I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love. Luke 7:47
Have you ever tried to forgive someone and found you simply had nothing to give?
Joseph knew exactly what that felt like. He’d been cheated by a close friend—his life savings, gone. For months he carried the anger and powerlessness of it. He heard forgiveness preached at church, but it felt like advice for small things. Not for losing everything at the hands of someone he trusted.
One Sunday a visiting preacher said something that stopped Joseph: “It is hard to forgive someone when you have never truly received forgiveness yourself.” The preacher quoted Jesus, saying, “… a person who is forgiven little shows only a little love” (Luke 7:47). Joseph couldn’t shake those words. They forced him to ask himself: had he ever actually asked Jesus to forgive him?
Joseph talked with his pastor. What began as a conversation about forgiving his friend became something else entirely. Joseph found himself confessing sins he hadn’t thought about in years—including cheating someone decades earlier. Suddenly he realized he wasn’t so different from the man who had wronged him.
His pastor prayed with him. A weight lifted that Joseph hadn’t even fully known he was carrying. For the first time, he genuinely felt complete peace with God. Joseph later identified that afternoon as the beginning of his journey toward forgiving his friend. He put it simply: “I couldn’t give what I hadn’t received. Once I recognized how much I’d been forgiven, forgiving him felt possible.”
We forgive others, Scripture says, “just as God through Christ has forgiven [us]” (Ephesians 4:32b). Forgiveness flows from God to us, and from us to others. Have you received God’s gift of forgiveness?
