This sentence comes immediately after the Lord’s Prayer, and most of us read straight past it. If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
It is uncomfortable because it sounds conditional, and we have been taught carefully that grace is not earned. Both things are true and the tension is the point.
Jesus is not describing a transaction where you buy forgiveness with forgiveness. He is describing a person. Someone who has genuinely grasped being forgiven becomes someone who forgives. If that has not started happening, it is worth asking honestly whether the first part landed.
Unforgiveness is one of the few conditions that makes it hard to receive what is being offered, not because God withholds it, but because a closed hand cannot take anything either.
The person you are thinking of right now is the one this verse is about. It usually is.
