About 15 years ago, when the Word of God came into my life, I remember struggling with a heaviness in my heart. I had the feeling that I was carrying unforgiveness inside. I remember trying to forgive all the people who might have done something to me and against whom I held a grudge. I remembered everyone I could possibly remember, but the heaviness didn’t go away. Then one fine day, as I was loading the washing machine, a light, unobtrusive thought came to me: “You’ve forgotten to forgive one more person.” “Who else?” I asked in my mind, surprised. “Yourself!” came the answer. At that moment, I remember, I didn’t even try to forgive myself; there simply came the realisation, the revelation, that the Lord had already forgiven me everything, and I received His forgiveness into my life, and a weight fell from my heart.

That evening I had a vision in which I saw Jesus holding out His hand to me, and then came the Word of the Lord, which was repeated several times: “I am the Lord, and there is no other God besides Me.” Up to that moment I had known that Jesus is the Son of God, but I had no revelation that He is also God in the flesh; but through receiving His forgiveness and grace towards me, light came, which poured truth into my life.

Old covenant forgiveness

And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.
— Mark 11:25-26

Perhaps you have been frightened with these verses from the pulpit, being told that the Lord doesn’t hear your prayers because you have unforgiveness in your heart towards that brother or that sister. You may often have heard that if you don’t forgive someone, God won’t forgive you either, and this makes a person forgive others not because he has really forgiven, but out of fear of God’s punishment.

The thing is that many believers take Jesus’ words as the tenets of the new covenant, to be followed flawlessly. They don’t understand that many of the things Jesus said, He said to Jews living under the law of Moses. And many of them thought, as some do now, that the Law of God can be kept, or, as some put it, that we should “try to keep it”.

Once in a café I was talking with a sister who kept repeating Jesus’ words to me: “I did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill.” She put the emphasis on the words “not to destroy”, while the word “fulfill” for some reason got lost. I answered her that Jesus often preached the old covenant of the law, while we live under the new covenant of grace.

She objected that the Gospels in which these words of Jesus are written are in the New Testament. In reply I asked her: “At what moment did the new covenant begin?”, also reminding her that a covenant is never ratified without the shedding of blood. For a second she thought, a little light dawned on her face, and she asked in reply: “On the cross, then?” “Exactly,” I answered. But then, unfortunately, legalistic thoughts and verses crept back into her head, and she went on resisting God’s grace. That is how the legalistic veil keeps a person from seeing the glory and grace that are in the face of Jesus Christ.

Because the books of the Bible are divided into two parts, the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament”, many people are confused and don’t understand at what moment the old covenant ended and the new one began. Interestingly, in the English Bible the word Testament is used for the books of the old and new testaments, while for the covenants themselves — the old one, made at Mount Sinai, and the new one, ratified on the cross of Golgotha — the word is Covenant. The word Testament means testimony, or will, while Covenant means a covenant, an alliance between two parties made through the shedding of blood. The epistle to the Hebrews says that even the covenant of the law of Moses was made at Mount Sinai with the shedding of the blood of calves and goats. And then it says: “And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.” (Heb.9:22) That is why at the Lord’s Supper Jesus lifted the cup and said: “For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” (Mat.26:28) And under which blood do you live — that of goats and calves, or the blood of the Son of God?

Coming back to the words of Jesus that the sister kept repeating — “I came to fulfill the law, not to destroy it” — I want to give you an example. Suppose you took out a bank loan of 50 thousand and have no means of repaying it. Then a friend comes and fulfils your obligations to the bank. Will you go on paying your monthly instalments to the bank after that? You will, if you don’t believe that your friend has paid off your debt. So it turns out that your freedom depends not on the fact itself that your debt has been paid, but on whether or not you believe your friend’s good deed!

“So can we now disregard Jesus’ words in the Gospels?” someone may ask. “After all, He said that His words are spirit and life.” Of course not, but to be built up in faith we need to understand Jesus’ words — and indeed the whole Word of God — in the light of the new covenant of grace, not the old covenant of the law. In other words, to see the words through the lens of grace, not of the law.

When Jesus spoke to the disciples about forgiveness in the verse from Mark chapter 11 quoted above, He said it in the context of prayer and the faith of God. In answer to Peter pointing out the withered fig tree to the Lord, Jesus said: “Have faith in God”, and then said: “whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them”. (Mar.11:22-24) And then He linked prayer with the forgiveness of sins. So it turns out that the root of everything is the forgiveness of sins. But not forgiveness according to the old covenant of the law, where a person has to do something to be forgiven, but according to the new covenant of grace, where God has already done something, and by believing in His good work we can receive everything we ask or think.

