Passage: Mark 11:25-26
The Big Idea
Right after promising that believing prayer can move mountains, Jesus added: “Whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive.” Prevailing prayer needs two things: faith toward God and love toward people. Forgiveness is love, and it’s the outward fruit of knowing we’ve been forgiven. God has freely forgiven us countless sins. When we believe that, His forgiving love flows through us to others, and our prayer life comes alive.
Faith and Love
Jesus said that whenever we stand to pray, if we’re holding anything against anyone, we should forgive them, so that our Father in heaven may forgive our sins too; and if we refuse to forgive, neither will our Father forgive us (Mark 11:25-26).
These words come right after the promise we just studied: “Have faith in God… Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:22-24). That astonishing promise taught us that God’s power is freely offered as we surrender to His will by believing His Word.
That lesson was about our faith relationship with God. This one shows that our relationships with people matter just as much in God’s eyes. If we want to pray with full confidence, we need to trust God and love others.
And the two are directly linked. If we know and trust God’s love for us, it will show in our love for others. Prevailing prayer needs both.
- Forgiveness is commanded.
- It’s the outward expression, the fruit, of knowing and believing that you have been forgiven.
Jesus taught this more than once:
- In the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12, 14-15).
- In the parable of the unforgiving servant, a man forgiven a staggering debt who then choked a fellow servant over a small one (Matthew 18:21-35).
And Paul gives us the New Covenant order: be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:32).
Notice the order. Jesus spoke these words before the cross. On this side of the cross, we don’t forgive in order to earn God’s forgiveness; we forgive because we’ve already been forgiven in Christ (Colossians 3:13). But Jesus’ point still stands: an unforgiving heart and a powerful prayer life can’t live in the same house. Unforgiveness shows we’ve lost sight of how much we’ve been forgiven, and it chokes our fellowship with the Father.
Jesus ties forgiveness to prayer here, probably because He knows that the biggest problem with praying people is a lack of love. He wants to lead us into His own experience of open access to the Father’s throne and answered prayer, and He knows the only way is to love people thoroughly.
1. Forgiveness Is Love
God is love. So God forgives us. How many times? In how many ways? Always, every time!
God doesn’t forgive just because it’s right or fair. He forgives because He loves. He’s perfectly loving.
God has freely forgiven us countless terrible sins, and each one has proven again that His love is real and personal. That’s forgiving grace.
And it’s when we believe this sin-forgiving grace that we can pray at all. All prayer is built on that foundation. It’s the only confidence we have. I’m not good enough to be heard on my own!
Jesus teaches that this must be our heart toward others too, and it will be if we’ve truly received His forgiveness. God has forgiven us in love, so we forgive others in love. Not half-heartedly; God doesn’t do that to us. Fully, from the heart, with love, not grudgingly.
No matter what was done to us. Even if it was terrible and unfair. Even if it changed your life and left scars you’ll carry for years. We forgive. It’s commanded. It’s taking up our cross and following Jesus. And there’s life and grace available for us to do it.
(Forgiveness isn’t the same as pretending nothing happened, or trusting someone who isn’t safe. If someone has harmed you or is still a danger to you, forgiving them doesn’t mean staying in harm’s way. You can release the debt to God and still set wise boundaries and seek help.)
But our flesh doesn’t want to forgive. We say:
- “My pride is wounded. It doesn’t feel right to forgive that person!”
- “It’s my right to hold this grudge. It still hurts.”
- “They don’t deserve to be forgiven.”
His command isn’t complicated: forgive everyone, all the time. You don’t need to understand how or why. Trust Him and obey. He’ll take care of it.
But that’s where it breaks down. We don’t trust Him.
He’s trying to give us a powerful prayer life that receives help from heaven, and we stubbornly hold back forgiveness. It’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to suffer. Wanting someone to hurt isn’t love.
2. Our Relationship with God Shows in How We Love People
God measures our spiritual life outwardly not by how we pray, but by how we love. Not by the beautiful words we use in prayer, but by gentle, kind words to the people around us.
God answers prayer from a life that receives His love and passes it on. Not from frantic efforts, desperate cries, passionate words, or magic phrases. We can’t separate an unforgiving life from our prayer life. If one is dead, so is the other. You can’t fake it!
3. Loving Others Reveals the Truth of Our Spiritual Life
Love and forgiveness are inseparable. The Spirit of love is the Spirit of forgiveness. To love people is to forgive them.
John says that if someone claims to love God but hates his brother, he’s a liar; whoever doesn’t love the brother he has seen can’t love the God he hasn’t seen (1 John 4:20).
And John ties love directly to confident prayer: Let’s love not just in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we’ll know we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts before Him. Even when our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts. And when our hearts don’t condemn us, we have confidence before God, and we receive from Him whatever we ask. His commandment is this: believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another (1 John 3:18-23).
So the whole teaching comes down to this: have faith in God, and have love for people.
The secret to an effective prayer life is simple: believe God’s love for you, and freely give it to everyone.
Putting It into Practice
When we start praying in faith, it will probably reveal how little we love. God doesn’t keep the reason for our failure a secret. Two things are a must: faith and love.
James says we ask and don’t receive because we ask with wrong motives (James 4:3). Let that search our hearts.
We need a life fully given over to God’s will, loving others in full surrender to Him. He loves others. On the cross Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34).
Set your heart to love people. Set your heart to obey His command. And God will show you how He delights to answer the prayers of His disciples!
A Closing Prayer
Andrew Murray, in his meditation on this passage, prayed:
“Blessed Father! You are Love, and only he that abides in love abides in You and in fellowship with You. The Blessed Son has this day again taught me how deeply true this is of my fellowship with You in prayer. O my God! let Your love, shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Spirit, be in me a fountain of love to all around me, that out of a life in love may spring the power of believing prayer. O my Father! grant by the Holy Spirit that this may be my experience, that a life in love to all around me is the gate to a life in the love of my God. And give me especially to find in the joy with which I forgive day by day whoever might offend me, the proof that Your forgiveness to me is a power and a life.
“Lord Jesus! my Blessed Teacher! teach me to forgive and to love. Let the power of Your blood make the pardon of my sins such a reality, that forgiveness, as shown by You to me, and by me to others, may be the very joy of heaven. Show me whatever in my dealings with others might hinder my fellowship with God, so that my daily life in my own home and in society may be the school in which strength and confidence are gathered for the prayer of faith. Amen.”
Grace Takeaway
You have been forgiven more than you’ll ever know, and that forgiveness is the only ground you stand on when you pray. Let it flow. When you stand to pray and remember a grudge, hand it to Jesus and release that person the way He released you. Faith toward God and love toward people go together, and where they meet, prayer comes alive.
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