Prayer: Forgive Us Our Debts

Yes. Matthew 6, and we're gonna read from verse 9 through to verse 15. Pray then like this. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come.

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

This is a series we did earlier in the year on the Lord's Prayer. This is the fifth in that sermon series. I don't know if you've ever seen those artists, usually at local markets, that do like caricatures of people. They're like cartoons. And I don't know if you know what a caricature is, but it's normally where they take a particular facial feature or something.

They exaggerate it slightly to make it look a little bit amusing. But the thing is we often do the exact same thing with people who've hurt us. We turn them into characters of themselves. We think of them one dimensionally. If someone lies to you, we think of them as just a liar.

If someone abuses you in some way, they become an abuser. In cartoon world they will become a caricature of their former self, but in the real world we demonize such people. We dehumanise them. But we often don't do the same thing with ourselves. If we lie about something, we rarely define ourselves by that lie.

Rather we minimise it or we excuse it or we unpack the complex circumstances that led us to say or do such a thing. We may have told a lie or been abusive, but we're basically still a good person. The truth is that we find it easier to forgive ourselves than the faults of other people. It's easier to play the victim and demonise someone else than it is to forgive them. Alexander Pope is famous for the quip: to err is human, to forgive divine.

And forgiveness is divine. Forgiveness is one of the defining characteristics of God in the Bible. When God reveals Himself to Moses, He describes Himself as merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. God is a God who forgives. In fact, Jesus teaches us to pray, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

This morning I want to look at what it means to pray, forgive us our debts. I'm gonna break down that verse 12 into two parts: how we are to pray for forgiveness from God, and secondly, how we are to practice forgiveness of others. So let's start with praying for forgiveness from God. Firstly, I want to start with what Jesus means by some of those terms. Firstly, what does Jesus mean by the term debt?

Now before we get to that, you might be wondering why when we pray this prayer we use the word sin instead of debt, or if you're from an Anglican persuasion you use the term transgression instead of debt. Well, the answer to the Anglican question is because in Tyndale's old English translation he uses trespass, and that's just stuck. So Anglicans always use forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, whereas in the Reformed tradition we use the word sin instead of debt, following Luke's version.

Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. So we follow Luke's version rather than Matthew's version. Trespass is the word Matthew uses in verses 14 and 15. It means to violate God's law, whereas sin means to miss the mark. They're often used interchangeably in the Bible.

So why does Jesus use the word debt? Well Jesus is suggesting that to commit sin or to transgress God's law is to owe God something for which we must pay. Let me use this illustration. A boy asks for an ice cream cone in a shop, but when he goes to pay, he's only got two dollars and not four dollars, which is what the ice cream is worth. He missed the mark, and now he owes the store owner two dollars.

But let's say he then sneaks around behind the counter when the owner isn't looking, and he steals a cone, fills it with ice cream, and runs out of the shop. Not only does he now owe the store owner four dollars, he's also transgressed the law. To miss the mark and to transgress God's law both result in a debt to God. We are spiritually indebted to God because of our sin. So what does Jesus then mean by the word forgiveness?

The word literally means to let go or release. In Jesus's parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18, the servant has a huge, unpayable debt. And Jesus says, and out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. Forgiveness means releasing us from our debt to God. Every wrong thing that we've thought, said or done incurs a debt.

Everything we didn't do or didn't say that we should have incurs a debt, and we can never pay it back. It's not like you can take back a word or an action. It's not like you can go back in time and do or say what you should have done back then. But forgiveness is when God releases us from our debt to Him. King David writes in Psalm 51, have mercy on me, O God, according to Your steadfast love, according to Your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

Notice the words that he uses there. God in His mercy blots out our transgressions. It's like all of our sins have been written in a book, but when God forgives us, He blots them out. He erases them from the ledger. And God doesn't just wash us from our iniquity, He thoroughly, or completely, washes us clean until there is no stain left.

God cleanses us of our sin. The psalmist says, as far as the East is from the West, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. Or as Micah puts it, He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot, so He will cast our sins into the depths of the sea. Micah says.

It's a picture of sin being like a heavy burden which God lifts off our shoulders, and then He casts it into the depths of the sea. The idea is that we will never find it again. As far as the East is from the West means you'll never reach it again. It's gone. We have a debt but God forgives it.

So secondly we have to ask ourselves: how are we forgiven? There are three essential components to forgiveness. Firstly, we are only forgiven through Jesus. In the Last Supper Jesus pulls out a cup of wine and He says to His disciples, this is My blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus's blood is poured out on the cross, which is another way of saying Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins.

Our sins are only forgiven through the death of Jesus. In fact the writer of Hebrews says, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The debt of our sin has to be paid and the payment is Jesus's life. The life of God's own Son. The apostle Paul writes this: you who were once dead in your trespasses, God made alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all our trespasses by cancelling the record of death that stood against us with its legal demands.

