In Matthew 6:14-15 Jesus is reported to have said the following:
That’s very clear. The only way to earn the forgiveness of God is by forgiving the sins of other people. Faith is not required, just forgiveness.
Which sins must be forgiven? Jesus answered that question too:
Every sin except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is to be forgiven. That means murder, rape, incest, sodomy, assault, battery, robbery, fraud, slander, libel--- all those sins and many more must be forgiven.
In the above passage Jesus is talking about the sins that he will forgive, both in this life and in the afterlife. Surely Jesus doesn’t expect his followers to forgive the same sins, does he? Well, yes actually-- he does:
Jesus expects his followers to be as perfect as God. If God forgives all sins but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then so must his followers.
And how many times must a sin be forgiven? That question was answered elsewhere in the book of Matthew:
Some translations render the last number as seventy times seven, or 490. But whether it’s 77 times or 490 times, that’s a lot of forgiveness! I would argue that Jesus never expected his followers to keep track of how many times they have forgiven a sin. The number 77, as I see it, was never intended to be understood as a real number, but should instead be interpreted as “a number that is so huge that no one could ever forgive a sin that many times.” That is, the number 77 is the First Century CE equivalent of “infinity.”
So Jesus expects his followers to forgive every sin except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and to forgive them infinitely many times. The Lord’s Prayer underscores the importance of forgiveness by asking his followers to think about it every day:
Clearly forgiveness is the crux of the morality that Jesus taught.
Or, rather-- that’s the morality of the version of Jesus one finds in the book of Matthew. The Jesus of the book of John never once says that his followers must forgive the sins of other people if they are to earn the forgiveness of God!
Christians have sided with the John Jesus and have ignored the morality of the Matthew Jesus. The Catholic Catechism never once cites or even references Matthew 5:48, Matthew 6:14-15, Matthew 12:31-32, or Matthew 18:21-23. Furthermore, the Catechism lists the seven Christian virtues as follows:
Note that forgiveness is not one of the listed virtues. Matthew 6:14-15 says that you must forgive the sins of others if you wish to be forgiven by God, and yet the Catholic Church doesn’t think that forgiveness is a virtue!
Perhaps you might think that forgiveness is simply a subtype of charity. No! Here’s the first definition of “forgive” in the Miriam-Webster dictionary:
That is, forgiveness implies an intent not to prosecute. And here’s the first definition of “charity” from the same dictionary:
Forgiveness is extended to someone who has committed a sin; charity is extended to those in need, regardless of whether they have committed an offense. So they are two very different actions.
Earlier we found that Jesus expects his followers to forgive every sin except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and to forgive each sin infinitely many times. That seems pretty ridiculous. If an armed man forces his way into my house and kills my spouse before my eyes, I would not be willing to simply shrug it off and tell the man “I forgive you.” No! I would want to report his actions to the authorities and have him arrested so that he can stand trial for murder!
To pardon someone means to exempt them from punishment. So according to Jesus, not only am I supposed to cease to feel resentment, but if my spouse’s killer were to return to my house I would be obligated to reaffirm my pardon of his actions. I must never even seek to have him prosecuted!
Here is a very well known passage from the book of Matthew that shows just how much Jesus expected of his followers:
It’s difficult to understand how loving someone like Adolf Hitler, or Kim Jong Un, or Mao Zedong, or Vladamir Putin could improve the world condition. But Jesus wasn’t trying to make the world a better place in which to live. He was only trying to prepare his followers for an eternity in paradise.
The story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 is a wonderful tale of compassion and generosity. The Beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-11 show compassion for the downtrodden and oppressed. A story about the last judgment in Matthew 25:31-46 shows that Jesus expects the people of earth to extend charity to those in need. And the story of the woman accused of adultery in John 7:53 – 8:11 shows that forgiveness, used judiciously, can bring about a renewal of spirit and a corresponding change of behavior.
But universal forgiveness of any and all crimes is simply not practical in a modern society. That particular aspect of the moral teachings of Jesus is just far too idealistic. A society that forgives all crimes will effectively be rewarding criminals. The end result of such a policy will inevitably be an escalation of crime. Jesus may have believed that his followers would be so few in number that the policy of forgiving every sin would never be disruptive to the social order. But in the United States about 65% of the population considers itself to be Christian, so that notion is no longer tenable. The universal forgiveness teaching of Jesus may be revered as an unattainable ideal, but it must never be codified in law or social policy.
