Conditioned forgiveness

“… Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:12-15) 

God only forgives us if we forgive others
The Our Father is more than just a simple prayer. It is the most concise or the all-encompassing summary of Jesus’ message; it contains everything that we need to put into practice to have life and to have it abundantly. In Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness is not only part of the body of the prayer but it also merited an added comment from Jesus as a “Post Scriptum”.

Of all the themes enumerated in this prayer, as if it were a list, Jesus commented on only one – forgiveness -- to make it clear, leaving no room for doubts or false interpretations, everything he has to say on this subject. This appendix addendum was presented in verses 14 and 15 which came, as we have said earlier, outside the body of the prayer.

In order to make people think, very often in my homilies I ask the congregation whether God loves us unconditionally, to which all unanimously answer ‘yes’; then I follow with the question of whether or not God also forgives us unconditionally, and without much thought they also all answer ‘yes’ because they think it is logical that this should be the case.

When I contradict this collective agreement that God forgives unconditionally by saying that unlike God’s love for us, his forgiveness is not unconditional, but rather that “some conditions do apply”, that it comes with some requirements. All are taken aback by that and many, again without much thought, are too quick to say that my doctrine is false.

Many Christians pray the Our Father prayer probably more than once a day yet are not fully aware of what they are saying and what the prayer demands of them. From the added comment that Jesus himself made, we can only conclude that despite loving us unconditionally, God does not forgive us unconditionally. Therefore we better satisfy His conditions first before asking for His forgiveness. In order for us to be forgiven for having offended God, it is “conditio sine qua non” that we should first forgive others who have offended us.

In fact, in the prayer that Jesus taught us, when we say, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, we are telling God that as we have already forgiven others, that is, we have already done our part, that He should now also do His part and forgive us in turn. We place the forgiveness that we should grant others as a pre-condition to the forgiveness that we ask from God; in other words, we ourselves see that forgiving others is the condition to receive God’s forgiveness for ourselves. What allows us morally to ask God for forgiveness is the fact that we have already forgiven from the heart those who have hurt us.

“…the measure you give will be the measure you get.” (Matthew 7:2). Just as the love we have for ourselves ought to be the same measure of love that we should have for our neighbours, we cannot wish to have God for ourselves and the devil for others. We cannot hope for God’s forgiveness if we do not truly and fully forgive those who have offended us.  This truth may be as hard to accept as was Jesus’ discourse on the Eucharist in the Gospel of John which caused many followers to desert the Lord.

And forgive us our trespasses in a greater way than we forgive others – As a matter of fact, the hardness of this language on forgiveness provoked similar dissent as that over the Eucharist; in recent time, the Brazilian charismatic priest Marcelo Rossi, giving deaf ears to the words of Jesus in verse 12 because of its hardness, replaced them with his own, as cited above.

Revoked pardon
Word of a king cannot be withdrawn – Let us recall the promise that King Herod made to the daughter of Herodias, and let us also recall the words of Pilate with respect to the words he wrote on the sign placed at the top of the Lord’s cross. A king does not go back on his word, on what he has said and promised. Much less God, the King of the Universe, would take back His word.

However, the parable of the Unforgiving Servant described in the Gospel of Matthew (18:23-35) suggests that on the subject of forgiveness, God can even go back on His word. The parable recounts the story of a slave who owed an exorbitant sum of money to his Lord who, having compassion on his slave, forgave him his debts. However, as this servant did not forgive someone who owed him a much smaller sum of money, the Lord took back his word and revoked the pardon that He had previously granted.

When God goes to the extent of taking back something that He has already given, something that a sensate person would never do, this shows how adamant God is about that single condition to obtain His forgiveness, that is, we must be ready to forgive those who need our forgiveness as much as we need God’s.

Allowances
“Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18:21-22)

Always hitting on the same key, these are the verses prior to the parable that we quoted above where God withdrew the pardon He had previously given. God does not give us respite. We are to forgive and forgive not just once or twice but always, unceasingly and without getting tired just as God does with us. We can never say ‘enough is enough’ and we can never give up on someone because God never gives up on us.

Not taking anything away from the difficulty of forgiving someone who has hurt us, the following points can be of help:

1. Take into account the person’s upbringing: the traumas suffered during infancy, the bad parents, the bad teachers. A perfect upbringing and education do not exist; since Freud, no one argues the effects that the first years of life have on the rest of our lives. To overcome these deterrents is not easy and many never succeed. In view of this, to what extent is a person responsible for what he does? If the courts of justice take into account these determinants then why don’t we also when we are called to forgive?


2. Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do. This was the reason the Lord gave to forgive those who killed him. When we do evil things, most of the times we act under the influence of a powerful emotion; strong emotions fog up the mind the same way excessive alcohol does, and the person ends up not knowing what he says nor what he does. The prodigal son was out of his mind when he decided to abandon his family, as it was well told in the Gospel, and as the parable says, when he came to his senses he returned to his family.
   
   
3. The sin is one thing, and the sinner is another. The person who commits a wrongdoing also does many good things but often we do not see the good, only the bad. Furthermore, it also happens that when a person who has always done right by us does one single bad thing against us, we end up condemning him forever for it. We report to the four winds the evil that someone has done, the good that this same person does not even in private do we acknowledge it; we criticize his wrongdoings and envy his goodness. Like God, we need to make the distinction between the sinner and the sin, so as not to “throw away the baby with the bathwater”.


4. We are often hypocrites, criticizing others for the same wrongdoings that we ourselves do, or may one day come to do if given the same circumstances. If we can honestly conclude that we would do the same then to forgive is to put into practice the precept of the Lord that tells us, do to others whatever you would like others to do to you.


5. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.  Matthew 5:44 – I would say that more than an exhortation or an advice, Jesus is giving us the technique that miraculously works. None of us like to pray for those who hate us, and yet, if we make the choice to do just that and commit ourselves to do what is right, going against our instincts, we will find that after some time the feeling of hatred starts to weaken and eventually disappears altogether. Give it a try and you will see for yourself. The Gospel cannot be wrong.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC