March 26

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?’ — Matt 18:32-33 BSB

Though the servant had been forgiven a vast debt, he wasn’t willing to forgive a fellow servant a small debt.

No Christian teaching is repeated more often or more earnestly than the call to forgive. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus links divine and human forgiveness: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Then He adds a solemn warning: “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.”

Paul urges us to be kind and tenderhearted, forgiving one another just as God has forgiven us in Christ. This teaching is clear—if we are unwilling to forgive others, it shows that we ourselves have not truly experienced God’s forgiveness. A heart that refuses to forgive has not yet tasted the mercy of God.

It was once said of a man, “His heart was as large as the world—but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.”