The Lutheran Hour
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"Forgiveness Is a Non-Negotiable"
- Full Program MP3 TLH Message (only) Pastor Zeigler Interview
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Text: Matthew 6:12
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What were the non-negotiables you were raised with?
By non-negotiables, I mean the things that could finish the sentence, “In this family we …” such as, “In this family at dinner time we try at least one bite of everything on our plates.” Or “In this family we go on trips during the summer,” or “We go to college,” or “We go to church on Sundays.” Or “In this family we root for the Packers.” Sometimes, the non-negotiables could be stated as negatives, like, “In this family we don’t touch dad’s tools,” or “We don’t bother mom while she’s watching her show.”
There are some lines you do not cross.
Every family has these non-negotiables—expectations that aren’t up for discussion, rituals that aren’t “on the table” for trading out. They’re what make a family what it is—its core values, beliefs, convictions, practices that, if you gave them up, you’d be a different family. Even in families with low expectations, even they have non-negotiables, even if it’s only, “You don’t tell me what to do. You do you.” Even if the only rule is, “There are no rules,” that’s still a rule.
Part of what makes non-negotiables necessary is that they establish boundaries. They let us know where I stop and where you start. They protect us from walking all over each other, from treating each other like objects, like property, or just extensions of ourselves. Non-negotiables say, “You can go this far, but no further.” Joking’s okay, but don’t be mean. Rough-housing is okay, but not in the living room—and biting: never okay. But even more than boundaries, non-negotiables are the fabric we work with, the water we swim in, the raw material we need to make a life. Without some non-negotiables we couldn’t live together or work together, we couldn’t even play together. We couldn’t trust each other. We wouldn’t even know who we are. Non-negotiables are embedded in our identities and secured by our boundaries.
You don’t even have to believe in God to have non-negotiables. Maybe you don’t believe in God. You might believe that things got to be this way through evolution—through randomness and chance. And if that is the case, then the non-negotiables we had yesterday may not be the ones you want for tomorrow. Because if there is no Creator-God to tell us, “Thus far, and no further,” then we have to make our own boundaries, or I make mine and you ours, even if all we can agree on is, “Don’t tell me what to do,” which, incidentally, is how someone once described hell—a country where people are always trying to get what they want, but not what they need, and always moving further and further away because they don’t want to be told what to do.i Whether or not we can agree about God, I think we can agree that at least some non-negotiables are inevitable, because without some boundaries, everything dissolves into everything else, into indiscriminate nothingness.
But maybe that’s what you believe—that there are no permanent boundaries, that there really is no difference between biting your nails and biting your friend, (though your friend might disagree). If that is what you believe, then that’s your non-negotiable. It’s your judgment on the universe, your belief about how things really are. I guess that’s another way to describe a non-negotiable: it’s just how things are, at least, from a certain perspective.
I don’t know what your perspective is, but if we had the opportunity, I would like to know about you, to try to understand something about your story, how you came to believe what you believe, why you hope what you hope. I would like to know you, because you are a non-negotiable for me, for us, for this community of which I’m a part. That’s why we go to the effort to produce this program every week. We do it from the conviction, the belief, that you, whoever you are, wherever you are, you are a non-negotiable because God says so.
Jesus, God’s Word, God’s eternal Son, who created everything, He said it not just with His words but also with His deeds. He said it by being born as a fellow human being alongside us. He said it by the way He embraced everyone He met. He said it by the way He surrendered His life to God’s justice and mercy.
Jesus’ surrender culminated in His death on the cross. And God was pleased to raise Jesus from the dead, so that He, in a way I don’t fully understand, could be present everywhere, by God’s Spirit, so that He could return one day and raise us all from the dead and make everything new, better than new. Jesus said and did all this because, just as God was not willing for His Son to be lost in death, so also, God is not willing that you would be lost. You are God’s non-negotiable. Jesus sent me to tell you that.
