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For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Matthew 6:14-15
Reflect
For those of you who weren’t alive in 1974, it’s probably hard to imagine just how deeply Watergate had shaken the country. There was a palpable sense of anger in the air for many. So many people wanted their pound of flesh. Yes, many surrounding President Richard Nixon had been hauled off to jail, and it wasn’t enough that he became the first – and still only – president who had ever resigned from office. Plenty of people wanted to see Nixon in cuffs, paraded past reporters and cameras and publicly shamed for lying to and deceiving the American people.
Enter Gerald Ford, the substitute vice president who had entered an administration that was already under fire from the media and Congress. Only nine months after he became vice president, Mr. Ford was suddenly sitting in the Oval Office. And only one month after becoming president, he made a decision that would enrage millions of people, badly damage him politically and likely contribute to his defeat two years later.
Simply put, President Ford pardoned ex-President Nixon.
Many saw it as party politics. Ford said it was an effort to move the country past the ugliness of Watergate and toward something better and more productive. His first words after his inauguration had been, “Our long national nightmare is over,” and the pardon was a continuation of that sentiment. But it wasn’t seen that way by many – at least not for many years. In 2001, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation gave Ford its Profile in Courage Award for being willing to place what he believed was the good of the country ahead of his own political future.
Forgiving people isn’t easy. Our human desire is usually to hold on to the pain caused by others as some sort of fuel for the vengeance we hope to get one day. “After all, they didn’t care about my feelings when they hurt me! Why should I have to forgive them?!”
There’s more than one level to why we should forgive. On the one hand, it’s good for us. My wife so often tells me that God’s Word is preventative medicine and that when we follow His commands, it’s simply in our best interest – and God knew that when He inspired people to write those things down. Why forgive? Because unforgiveness keeps us locked in the past, always looking backward and never ahead. No one would ever try this, because it’s foolish, but imagine that if, on your drive to work, you never looked ahead and only stared at the people in your rearview mirror. There’s not a question about whether or not you’d crash – it would just be a matter of how long it would take.
But beyond being good for us, God calls us to forgive others because forgiveness is part of His nature. Every time we ask Him to forgive the things we’ve done wrong, He’s faithful to do just that. That doesn’t mean the things other people have done to us are small. Some wounds are enormous. Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending that what happened didn’t matter or that it was somehow acceptable. It doesn’t always mean that trust is immediately restored, either. But the mercy God has shown us should change the way we respond to people who have hurt us.
Jesus makes that connection very clearly in Matthew 6. He teaches us to pray, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,” and then, just a few verses later, He comes back to the same idea again. That ought to get our attention. People who live by the mercy of God cannot casually refuse mercy to everyone else.
There is more than one way people have tried to explain this passage, but no matter how we work through the wording, Jesus clearly links God’s forgiveness of us with our willingness to forgive other people. He isn’t telling us that forgiveness is easy. He isn’t saying the hurt wasn’t real. But He is telling us that a heart that has received mercy should become a heart willing to extend mercy.
I hope that today you have already forgiven those who have wronged you in the past. Again, I know it’s not easy. And forgiveness doesn’t mean that you have to forget every lesson you learned or ignore every boundary you may need.
The rearview mirror has a purpose. It helps us remember where we’ve been and recognize what may still be behind us. But no one can safely drive forward while staring into it.
If there is pain from the sins of others lingering in your life, don’t let it control every mile ahead. Forgiveness doesn’t erase the past. It simply refuses to let the past determine the future.
Stop staring in the rearview mirror and look ahead. The Lord’s plan for you starts right now with pardon and forgiveness.
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Reflection copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt. Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