New covenant forgiveness

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.
— Ephesians 4:32

Notice the difference between Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Mark: “But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive”, and the same words of Jesus spoken by the apostle Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “forgiving one another, just as God in Christ [ALREADY] forgave you.” (I added the word ALREADY to stress that the event is complete.) In the first case the Father’s forgiveness is in the future, the fact has not yet happened, and it depends on our forgiving, because Jesus had not yet died and shed the blood of the New Covenant; in the second case the words were spoken after the cross of Golgotha, when the Son of God had already shed His blood.

When did our heavenly Father forgive us all our sins? When we repented, or when we forgave others? No! When Jesus, hanging on the cross, prayed for all of us: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” (Luk.23:34) Someone may say that Jesus was praying for the Pharisees, but the truth is that it was the sins of all of us that nailed Him to the cross. By the way, by saying these words Jesus put all our sins into the category of unintentional sins, even if we committed them intentionally. For the Pharisees and sinners mocked and blasphemed Him intentionally, yet Jesus put all our sins into the category of unintentional ones. (Special thanks to Joseph Prince for this revelation.) The only intentional, or wilful, sin spoken of in Hebrews chapter 10 is the rejection of the saving sacrifice of the Son of God and insulting the Spirit of grace. The Lord once gave me a revelation about this, written in the article “Willful Sin, or the Iniquity of Eli’s House.”

There on the cross God the Father forgave us all our sins. And not according to the poverty of our confession, but, as the apostle Paul wrote, “according to the riches of His grace“. (Eph.1:7) Once I had a dream in which I was preaching the forgiveness of sins to a man, and I said to him: “On the day you can measure the riches of God’s grace, you will know how forgiven you are.” “Wow!” he answered, and went on: “But that’s impossible to grasp!” Exactly. We often think that our forgiveness depends on our confession, our efforts and our promises to God and to ourselves not to behave badly any more, but such attempts show that we are still living in old covenant forgiveness, not new.

In the new covenant, the more we come to know the magnitude of God’s forgiveness towards us, the more we love Jesus, for Jesus said: “to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little” — and the one forgiven much loves much. And all of us have been forgiven very much; it’s just that some believe, like Mary, and others don’t, like Simon the Pharisee. We will also love our brothers and sisters, readily forgiving what they do to us.

Jesus once told a parable in which a servant owed his master ten thousand talents, and when his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children, he begged his master to have patience with him. “Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.” This servant went out, met his fellow servant, who owed him incomparably less, took him by the throat and demanded payment. He too begged him to have patience, but this wicked servant would not wait and threw him into prison until he should pay. Then his fellow servants reported this wicked servant, and the master said to him: “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?… So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.” (Mat.18:23-35)

“There you see, Paul, Jesus said that the Father will not forgive us until we forgive.” The thing is, dear friend, that this wicked servant did not believe in the forgiveness that was given to him. He thought that his master had forgiven him not out of mercy, but because he was such an exemplary and good servant. This is the same wicked servant who buried the talent given to him in another parable Jesus told. Instead of putting the talent to work (believing in God’s forgiveness and redemption), he buried it (turned forgiveness into works of the flesh) and as a result lost it, because it was taken from him. It is not those who believe and then sin or behave badly who lose salvation, but those who are given salvation and forgiveness as a gift and, instead of receiving their Master’s grace and mercy by faith, give it back to the Master. (Mat.25:25)

But if a person has received the grace and forgiveness of our Lord Jesus Christ and believed, he has put it to good work (faith in Jesus) and can no longer lose it. How can you lose what has been put to work and received back with profit? It’s the same with forgiveness. When we receive God’s forgiveness, we receive it forever. Now all that remains is for us to come to know how forgiven we are. And the more we learn the magnitude of our forgiveness, the more we come to know the magnitude of God’s grace, and then kindness, compassion and forgiveness towards others come not from fear of punishment, in the form of hypocritical behaviour, but naturally, out of the abundance of the heart.

Interestingly, straight after Paul wrote: “forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you”, he goes on: “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.” (Eph.5:1) Imitating God consists in forgiving others as He forgave us in Christ. The more we come to know how much the Father has forgiven us in Christ, the more our behaviour resembles the behaviour of God in Christ Jesus. :-)

So, beloved brothers and sisters, let us come to know how much He has forgiven us: every time we make mistakes, instead of repenting and asking for forgiveness, let us thank the Father that this sin and this mistake have already been forgiven us in Christ, and the blood of Jesus has already washed us from all sin. And if doubts still torment us, the Spirit of God is always ready to bear witness to us of God’s Word: “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” (Heb.10:17) And then, as Jesus said, we will have the faith of God, and whatever we ask in prayer will be given to us, for the prayer of a righteous man avails much. And the righteous man is one whose sins are ALL forgiven, and to whom the Lord will never, under any circumstances, impute sin! (Rom.4:7-8) Amen!