What does Matthew 6:15 mean when it says God won’t forgive us if we don’t forgive others?

Short Answer

Matthew 6:15 does not teach that we earn salvation by forgiving others. Instead, it teaches that forgiven people are expected to become forgiving people.

Salvation is completely a gift of God through Christ alone—not something we purchase with good behavior. However, genuine salvation produces changed hearts and visible spiritual fruit, including forgiveness toward others.

So forgiveness is not the cause of salvation; it is evidence and fruit flowing from a transformed life.

The point of Matthew 6:15 is that a person who permanently refuses to forgive may reveal that they have never truly understood or received God’s forgiveness themselves.

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The Overview

This question centers on an important tension many Christians wrestle with:

“If salvation is by grace alone, why does Jesus speak so strongly about forgiving others?”

Salvation Cannot Be Earned

The response strongly emphasized that salvation is not something humans can purchase or deserve.

The illustration used compared salvation to being given an inheritance far too valuable to ever buy. No amount of human goodness, effort, or moral achievement could ever earn eternal life. It is received entirely as a gift of grace through Jesus Christ.

What Changes After Salvation?

Although salvation is free, genuine conversion produces transformation. God’s Spirit begins working inside believers to shape their lives and produce obedience and spiritual fruit.

This includes things like:

• love
• obedience
• repentance
• forgiveness
• growth in holiness

These are not payments for salvation—they are the result of belonging to God.

Why Forgiveness Matters So Much

Forgiveness is one of the clearest outward evidences that someone understands God’s mercy.

The argument made here is simple:
If God has forgiven us an immeasurable debt, Christians should become people who increasingly forgive others.

This does not mean Christians forgive perfectly or instantly every time, but that forgiveness becomes part of the new heart God creates.

Understanding Matthew 6:15

When Jesus says:

“If you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you,”

the explanation given is that Jesus is describing the nature of genuine believers.

A truly transformed person cannot permanently remain hardened, bitter, and unforgiving without conviction or change.

God Produces What He Commands

Another key point came from Philippians 2: believers are called to work out their salvation, but God Himself is working within them to produce obedience and transformation.

So even forgiveness itself is ultimately empowered by God’s grace, not human effort alone.

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Key Takeaways

• Salvation Is Completely by Grace
  It cannot be earned by works.
• Forgiveness Is Fruit, Not Payment
  It flows from changed hearts.
• God Expects Believers to Forgive
  Because they have been forgiven.
• Refusing Forgiveness Is Serious
  It may reveal spiritual problems.
• The Holy Spirit Produces Change
  God empowers obedience in believers.
• Matthew 6:15 Describes Real Faith
  Not salvation by human effort.

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Bible Verse Mentioned

• Matthew 6:15
• Philippians 2:12–13
• Acts 26
• 1 John
• Ephesians 2 (good works implied)

Transcript: 

If Jesus plus nothing equals salvation, please tell me what Matthew 615 means. All right, let’s look that up.

I’m going to catch up with you here. Matthew 615. Oh, I see what you’re where you’re going with this. Yeah. Happy to talk about that. And there’s more to your question here. It makes me think it means Jesus plus forgiving others equals our forgiveness, resulting in salvation, not the work of Jesus alone. Okay. Yeah. Nothing earns our salvation.

It’s be like me saying I’m going to sell you California. You can’t buy it. You can’t afford it, right? You just can’t. There’s nothing you can do. And and to try and offer me your bank account, whatever your bank account is, I don’t care if you get $10 million in banking would be an insult, right? You know, you don’t get the redwoods and you know, you don’t get the beaches of Orange County.

You don’t get, you know, San Diego, you don’t get California and the deserts and the mountains. You don’t get all that for your $10 million. That’s not how this works. So you get to have this because I’m giving it to you. Okay. Well, how do you become a recipient of this? Well, we get in a covenant relationship, and the covenant relationship is one where you are called here as my in this case, this is terrible illustration because I’m not putting myself in the place of God and social media because you’re my son, right?

And I’m giving this to you as an inheritor because my real son has died for you, and now you’re in his place and with him, because he’s resurrected now, and you’re going to get all of this. What I expect now, right, is that my spirit in you is going to produce fruit, and that fruit or that work, or that set of good works that you’re supposed to walk into and walk in that I prepared for you?

It’s just being a part of this family now because you’re in inheritor of this state, and I will give you all this probably a bad state to choose to have you out there rolling your eyes. I don’t want to. I don’t want California. Okay, I get it. Let’s just say it was totally a great place to be in terms of its politics.

And you had all these beautiful places that we have. We have great, beautiful places here. But let’s just say, just work with me on this illustration, would you? Okay. So all of this, I’m going to tell you, you’re going to say, okay, I get that there’s some covenantal relational obligations here. And it’s something that the Bible says, not only does God demand it, but his spirit is going to work to produce it.

Are you going to work out your salvation with fear and trembling? What is God who is at work in you? Both the willing to work for his good pleasure? So God is going to supply through His spirit what he’s demanding. What he’s demanding is that you bear fruit in keeping with your repentance. Right? Just to quote acts 26, you’re going to do that because God, right, has has made that clear in his word.

And all I’m telling you is, this is how the Bible tells us to, see forgiveness. It’s one of the primary, things that God is asking us to do and that is that we are people that bear the the good work of forgiveness. Right? Because God has forgiven us as God has forgiven us, we’re demanded to forgive.

And in that demand, right. We now have, an outworking of this covenantal relationship of us being, walking, being, being obedient children, walking in the good works he’s prepared for us first. John would be a good example. All those discussions about loving your brother are impossible without forgiveness. You can’t do that without forgiving. It’s the number one thing in the book of verse, John.

Barring the overarching umbrella of obeying his commands, the specific thing of loving your brother, right. It’s going to necessitate, unless your brother’s perfect forgiveness. And so we have in the text that you’ve got to forgive others their trespasses, or your father’s not going to forgive your trespasses. What does that mean? That means that every real Christian is going to forgive the trespasses of their brother.

You’re going to forgive people. And, that’s the reality of real Christians. God works that out in us because his Spirit indwells us. And that’s how the Bible says this all works. So we’re not earning anything by that. That’s one of the good works that God has, demanded that we walk in and he’s provided all the means for us to do that.