It describes an action, and it reaches for physical pictures every time: a weight lifted off a man’s back, a debt struck off a ledger, a distance measured, a stone dropped into deep water. Read the Psalms on this and you are reading about something that happened, not about God deciding to overlook things.
Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose iniquity the LORD does not count against him, in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was drained as in the summer heat. Selah Then I acknowledged my sin to You and did not hide my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and You forgave the guilt of my sin. SelahThe word behind 'forgiven' in verse 1 is the everyday verb for lifting something up and carrying it off.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins or repaid us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His loving devotion for those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.He has not dealt with us according to our sins — and the distance in verse 12 is one with no midpoint.
Ver. 12. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. O glorious verse, no word even upon the inspired page can excel it! Sin is removed from us by a miracle of love! What a load to move, and yet is it removed so far that the distance is incalculable. Fly as far as the wing of imagination can bear you, and if you journey through space eastward, you are further from the west at every beat of your wing.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, 1869-1885Reformed Baptist
Psalm 103:12
This is the second Psalm of benediction. The first Psalm describes the result of holy blessedness, the thirty-second details the cause of it. The first pictures the tree in full growth, this depicts it in its first planting and watering. He who in the first Psalm is a reader of God's book, is here a suppliant at God's throne accepted and heard. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. He is now blessed and ever shall be.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, 1869-1885Reformed Baptist
Psalm 32:1
Psalm 103 is worth slowing down over twice. Verse 3 uses a Hebrew verb for forgiving whose subject, across the whole Old Testament, is never once a human being — it is something only God is ever said to do. And verse 10 praises Him for an absence: for what He has not done. That is an unusual thing to put in a song, and Spurgeon thought it deserved as much gratitude as anything God has actively given.
He who forgives all your iniquities and heals all your diseases,Who forgives all your iniquities — a verb the Hebrew Bible reserves entirely for God.
Ver. 10. He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. Else had Israel perished outright, and we also had long ago been consigned to the lowest hell. We ought to praise the Lord for what he has not done as well as for what he has wrought for us; even the negative side deserves our adoring gratitude.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, 1869-1885Reformed Baptist
Psalm 103:10
Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance— who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion? He will again have compassion on us; He will vanquish our iniquities. You will cast out all our sins into the depths of the sea.Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity — and casting our sins into the depths of the sea.
I, yes I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake and remembers your sins no more.I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions — for My own sake. The reason is in God, not in us.
When God takes away the guilt of sin that it may not condemn us, He takes away also the power of sin that it may not rule us. cast . . . into . . . depths of the sea--never to rise again to view, buried out of sight in eternal oblivion: not merely at the shore side, where they may rise again.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Micah 7:19
That is the note this page keeps returning to. Pardon is not the whole of it: the same act that takes away sin’s power to condemn takes away its power to rule. A forgiveness that left a man exactly as it found him would not be the forgiveness the prophets are describing.
The Side We Have To Do
— Psalm 51, and one promise in 1 JohnPsalm 51 is what confession sounds like when there is nothing left to defend. David has been caught, a prophet has said you are the man, and the first thing out of his mouth is not an excuse or even an admission — it is an appeal to mercy, before the sin is named at all. Spurgeon noticed the order, and it is the same order as the rest of this page.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your loving devotion; according to Your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash me clean of my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You may be proved right when You speak and blameless when You judge.Mercy first, sin second — and 'against You only have I sinned' from a man who had wronged several people.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.Two verbs, one promise: forgive AND cleanse. Faithful and just — not merely merciful.
Ver. 1. Have mercy upon me, O God. He appeals at once to the mercy of God, even before he mentions his sin. The sight of mercy is good for eyes that are sore with penitential weeping. Pardon of sin must ever be an act of pure mercy, and therefore to that attribute the awakened sinner flies. "According to thy lovingkindness." Act, O Lord, like thyself; give mercy like thy mercy. Show mercy such as is congruous with thy grace.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, 1869-1885Reformed Baptist
Psalm 51:1
Ver. 5. I acknowledged my sin unto thee. After long lingering, the broken heart bethought itself of what it ought to have done at the first, and laid bare its bosom before the Lord. The lancet must be let into the gathering ulcer before relief can be afforded.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, 1869-1885Reformed Baptist
Psalm 32:5
Psalm 32 also records what the months before that confession cost him. David does not describe guilt as a mood; he describes it as something that wore his body out. And Psalm 51 tells us what God is actually after in the exchange — not a payment, and not a performance, but a broken spirit He will not despise. Then the psalm asks for the thing Ezekiel would later promise a whole nation: a clean heart, created.
Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.Cleanse me with hyssop — the branch used to apply blood at the Passover.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.Create in me a clean heart — the verb is the one used of God making the world.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.A broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
Ver. 3. When I kept silence. When through neglect I failed to confess, or through despair dared not do so, my bones, those solid pillars of my frame, the stronger portions of my bodily constitution, waxed old, began to decay with weakness, for my grief was so intense as to sap my health and destroy my vital energy.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, 1869-1885Reformed Baptist
Psalm 32:3
Ver. 17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. All sacrifices are presented to thee in one, by the man whose broken heart presents the Saviour's merit to thee. When the heart mourns for sin, thou art better pleased than when the bullock bleeds beneath the axe. "A broken heart" is an expression implying deep sorrow, embittering the very life; it carries in it the idea of all but killing anguish in that region which is so vital as to be the very source of life.
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, 1869-1885Reformed Baptist
Psalm 51:17
The artwork
Siberdt paints the conversation Psalm 51 comes out of. Nathan is standing; the king is not. Everything Psalm 51 says about a broken spirit is happening in this room, before a word of the psalm is written — which is why the psalm never argues its case and never explains itself. The story behind it has its own study, and it is one of this page's doors.
Eugène Siberdt, The Prophet Nathan rebukes King David (1866-1931) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Even As
— the two sides, and the hinge word that joins themPaul never issues the command to forgive on its own. Twice he writes it as a comparison — even as God in Christ forgave you— and in both places he uses the same verb for both halves of the sentence. It is a word built straight on the Greek word for grace. To forgive somebody, in Paul’s vocabulary, is to hand them grace: the identical thing you were handed, in a smaller amount.
What God did
What we are asked to do
Lifted it off you — the ordinary Hebrew verb for picking something up and carrying it away.
Psalm 32:1 · nasa→Let it go — the Greek verb means to send away and walk off from.
Matthew 6:14 · aphiemi→Forgives — a verb the Old Testament never once puts in a human mouth. God is its only subject.
Psalm 103:3 · salach→Forgive as a gift — the verb is built on the word for grace.
Colossians 3:13 · charizomai→Removed it as far as the east is from the west — a distance with no midpoint.
Psalm 103:12→Seventy times seven — a number chosen to stop you counting.
Matthew 18:22→Cast it into the depths of the sea, where nothing rises again.
Micah 7:19→Bear with each other — before the sentence ever says forgive.
Colossians 3:13→At the cost of His Son. The pardon was not cheap on God's side of the seam.
Ephesians 4:32→At no risk and no cost — and we still hold back, said Chrysostom.
Ephesians 4:32
Ten thousand talents — a debt no lifetime of wages could clear.
Matthew 18:24→A hundred pence — the debt the forgiven man would not release.
Matthew 18:28→Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.Kind, tender-hearted, forgiving — 'even as God in Christ forgave you.' One verb, used twice.
Bear with one another and forgive any complaint you may have against someone else. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.Bearing with each other comes first in the sentence; forgiving comes second.
"Even as God," saith he, "also in Christ forgave you." And this, moreover, contains a high allusion. Not simply, he would say, hath He forgiven us, and at no risk or cost, but at the sacrifice of His Son; for that He might forgive thee, He sacrificed the Son; whereas thou, oftentimes, even when thou seest pardon to be both without risk and without cost, yet dost not grant it.
John Chrysostom· Homily on Ephesians 17, 407Church Father
Ephesians 4:32
Chrysostom is doing the arithmetic nobody wants done. God’s pardon cost Him His Son. Ours usually costs us nothing but pride — and we still find it hard. He is not scolding the reader so much as showing him the size of the gap he is standing in.
The Hard Text
— Matthew 6:15 — printed whole, read honestly, and not decided for youRight after the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus adds one line that has frightened sincere Christians for two thousand years. It is not softened here and it is not sharpened here. It is printed, and then the two main ways the church has read it are given with the men who held them.
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 yours.The promise and the warning, in two consecutive sentences.
Then the master summoned him and declared, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave all your debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should repay all that he owed. That is how My heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”Jesus telling the same truth as a story — and 'from your heart' is the last phrase in it.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.Three verses earlier, in the prayer itself — and the word here is debts, not trespasses. Clarke's point below turns on that.
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy-seven times!Peter proposes seven, which was generous. Jesus answers with a number nobody keeps a ledger to.
It is evidence, not a condition
On this reading, an unforgiving heart is a symptom rather than a cause. Where God has really done something in a person it shows up here, and where it never shows up here, something else was missing all along. Matthew Henry states it as cleanly as anyone ever has.