This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. It's only through the death of Jesus on the cross that our debt is forgiven. Oasinus, the guy who wrote the Heidelberg Catechism, says, God does not impute any sin to us. He receives us into His favour, declares us righteous, and regards us as His children out of His mere grace and mercy for the sake of the satisfaction which Christ made in our behalf. Jesus satisfies our debt through His death on the cross. But secondly, Jesus hasn't satisfied the debt of everyone, but only those who have put their faith in Him.

We are forgiven not just because Jesus died but because we have put our faith in Jesus's death. Peter tells the first Gentile converts everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through His name. In fact Jesus says, unless you believe that I am He, or I am God, you will die in your sins. The point is that there is no forgiveness from sin apart from faith in Jesus Christ. Unless you believe Jesus died for your sin, your sins won't be forgiven.

Thirdly, we find forgiveness through confession. It's not enough to just believe Jesus died for your sins, you actually have to acknowledge your sin before God. David writes, I acknowledged my sin to You and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. The book of Proverbs says, whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

Confession or repentance means to turn away or forsake your sin. It's an essential part of forgiveness. The Apostle John writes, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Confession is about being honest before God about our sin and our need for forgiveness. So the third question we have to ask is: why should we pray for forgiveness?

After all, haven't we been forgiven once and for all through faith in Jesus? And if we've been forgiven our debt of sin, why should we keep praying for forgiveness? Well, the simpler answer is because Jesus tells us to. Jesus tells us to pray to God, forgive us our debts. We ask for forgiveness because Jesus says that's a good thing to do.

But secondly, we pray for forgiveness because you and I are still sinners. When Paul says none is righteous, no, not one, he's not saying that no one is righteous before they became Christians. He's saying no one is righteous even after becoming Christians. When he says for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, the sin isn't past sin, it's present and active sinning. Paul says about himself, I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

Even someone as amazing as Paul still wrestled with sin in his life. Calvin writes this: for though the righteousness of God shines to some extent in the saints, yet so long as they are surrounded by the flesh, they lie under the burden of sins. Jesus says we're to pray every day for our daily bread. So we need to pray every day for the sins that we commit. In fact, the only person who doesn't have to pray this prayer is Jesus.

Jesus prayed that God's name would be hallowed and that His Father would be glorified. He prayed that God's kingdom would come, and He famously prayed that God's will be done, but He never needed to pray, forgive me my debts, because Jesus didn't have any debts with His heavenly Father. Jesus was without sin. But you and I need to pray every single day because we are still sinners.

Thirdly, we pray for forgiveness because it's the relational thing to do. Kevin De Jong makes the point that if God is only a judge, then we're either guilty or not guilty. That's it. But God isn't just a judge, He's also our Father. That's how Jesus calls us to address God and to think of God as our Father in heaven.

And it's in that context that we ask for forgiveness because we want to please our Father. We want to be forgiven for the ways that we've displeased Him. It's because God is our Father that we say sorry for our sins. In Christ, we are no longer condemned for our sin, but the Spirit still pricks our conscience when our sin disrupts our relationship with our heavenly Father. We pray for forgiveness not to be justified all over again, but because we've made a mess of the most important relationship in our lives.

When we pray forgive us our debts, it's not the prayer of a frightened criminal in the court of God, but the prayer of a child before their loving Father. So I want to ask you this morning: what do you need to confess? In what ways have you fallen short of God's glory? In what ways have you transgressed God's law? In what ways have you displeased your heavenly Father?

After the sermon we're going to take a few moments to pray for God's forgiveness, trusting that God is faithful and just and that He will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. C. S. Lewis once wrote, we all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it.

We love the idea that God freely pardons our sins through faith in Jesus Christ, but the idea of pardoning other people who have sinned against us isn't quite as exciting. And yet Jesus tells us to pray, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. We've looked at the first half of that verse, praying for forgiveness from God. Now let's look at how Jesus calls us to practice forgiveness of others. So I want to start by asking the question: which comes first?

God's forgiveness of us or our forgiving of others. Because it seems like Jesus is saying God will only forgive your sins if you forgive those who have sinned against you. Jesus actually expands on that idea in verses 14 and 15. He says, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Are you only forgiven because you forgive other people? The answer is no. Our forgiveness of others doesn't merit God's forgiveness. Nothing merits God's forgiveness. Our forgiveness is all grace.

It's all Jesus. In fact, Jesus tells a parable called the unforgiving servant. Like I mentioned earlier, the servant has a huge, unpayable debt which the master forgives, and then the servant finds another servant who owed him a tiny debt and starts to throttle him, demanding him pay it back at once. When his master hears of this he says, should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And he throws him in jail until his original debt is paid.

Jesus finishes: so also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Jesus's point is that our forgiveness of others flows from the forgiveness we have received from God. God pays our unpayable debt and so we forgive the debts of others. The Apostle Paul makes the same point. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

And he says it again in Colossians 3: as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. It's not that God will only forgive us if we forgive others, but if we have been forgiven by God, we will forgive others. God's forgiveness of us motivates our forgiveness of those who have sinned against us. If we've received forgiveness, we will practice forgiveness. So before we look at what it means to forgive other people, I want to look at what forgiveness isn't.

