NOTES for Mar 11:23-26
What, after all, is the connection between faith and forgiveness? And do unbelievers really have no ability to forgive at all? Of course, if by faith we mean what is most often meant by it, namely religiosity and everything connected with it, the questions asked may appear, at the very least, strange. But if we see in it what most authors of the biblical books saw, namely faithfulness, much immediately becomes clearer. At the same time it is important to keep in mind that faithfulness in this case, judging by the context, applies not only to relationship with God, but also to relationship with one's neighbor; in any case, Jesus never says that He means only faithfulness to God or to Himself, as Messiah or as Teacher. And that is no surprise, because faithfulness is indivisible. Either it exists, and then it permeates every relationship, whether with God, with Christ, or with one's neighbor, or it does not exist, and then it is nowhere and in nothing. Moreover, faithfulness is unconditional, because at its foundation lies that spiritual wholeness which, for life in the Kingdom, to which Jesus calls the faithful, must be absolute.
Only this makes forgiveness possible: forgiveness is not indulgence toward the sin of one's neighbor, which often makes one close one's eyes to the obvious (unless, of course, it concerns the one closing his eyes directly), but the ability to see in one's neighbor that image of God which gives even the greatest sinner hope for salvation, a hope that remains until the day of Judgment. This is what the Savior calls us to: to live the life of the Kingdom and to look at our neighbor with the eyes of a citizen of the Kingdom. And to forgive the neighbor's sins until God carries out His judgment.