Forgiveness from the heart is the polar opposite of resentment and its only antidote

A24 | 13 SEPTEMBER 2026 | MATT 18:21-35

The notion that justice is restored by retaliation has influenced legal codes and framed our understanding of how best to deal with human conflict across the ages and in practically every culture. Possibly the oldest and most universal principle of retributive justice, dating back to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi in the 1700s BC, and referred to by Jesus himself in Matthew’s gospel, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, the so-called Law of Talion, was meant to mitigate retaliation, on the understanding that, though all-out warfare when one member of the tribe was injured or offended was justified and a natural resort, it was, however understandable, an ultimately self-defeating reaction. One death, it stipulates, should be avenged by only one other death.

All of which raises the question: is forgiveness “from the heart” realistic or even possible? The message of this gospel could not be clearer: if revenge rather than forgiveness is thought to be natural, forgiveness is the work of grace, making possible that which, by nature alone, would be impossible.

In the parable of the unjust steward which Jesus tells to reinforce his message, it also becomes clear that the grace of forgiveness opens a new world and a new language, different from anything heard before or elsewhere: “Do good to those who harm you.” “Bless those who persecute you.” “Forgive your brother seventy-seven times” – always and endlessly, in other words. This is the language of generosity and compassion, the language of charity, in other words, which is the form of all the virtues, the essence of all God’s gifts and God himself.

The parable itself is possibly the darkest of them all. The sums instanced are deliberately both vast and minuscule, respectively, stressing the wicked servant’s blindness as much as his heartlessness. Any right-minded reader is stunned by both the stupidity of the mean-minded servant’s failure to recognise his own good fortune and his callousness in failing to respond to his fellow servant’s need, equal to his own.

But the parable also skilfully illustrates the dire and destructive consequences of refusing to forgive, and the cycle of bitter resentment that follows in its train. Resentment, the most negative and destructive of all human emotions, sucks us into an inescapable vortex that destroys all concerned, the one who refuses forgiveness and the one refused forgiveness. Nothing is more contagious than resentment.

Forgiveness from the heart, on the other hand, is the polar opposite of resentment and its only antidote; the ultimate release from wrongs perpetrated and the most soothing balm for hurt suffered. To withhold it is to withhold the most precious of all God’s gifts, the one indispensable grace which we all, without exception, stand in need of: God’s love and forgiveness are one and the same. To withhold forgiveness from another person is to come between them and God’s love made concrete in our lives.

On a human level, genuine forgiveness is, of course, much more than peace-keeping compromise or face-saving accommodation. It is rooted in the recognition that our weaknesses are shared, that we ourselves are as needful of forgiveness and healing as everybody else. And, most uncomfortably of all, it is rooted in the recognition that we ourselves might be capable of every evil, given different circumstances and conditions. Plato’s sobering story in the Republic of the Ring of Gyges, in which due to the invisibility and anonymity engendered by the ring he finds, a shepherd boy is able to perpetrate any crime he chooses, without fear of discovery or redress, is salutary: what would we do in the same circumstances? “There but for the grace of God, go I”, should be often on our lips.

The parable’s coda is that the measure by which we forgive will be the exact measure by which we ourselves will be forgiven. This is not so much by divine decree as according to the very nature of forgiveness and the nature of the human heart. We will be able to grant forgiveness only to the degree we are able to receive it and vice-versa: if the heart is open enough to receive forgiveness, it will be sufficiently open to give it; and only the kind of heart that can forgive will be the one able to receive forgiveness.

General Oglethorpe (1696-1795) is reported to have said to John Wesley (1703-91). “Sir, I never forgive”. Wesley’s rapid riposte was: “Then, Sir, I hope you never sin.” Little wonder that Jesus tells us explicitly: “Leave your gift before the altar and, first, go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” (Matt 5:24) And “When you stand to pray, if you hold anything against another, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven will forgive you your trespasses also.” (Mark 11:25) That sentiment is repeated every time we say the Our Father: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgiven those who trespass against us.”