The Dangers Of Unforgiveness

OCTOBER 19, 2026

(Part 2 of 2)

READ AGAIN: MATTHEW 18:21-35

As long as you fail to forgive an offender, you are shackled to the past. Unforgiveness keeps that pain alive. Unforgiveness never lets that wound heal, and you go through life reminding yourself of what was done to you, stirring up that pain and making yourself progressively angrier. You go through life accumulating bad feelings.

Now, think about it. What’s the point of that? What’s the benefit? Unforgiveness just imprisons you in the past and robs you of the joy of living. On the other hand, forgiveness opens the door and lets the prisoner out. Forgiveness sets you free from your past. As soon as you forgive, you’re free. If you insist on remembering the offense and never forgiving it, then you allow the person to go on offending you the rest of your life. Does Jesus really command us to forgive?

Not only He commands but God's grace for us is absolute and our only hope of spending eternity with Him. The ability to forgive those who hurt us is evidence that the Spirit of God in us through faith in Christ is alive and active and at work in us.

The “FINAL ANALYSIS” of the above verses is this: Jesus drives the point of the story home. His Father in heaven, God, will also imprison every person who does not forgive his brother from the heart. God expects those whom He forgives to forgive everyone who sins against them up to the amount they themselves have been forgiven. Since every sin we commit is committed against God, those who are forgiven by Him are forgiven for every sin, every wrong and wicked choice, we ever do over the course of our lifetimes. Nobody will ever sin against us anywhere near to the amount we have sinned against God.

SCRIPTURE READING:

MATTHEW 18:15

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK:

Unforgiveness chains us tot the past, poisons the present and keeps us from what God has for us in the future