Jesus told His followers, “It is not the will of [God] your Father in heaven that one of these little ones be lost.” It’s recorded in the Gospel of Matthew 18:14. “Little ones” here refers not just to small children, but also, to everyone who is small and vulnerable, to everyone threatened by the sins and failures of others, to everyone shackled by their own failures and sins, and not able to free themselves—those are the little ones of whom Jesus speaks.ii
They are all of us, though sometimes we like to think otherwise. We are all “little ones” before God, and Jesus says that His Father—actually He says, “your Father”—our Father, is not willing that one—not even one!—of these little ones be lost. It is not God’s will for little ones to be lost to Him, or lost to us. God’s love for them, all of them, His desire for their eternal good, that’s a non-negotiable, which brings up another related non-negotiable for God: forgiveness.
Earlier, Jesus had taught His followers to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” And He told them, “Because if you forgive others their trespasses” (their slights and shortcomings and failures), “your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (see Matthew 6:12-15).
In other words, for the God and Father of Jesus, forgiveness is a non-negotiable. God gives boundaries to protect His forgiveness, because forgiveness reflects who God is—it is part of God’s identity, His justice, and His mercy. To expect for God not to care about forgiveness, is to ask God to be a different god, a god of your own making, and then to put your trust in that god, to stake your life on that god, instead of on the God and Father of Jesus.
If we want to be part of God’s family, forgiveness is a non-negotiable. Now, there was an instance when Jesus’ first followers wanted to test this. “Is forgiveness really necessary in every situation?” They wondered. “I mean, what if you have a really good reason not to forgive someone? Say, like, they did it on purpose? They did it because they knew it would bother you. And even though you’ve told them how much you hate when they do that, and this is at least the seventh time that they’ve done it—and they’re not even trying to change—what about then? There’ve got to be more important things than forgiveness, Jesus, like sanity and common decency, right?”
Jesus, as He often did, answers the question with a fictional story, a parable. It’s recorded in Matthew 18, starting at verse 23.
Jesus said, “For this reason, the Kingdom, the rule and reign of heaven, has become like a certain king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. And as he was settling, one servant was brought before him who owed 10,000 talents [which would have taken an average day-laborer somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 million workdays to pay back—an impossible debt]. And so, because he could not pay it, the master ordered that the servant be sold, along with his wife and his children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell down before him and pleaded with him, saying, “Be patient with me. And I will repay you everything.” But because the master was moved with compassion for this servant, he released him and forgave him the debt.
Then, that same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii [a hundred days’ wages], and grabbing him, he began to choke him, saying, “Pay what you owe.” So his fellow servant fell down and began to plead with him, saying, “Be patient with me. And I will repay you.” But he was not willing, and he went and threw him in prison until the debt should be paid.
Now, when his fellow servants saw this, they were greatly distressed. And they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then, the master summoned him and says to him, “You wicked servant! All that debt I forgave you because you pleaded with me.
And it was necessary—wasn’t it—for you to have mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you.” And because he was angry, his master handed him over to the jailers until he should repay all that was owed.”
“So also,” Jesus said, “will My Father in heaven do to all of you if you do not, each of you, forgive your brother from your hearts” (Matthew 18:23-35).
Jesus compares God, His Father, to this king. Now, that doesn’t mean that God is like this fictional king in every sense, but at least in one sense: in God’s family, forgiveness is a non-negotiable. It’s not up for debate because forgiveness is what makes us who we are. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, just necessary. Necessary, because God is not willing that even one of these little ones be lost—not lost to Him, not lost to us. And we’re not going to change God’s mind on this. And we shouldn’t try. We can’t give up on anyone, because God hasn’t given up on us.
Jesus’ story is a comfort and a warning. It’s a comfort because no debt is too much for God to forgive on account of Jesus. And a double comfort because Chrisitan forgiveness doesn’t start with us, but with God. It’s God’s non-negotiable—not ours. Our forgiveness is simply God’s forgiveness flowing through us. The algorithm is simple: as God has had mercy on us, so we have mercy on others. That’s the Christian way. It’s not so much that we’re trying to imitate God—though sometimes the Bible says it that way (see Ephesians 5:1). But it’s not imitation in an artificial sense, but an organic sense. We’re participating in God’s life. We’re riding the wave of God’s forgiveness. We’re carried along by the river of God’s life, because God’s life and God’s forgiveness are just two ways of saying the same thing. Which means that if I shut out God’s forgiveness, then I shut out God’s life.
So, Jesus’ story is also a warning. But the warning is not, “Watch out, because God might change His mind and decide that He doesn’t love, but actually hates you.” No, that’s not the warning. It’s not that God’s forgiveness is conditional. It’s that God’s life and God’s forgiveness are one in the same thing. If you refuse to let God’s forgiveness flow through you, or if I refuse, then we are, at the same time, refusing God’s life, refusing the God of Jesus, and making a god of our own choosing. And then those little artificial gods will have to pay the bill for our unpayable debt to the true God.
Today, if you look at your hands or you look in your heart, and you notice that maybe you do have someone in a chokehold of unforgiveness, like the wicked servant in Jesus’ parable, in the fictional story it was too late for him. But in real life, it is not too late for you. Jesus tells this story because He loves you—to warn and to comfort you. God’s forgiveness is still on the table. It’s still there, ready to flow through you right now.
So, take a deep breath. Loosen your grip a little. Let God’s love and life flow through you, and to you, because He is not willing that even one of these little ones be lost, and that includes you.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive.”iii
For anyone who belongs to Jesus, forgiveness is a way of life, but that doesn’t make it easy. I saw the difficulty of forgiveness on the face of Erika Kirk when I watched a video of her speaking at the memorial service of her late husband, Charlie Kirk, who was murdered one year ago this week.iv In her talk, Erika, who has a master’s degree in legal studies,v described the cowardly murderer who shot her husband while hiding from four hundred feet away, she described him simply as “that young man.” That is, somebody’s neighbor, somebody’s friend, somebody’s son—their little one. “That young man”—she repeated it—lifting her eyes up in grief and pain as she said it. She referenced the words of Jesus from the cross, when He prayed for the people who were crucifying Him: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”—forgiveness that would flow even to those men. “That man,” Erika said it again, this time with a flash of anger on her face. Maybe she was contemplating his crime, what he had done, what he had stolen from her and her two small children. But then she paused, loosened her grip a little, and took a deep breath.
And it was like she wasn’t even there anymore, or maybe just smaller, all of a sudden. When she spoke again, she was just a little one standing in the presence of the Holy God, the King who had forgiven her an unpayable debt. When she spoke again, it was a prayer pleading for mercy she couldn’t afford. “That young man, I forgive him,” she said, almost surprised to hear herself saying it, before hiding her face in tears.
A minute later, when she regained her composure once more, she addressed the tens of thousands of people standing in the stadium: “I forgive him because it was what Christ did. And what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love and always love.”
To forgive someone, you don’t have to pretend that what they did wasn’t so bad. To forgive someone, you don’t have to pretend that there won’t be lawful, God-given consequences in this life. To forgive someone, you don’t have to pretend that the debt they owe isn’t crippling. You don’t even have to pretend that you like someone to forgive them. Forgiveness is simply releasing the chokehold. Forgiveness means wanting good for the person who hurt you, seeking their good, not their ill, praying for them to be included, cured, found, restored, made whole again in Christ.
Forgiveness starts with God’s forgiveness for us. The truth that God absorbed the whole crippling debt of our sin in the death of His Son because He was moved with compassion for us—that’s where all Christian forgiveness begins. And forgiveness starts to flow through us because we have no life outside of Jesus. We died to ourselves and our lives are hidden in Him. Our forgiveness is just Christ’s forgiveness passed on.
