Three Benefits of Forgiveness

My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.
—Matthew 18:35

Why should we forgive? What’s in it for us when we develop a forgiving heart?

Let me mention three benefits of forgiveness. First, the reason we forgive is because forgiveness is often the only way to settle a debt. In Matthew 18, Jesus told the story about a king who called in a slave who owed him six billion dollars.. He says to this slave, “I want my money and I want it now.” Of course, there is no way that servant could ever repay his debt and the king understood that. And so the Bible says when the slave begged him for forgiveness, “The lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt” (v. 27). That’s what forgiveness is. It is releasing a person of a debt they owe you. Why did the king do that? Well, there was an altruistic reason. It was because he felt compassion. But I believe there was also a practical reason. He realized he was holding an account receivable that was absolutely worthless. He was never going to get his money back. So why hang on to that debt?

I think many people struggle with forgiving an unfaithful mate, somebody who has abused them, or somebody who has cheated them out of money. They refuse to let go of that wrong because they think somehow their offender can make up for the injustice they committed. But the fact is, most of the time people can’t compensate us adequately for what they’ve done to hurt us. We are holding an account receivable that is absolutely worthless. Forgiveness, many times, is the only way to settle a debt.

There’s a second benefit of forgiveness. Forgiveness frees us from emotional bondage. If someone owes you a debt, you are financially and emotionally linked to the person who owes you money. I think that’s what was going on here. Here is a king who was owed billions of dollars, and I’m sure he wanted his money back. He was in emotional bondage to the person who owed him the money. Perhaps he went down every day to the treasurer and said, “Has the check come in yet? Is that money here yet?” And the treasurer said no. When we have somebody who owes us not just materially but emotionally for a wrong they committed against us, we are in emotional bondage to that person. As long as that person owes you, you can’t let go of it. But forgiving somebody, letting go of a debt, is many times the only way we can be free to get on with our life.

There’s a third benefit of forgiveness, and that is forgiveness assures us of God’s forgiveness. Remember how the story ends up? The king forgives the slave of his six-billion-dollar debt. Then the slave goes out and finds a fellow slave who owes him sixteen dollars, and he grabs that fellow slave and says, “Pay me what I owe you!” The slave begs forgiveness for his sixteen-dollar debt. But the first slave says, “No, that money’s mine. I deserve it. And I am going to throw you into prison until you repay everything you owe me!” When the king hears about what happened, he says to the slave, “‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him” (Matthew 18:32–34).

You see, the Bible teaches that forgiveness is the obligation of those who have truly been forgiven. Our willingness to forgive assures us of God’s forgiveness in our life.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “Developing a Forgiving Heart” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.
Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.