Not as if this were the only condition required; there must be repentance and faith, and new obedience; but as where other graces are in truth, there will be this, so this will be a good evidence of the sincerity of our other graces. He that relents toward his brother, thereby shows that he repents toward his God.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Reformed
Matthew 6:14-15
It is a real condition, and it means what it says
On this reading the sentence is doing exactly what it appears to be doing, and the discomfort is the point. Thomas Aquinas puts it as a necessity; Adam Clarke will not let the reader off the hook at all. He is printed here without softening.
This condition is also necessary, because without it there is no remission of sins; hence: But if you will not forgive, etc. Nor is this surprising, because no sin can ever be forgiven without charity: "Charity covers all offenses" (Pr 10:12).
Thomas Aquinas· Commentary on Matthew, 1274Medieval
Matthew 6:15
But if ye forgive not - He who does not awake at the sound of so loud a voice, is not asleep but dead. A vindictive man excludes himself from all hope of eternal life, and himself seals his own damnation. Trespasses - Παραπτωματα, from παρα and πιπτω, to fall off. What a remarkable difference there is between this word and οφειληματα, debts, in Mat 6:12! Mens sins against us are only their stumblings, or fallings off from the duties they owe us; but ours are debts to Gods justice, which we can never discharge.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Matthew 6:15
Notice the distinction Clarke draws in his second half, because it belongs to both readings. The word for what other people do to us is not the word for what we have done to God. Theirs are stumbles, missteps, fallings-away from what they owed us. Ours are debts — and a debt is the thing Jesus chose to build the parable on: ten thousand talents against a hundred pence.
Till seventy times seven - That is, as often as there is occasion. A certain number is put for an uncertain.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Matthew 18:22
If this verse has ever frightened you about your salvationwhere the page hands off
Two doors, deliberately, rather than an argument here. The parable behind Matthew 6:15 — Peter’s question, the seventy times seven, and the unforgiving servant — has a study of its own, and it is the place to take the story whole.
And where this verse touches the question of whether a believer can be lost, that question also has a page, with the warning texts carried at full strength and Marcus’s own position on it plainly given. This page will not re-argue it in a paragraph.
The Father Who Ran
— what the whole doctrine looks like with a face on itJesus told all of this as a story once, and in the story the father is running before the son has finished his speech. That is the order this page has kept from the first line: the pardon is already moving toward you while you are still working out how to ask for it. What you are asked to do afterwards is not a fee. It is a family resemblance.
The clearest modern testimony to what this costs is Corrie ten Boom’s. In The Hiding Place (1971) she describes meeting, after the war, a guard from the camp where her sister died — and finding that she could not produce forgiveness out of herself and had to be given it. Her account is the honest answer to anyone who has read this page and thought the command was easy for the people who wrote about it. John Bevere devotes The Bait of Satan entirely to what unforgiveness does to a believer over time; Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship(1937) refuses to let the word “forgiveness” be used cheaply at all; and C.S. Lewis gave the subject a short chapter in Mere Christianity(Book 3, “Forgiveness”) that most readers find harder than they expect.
The Prodigal SonThe same doctrine, told as a story — and the father sees him a long way off.So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still in the distance, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.While he was still a long way off — the running starts before the apology does.
Read the Great Books
— the writers quoted above, in their own hands — go further than this pageThe Treasury of David
Charles Spurgeon · 1869-1885
Twenty years on the Psalms, and the source of every Spurgeon block on this page. Psalms 32, 51 and 103 alone would justify the shelf space.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary on the Whole Bible
Matthew Henry · 1710
The 'evidence, not condition' reading of Matthew 6:15 in its cleanest form, from a man who is pastoral without ever being soft.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Homilies on Ephesians
John Chrysostom · c. 400
Preached to a real congregation in Antioch, and still the sharpest thing written on what God's pardon cost against what ours does.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →The Hiding Place
Corrie ten Boom · 1971
The modern testimony this doctrine needs: a woman who lost her sister in a camp, meeting one of the guards afterwards, and discovering she had to be given what she was commanded to do.
In print — find it wherever books are sold.
Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis · 1952
Book 3 has a short chapter on forgiveness that most readers find harder than the chapters on doctrine. Read it after Matthew 18.
In print — find it wherever books are sold.
The Bait of Satan
John Bevere · 1994
Offence and unforgiveness are its entire subject, aimed squarely at believers who are certain they were the ones wronged.
In print — find it wherever books are sold.