What Does Matthew 6:14 Mean?
For if you release people's false steps, your heavenly Father will also release yours.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:THE KEY
Forgiveness is release: the movement you extend to another is also the movement by which you receive release.
THE MEANING
This verse joins your release of another person’s trespass with your experience of the heavenly Father’s release. The wrong is named, yet it does not have to remain held as a claim between you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that you can receive release while keeping another person permanently bound to their wrong.
THE ROOT
ἀφῆτε
aphēte
GROWS FROM
ἵημι (with ἀπό-, apo-)
Send away, let go, release.
The Greek verb translated “forgive” carries the sense of letting go or sending away. The verse uses this release first for other people’s trespasses and then for the Father’s release toward you, placing both acts in one motion.
ALSO GROWS
áphesis: Release, remission.
ἄφεσις
This related noun can name release or remission, revealing the letting-go beneath the familiar word “forgiveness.”
aphiēmi: Let go, leave, send away, remit.
ἀφίημι
This is the verb behind both instances of “forgive” in the verse: the repeated word makes the exchange of release audible in Greek.
παραπτώματα
paraptōmata
GROWS FROM
πίπτω
píptō
Fall; in the compound, fall beside or aside.
“false steps” in this verse is paraptōmata. A trespass is pictured as a fall to the side, a misstep. The verse names the wrong plainly while pairing that misstep with release: the fall need not remain held over the person who made it.
ALSO GROWS
parapíptō: Fall beside or fall away.
παραπίπτω
This verb supplies the image beneath “trespass”: a movement off the path.
paráptōma: A false step, lapse, or trespass.
παράπτωμα
The noun used in the verse names the misstep being released; it does not erase the fact that the step went wrong.
THE PATTERN
Release breaks the claim a wrong or debt holds over another person.
And this is the word of the release. Every one whose hand has lent to his neighbor shall let it fall, and he shall not press it from his neighbor or from his brother, for it is called the LORD's release.Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Release, and you will be released.And be useful to one another, tender in the inward parts, releasing one another, just as God in the Anointed One has released you.THE THREAD
Then Jesus said, Father, release them, for they do not know what they are doing. And they parted his garments, and cast lots.The Greek word translated “forgive” is again ἀφίημι (aphiēmi): let go, release. Here the release is spoken over people causing harm, showing that the word names a response to an actual wrong, not a claim that no wrong occurred.
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