God is a complete forgiver. He doesn’t have a ledger up in Heaven to keep track of how bad you’ve been and what you’ve done — if you’re born again, the blood of Jesus has totally wiped your slate clean.

Friend, that is the glorious forgiveness of our God, but we still have a tendency to think, “I don’t know if He forgives all of my sins. Mine are pretty bad.” I want to tell you that that’s not an unusual thing to think. I’ve had thoughts like that before, and I’ve had to renew my mind to the truth, and that’s what I want to help you with today. 

Of course, the best person we can look to when we want to be reminded of God’s forgiveness is Jesus Himself, and He actually has a parable about exactly this. The parable is found in Matthew, and it talks about a master who gathered all of his servants to see what they owed him. One of them had a debt of over a million dollars and no way to pay it back. So the master did what any creditor would do at that time: “But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made” (Matthew 18:25).

Of course, that isn’t where the story ends, because in the next verse, that poor servant begged for patience and forgiveness, and verse 27 says, “Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.”

That is our Lord. There was no way that we could do enough good or say enough prayers to make ourselves acceptable to God, but He had compassion on us, and it is only because of that compassion that we can be forgiven.

Notice that the servant in the parable didn’t have to do anything — all he did was ask, and the master forgave. That’s what happens with salvation! When we realize that we are sinners and we’re going to hell if our sin is not taken care of, we can come to Jesus and say, “I believe that God raised you from the dead, and I confess you right now as my Lord. Forgive me of my sins.” Then He just comes and washes us of all our sin, no judgement and no demands. That is the kind of forgiver our God is!

Knowing all this, we have only one way that we can reasonably respond, and that is to start giving out forgiveness to the people in our lives. Friend, nowhere does God say that we should keep blaming people for what they did to us, not even a little. Instead His example shows us that we should totally release them from their actions or words that hurt us. It’s not easy, but let me tell you, friend, it is so worth it. 

Let me give you an example from my own life. Many, many years ago, I was struggling with this disease in my body and mind. My hands and feet were painfully cold all the time. I was struggling mentally and even having panic attacks, and I remember thinking to myself, “What is this? I’m a believer. This isn’t supposed to happen to me.”

I didn’t realize it, but I was feeling bitter toward someone close to me, and that bitterness and unforgiveness was wreaking havoc in my soul and in my mind. Through it all, I was seeking the Lord, because I had experienced His healing in my life before, but I still couldn’t figure out why I was having these symptoms.

In the middle of my struggle, I was ministering at a service with Rick one day, and in that service, this prophetically gifted man of God came up to me and said, “You are a very sensitive person, and you have broken places on the inside of you, but in 24 hours, you’re going to wake up in a different world.” 

I had been trying to get my heart right for weeks, but when that prophet said that to me, I was finally able to recognize the unforgiveness I was holding onto. I was able to use my mouth to speak forgiveness to the person I was bitter towards, and I released them from what they had done.

I went to bed that night, and the next morning, it was just like the prophet said: when I woke up, it was like Jesus had put His invisible hand down into my soul and took out all those tentacles of bitterness, unforgiveness, criticism, confusion, and fear. He just took them right out of my heart, and I was completely free. My hands were totally normal, my feet were totally normal, and my mind was totally normal.

Maybe you’re struggling with unforgiveness and bitterness as well. Maybe you don’t even know you’re in unforgiveness — I didn’t know I was, because I was so focused on what I wanted the other person to do to change. I didn’t even realize what I was opening the door to. But if you ask God to reveal that unforgiving spot in your heart and you give it to Him, He will gladly take that torment out of your heart. 

What is so amazing to me is that God’s forgiveness doesn’t even stop there: when we forgive, we have opportunities to help those who wronged us. How amazing is that! How like our Lord to not just forgive but to love and help the very person who hurt Him. The Bible says that He saved us “while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8), while we were still hurting Him, but that didn’t stop Him from forgiving and sending His Son to save us. 

A great example of this is Joseph. If you know Joseph’s story, you know that he had every reason to be unforgiving. His jealous brothers had thrown him into a pit and sold him to the Egyptians, and then they had told his father that an animal had killed him. In Egypt, the lady of the house he was serving in lied about him and got him thrown in prison, and when a man who he’d ministered to in prison was released, he broke his promise to help Joseph get out too. Joseph had so many reasons for bitterness! 

But he never denied God, and when he got out of that prison, God elevated him. The only person who had more power than him in all of Egypt was Pharaoh, and when a famine arrived and Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt in need of food, he was in a position to save or to condemn them. He could have said, “No, I am never going to feed you. Look what you did to me!” He could have thrown them into the dungeon or had them killed — but instead, he fed them! He got his father and all his brothers’ wives and children, and he took care of them all until they died. He even got them the best land in Egypt. Now that is forgiveness! 

It was horrible what happened to Joseph. What his brothers did was wrong and unjust, but Joseph chose to forgive anyway, and because of that, his family was saved from starvation! I know so many stories of people who went back to those who hurt them and led them to Christ, and I believe that that is just so like our Lord. Friend, your forgiveness could give someone an entrance into life and salvation!

You might be reading this and saying to yourself, “You don’t know what’s happened to me. I can’t forgive something as bad as what they did.” It’s true that I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I do know that you and I have been given mercy, and I know that we did not deserve it.

If God just gave us what we deserved, we would have received hell, but instead He gave us mercy, and He and His forgiving power live on the inside of us. Romans 5:5 says that the Holy Ghost lives inside us, and He pours the love of God into our hearts. In John 17:26, Jesus says, “And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

In other words, the love we have in us through the Holy Spirit is exactly the same love that God the Father loves Jesus with, so you and I don’t have an excuse — we’ve got all the equipment we need to forgive.

Let’s follow Jesus’ example and His command to forgive today. I promise you that when you do, it will release and rescue the people who’ve hurt you, and you will also be totally saved and healed from that bitterness eating you up on the inside. I truly want that for you today. Friend, it’s time to forgive.