The passage in Matthew 5:23–26 is often read as a moral instruction, a call to settle disputes and forgive offences. But through the teachings of Neville Goddard, it reveals a much deeper metaphysical principle—one not about human courts, but about the laws of consciousness and the creative power of imagination.
“So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you,
leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court,
lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.
Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”
— Matthew 5:23–26 (ESV)
The Altar as the Place of Assumption
Neville taught that the Bible is psychological drama—not historical record, but a blueprint of the inner world.
In this view, the altar symbolises the moment you prepare to assume a new state. It is the inner place of offering where you impress the subconscious with the feeling of your wish fulfilled.
And the gift you bring is your chosen state of being—your new identity.
But you're told to pause, to withhold that offering if “your brother has something against you.”
Who Is Your Brother?
In this context, the brother is not a literal sibling or even another person.
It is a part of your own psyche—an unresolved emotion, a contradictory belief, a subconscious grievance.
It’s the voice in you that quietly resists the new assumption.
You cannot move freely into a new state while dragging a fragment of the old one behind you.
You may affirm faithfully, visualise vividly, and persist consciously—but if part of you remains unreconciled, the assumption won’t take root. You’ll find yourself looping back into the very state you’re trying to leave behind.
The Inner Courtroom
The text then shifts into courtroom imagery: “Come to terms quickly with your accuser.”
The accuser is your conscience—the persistent echo of your inner contradiction.
The judge is the impersonal law of consciousness, which manifests your current dominant state.
And the prison is the looping pattern you fall into when these inner tensions are left unresolved.
“You will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
— You must reconcile every last doubt, every unintegrated memory, every competing belief.
The Mind’s Return to Old Narratives
This isn’t only about forgiving the past.
It’s also a warning about inattention—about letting the mind slip back into old narratives and identities.
The courtroom is also the patterned mental environment you unconsciously return to when not fully awake to your new assumption.
If the state you’re trying to embody feels foreign, the mind will naturally drift back to what’s familiar.
And the law will reflect that drift—not your desire, but your dominant inner mood.
In Neville’s terms, this is not a punishment—it is simply the result of imagining without direction.
Reuben: The Pattern of Regression
This theme appears earlier in the Bible, embodied in the figure of Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn. Reuben was the beginning of strength—the first surge of conscious potential. But he lost his inheritance by going “up to [his] father’s bed” (Genesis 35:22, 49:3–4).
What does this mean?
Symbolically, Reuben returned to the old ways of thinking—to what was already established in the mind. He regressed into inherited patterns rather than pressing forward into a new identity.
Reuben shows what happens when the creative act begins, but the mind is drawn back into the past.
He becomes “unstable as water,” unable to hold a form. The assumption does not take. And so, like the man in Matthew who fails to reconcile, he is caught in the consequence of a divided state: unstable, judged, and denied the blessing of conscious dominion.
Integration Before Imagination
Forgiveness, in this light, is not just a virtue.
It is a creative necessity.
It is the removal of every splinter of resistance before you commit to the act of assumption.
Reconciliation is integration. It means bringing your full self into harmony with the new identity you wish to embody.
Only then can you offer your gift.
Only then does the assumption truly take hold.
Only then does the altar receive what you bring.
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