In this family, we forgive each other, in the Name of Jesus. Amen.
i See C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, New York: Harper Collins (1946).
ii See Jeffrey Gibbs, Matthew 11:2 – 20:34, St Louis: Concordia (2010), 887–96.
iii C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York: Harper Collins (2003), 115.
iv “Full Speech: Erika Kirk speaks at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service,” ABC News, Sept 21, 2025. Accessed on July 15, 2026 at https://youtu.be/JJyUV3t5310?si=x61SgoFB4cW6fsYs
v Robert Draper, “For Erika Kirk, a Husband’s Life Cut Short by Violence He Seemed to Foresee,” New York Times, Sept 21, 2025. Accessed on July 16, 2026 at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/us/politics/erika-kirk.htmlReflections for September 13, 2026
Title: Forgiveness Brings ChangeMark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. For FREE online resources, archived audio, our mobile, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. Now back to our Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. Today I’m visiting with Dr. Jeff Gibbs, a beloved Bible teacher in our church body. Welcome back to the program, Jeff.
Jeff Gibbs: Thanks, Mike. It’s good to be back.
Mike Zeigler: So today we’re talking about forgiveness. You’ve written on this extensively as you’ve commented on this Gospel according to Matthew and Jesus’ teaching here. And in your commentary, you offer some counsel, pastoral counsel, to people who might be struggling with forgiveness. And you walk us through some steps. I thought we could just walk through those steps here. And you say the first step is to remember that God takes the initiative.
Jeff Gibbs: We love because He first loved us. So God loves first. He didn’t ask that we ask Him to save us. No, He just does it. He takes the initiative and that’s what God is like. The parable begins with the master, the king forgiving an unfathomable debt. And the servant, maybe this shows his problem, he says, “If you’re patient, I’ll pay it back.” So the master is compassionate. He has compassion. He is deeply moved with pity. And so he forgives the debt. And then the very nature of that is there are two possibilities at this point. One is that God’s forgiveness begins to be transformative, or it doesn’t. And this guy, it didn’t affect him. In another context, he’s owed a considerable debt, a hundred days’ wages, and he chokes his fellow servant and throws him in jail. And the master says, “You did not let my forgiveness transform you at all. You rejected it. So I’m taking it away.” So it’s kind of severe. But on the other hand, God takes the initiative. God doesn’t ask us to be wonderful. He doesn’t ask us to be forgiving. First, He forgives. And then He says to His followers, “You forgive as well.”
Mike Zeigler: And I appreciate how you say that, not completely transform, but just begin to transform us. And you address that in the second step that you talk about, that distinguishing between the decision that we make to forgive someone and the emotions that may or may not come with that.
Jeff Gibbs: The word here that’s used to forgive means “to dismiss or release.” That’s one way of thinking about forgiveness: “I release you.” So yeah, there’s that. But then we all have experienced this too, is that you see that person around the corner in the aisle of the grocery store and your stomach knots so hard, you think you’re going to vomit. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t released them. You did release them. The act of the will and the emotions. And I think it’s important in this case to try to separate those out because otherwise you can walk around feeling, “Oh, I haven’t forgiven anybody that’s really hurt me.” And the answer is no, yes, you have. In Jesus, you have. Emotions, you just have to work on them over time.
Mike Zeigler: Third step then you mention is that we might have to do this again and again and again. And so not only do we distinguish between the will to forgive and the emotions of it, but also my failing and feeble forgiveness and God’s once-and-for-all forgiveness in Jesus. Those are two different things.
Jeff Gibbs: The act of God for us in Jesus is “one and done.” He died. He’s not going to die again. And He rose from the dead. He’s not going to rise again. So yeah, I’ve counseled lots of people and had to remember myself as well that if this thing comes up again, okay, it came up again. It’s still in the context of Jesus who now forgives my desire not to forgive. And then His forgiveness begins to transform me again, and I just move on. So in that sense, the Christian life of growth is not a straight upward movement. It doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It doesn’t mean I’m not being transformed or effective. I am.
Mike Zeigler: Thanks for your counsel and helping us wrestle with forgiveness.
Jeff Gibbs: It’s something that we all wrestle with, so I’m happy to be here.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Forgive Our Sins as We Forgive” performed by the Kammerchor of Concordia University-Wisconsin. Used by permission.
“Come Down, O Love Divine” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.