Concerning Forgiveness of the Neighbor

In my meditation titled “Remember Lot’s Wife” in the August 2025 issue of Sword and Shield, I asked this question: “Do we forgive our neighbor before he repents?” My answer to that question was no. This answer I sought to ground in Luke 17:3: “Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.”

The statement that we do not forgive the neighbor until he repents is itself false and wicked. For this statement I apologize. This is false and wicked because of the term that I used, namely, forgiveness. By using this term, what I wrote is itself false. This is because of God’s forgiveness of us. What is true is this: What we say of our forgiveness of the neighbor is what we say about God’s forgiveness of us. That is what Christ taught us to pray: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). Then, by the very words that I wrote, I taught that God does not forgive us before we repent. While this is not what I believe nor what I intended to teach, it is nevertheless what I taught. And for this I apologize to the reader, for I taught a lie in my words. Now, I wish to set forth both the truth and what I intended to write.

The answer to the question “Do we forgive our neighbor before he repents?” is an unqualified and resounding yes! This is the fruit of God’s free forgiveness of believers. God forgives his people without repentance. Before they have one thought of repentance, God already forgave them. This is likewise what God works in his people by his grace. The people whom God freely forgave, without repentance, likewise freely forgive their neighbors, their debtors, without repentance. This is what God works in his people.

When the believer has a debtor, that is, someone who sins against him, the believer, before his debtor ever repents, forgives the man. As God forgave him, so likewise does the believer forgive his indebted neighbor. The believer holds no malice, no ill-will, and no desire for revenge against his debtor. The believer simply says, “I forgive you. I do not hold you as my debtor.” No matter what the believer’s debtor did to him, the believer simply forgives his debtor. Positively, the believer loves his neighbor, that is, the one who is indebted to him. The believer loves that neighbor as himself. He desires that neighbor’s salvation.

It is then out of the believer’s free forgiveness of his debtor that in love for his neighbor, he rebukes his neighbor. He does not overlook that neighbor’s sin. He may have sinned against the believer, but he also sinned against God. This is the believer’s rebuke to him. “Neighbor, you need to repent. Neighbor, you do not offend me, but you offend God. Neighbor, what you did is sin against God.” If the believer never forgave his debtor, the believer would never go to his neighbor; he would never rebuke him; and he would never tell him to repent. He would not tell him, “Brother, you stand in peril.” What he would say is, “My debtor can go to hell. He never paid me what he owed me. He struck me, or he stole from me, or whatever.” Such an attitude is wicked and ungodly, and the one who so deals with his neighbor has never tasted the gospel. Rather, forgiving the neighbor before the neighbor ever repents, the believer goes to his neighbor in love, and desiring the neighbor’s salvation, he rebukes his neighbor.

Such is what I believe and what I intended to teach and defend. When I asked that question “Do we forgive the neighbor before he repents?,” and I answered no, what I was striving at was that the believer deals with the sin of the one who sins against him, and the believer rebukes him. The believer rebukes his neighbor because that man may have sinned against the believer, but that man also sinned against God. When I answered no, that is what I was trying to teach. I was trying to say that the believer deals with sin. He does not wink at sin; neither does he turn a blind eye to it. That is what I meant when I said that the believer does not forgive until his neighbor repents. But that is not what the word forgive means. Before the neighbor ever repents, the believer forgives him. Period. And then, in love for his neighbor whom he forgave, the believer addresses his neighbor’s sin, as it is offensive to God; the believer does not ignore that sin. That is what I meant by my words, but that is not what I taught, and for this I sincerely apologize.