Firstly, forgiveness isn't downplaying sin. When you forgive someone, you're not saying that what they did didn't matter, that it didn't hurt, that it's not a big deal. When someone says, I'm sorry, the correct response is not, that's okay, because what they did is not okay. The correct response is, I forgive you. Jesus says, if your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault.

He says, don't hide what they did. Don't pretend it wasn't a bad thing. Point it out. Forgiveness isn't approving what happened. It's choosing to rise above it.

Secondly, forgiveness doesn't automatically mean reconciliation. You can forgive someone who refuses to repent. You can forgive someone who has passed away. You can forgive someone who doesn't want anything ever to do with you. Paul says, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all, which implies that sometimes it won't be possible to live in peace with everyone.

Because living in peace with people requires two people, and sometimes the other person doesn't want to live in peace with you. Tim Keller in his book Forgiveness writes, attitudinal forgiveness can occur without reconciliation, but reconciliation cannot happen unless attitudinal forgiveness has already occurred. By attitudinal forgiveness he means how your attitude needs to change towards someone. So your attitude towards someone might be one of forgiveness, I no longer hold this against you, but that might not lead to reconciliation. But reconciliation can never happen unless there's first forgiveness or a change in attitude towards the other person.

Forgiveness won't always lead to reconciliation. Thirdly, forgiveness is not the absence of consequences. Just because you've forgiven someone doesn't mean they won't or shouldn't face the consequences of their actions. You might forgive your child for breaking curfew, but it's appropriate and right to still ground them. There are consequences for disobedience.

You might well, in the same way, God disciplines us even though He also forgives us. Just because you forgive someone for abusing you doesn't mean they shouldn't face the consequences of their abusive actions, whether that's maybe a domestic violence order, or even prison time. Just because Jesus forgave the man on the cross didn't mean he was removed from the cross. Forgiveness isn't the absence of consequences. So if that's what forgiveness isn't, what is forgiveness?

Let me suggest four things. Firstly, forgiveness means not seeking revenge. Paul writes, Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. Forgiveness means letting go of the right to get back at that person or to get even with them.

You don't have to repay those who have wronged you because the Lord will repay them for the evil that they have done. Forgiveness means letting go of giving someone what they deserve. Secondly, forgiveness means letting go of bitterness. Without forgiveness, life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment. You can't heal from the injuries that others have done to you until you forgive them.

The Reformed theologian Lewis Smedes in his book Forgive and Forget writes, to forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. Unforgiveness poisons the soul. When we forgive someone who has wronged us they lose their hold on our heart. Forgiveness means refusing to allow bitterness to fester in your life. But true forgiveness goes beyond not seeking revenge or letting go of bitterness, it actually seeks the other person's good.

When Paul tells us to not take revenge, he then says, to the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Instead of taking revenge, we show kindness. Instead of getting even, we show grace or undeserved love.

Peter says instead of reviling them we're to bless them. Jesus says love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That doesn't mean that you'll become best friends or that everything will go back to the way it was, but it does mean that you will be behaving like your heavenly Father for He makes His sun rise on the evil and sends rain on the unjust. God does good to the undeserving. When we forgive others we seek their good.

When we forgive others we become more like God who forgives us. Finally, forgiveness means cancelling the debt that those who have wronged us owe. At its very heart that's what forgiveness is. It means they don't have to pay you back for what they have done. Forgiveness is primarily not therapeutic, meaning it's not primarily about making you feel better.

It's primarily about restoring a broken relationship. That's what happens when God forgives us. Our relationship with Him is restored. We're reconciled with God. Like we saw earlier, it takes two to reconcile, but the ultimate goal of forgiveness is reconciliation.

When we forgive someone, we are removing the barrier to that reconciliation happening, at least from our side. What we really want is someone who will say they were sorry and who will come back into relationship with us again. Forgiveness means saying you are no longer in my debt. You don't owe me anything. I won't hold anything against you.

You don't have to work anything off for me to accept you. Forgiveness is more than just not seeking revenge or not being bitter. It's cancelling their debt and seeking their good. But I think the hardest question is: how do you forgive someone who has hurt you? It's one thing to say Jesus calls us to practice forgiveness, but how do you actually do that?

How do you forgive someone? I was listening to a podcast that suggested the following acronym: REACH. The R stands for recall the hurt. To heal you have to face that you've been hurt. Name how the other person has hurt you.

Call it for what it is. Don't minimise their actions or your feelings. E stands for empathise with the person who hurt you. Empathy means putting yourself in the other person's situation. That doesn't mean you excuse their behaviour, but it might help you understand why they might have done what they did.

Instead of demonising them or defining them by that one experience, think of them in a holistic way. Maybe they are just as broken and sinful as you are. Empathise with them. A stands for altruistic gift. See, the whole point of forgiveness is that it's unselfish.

It's altruistic. Forgiveness means giving someone what they don't deserve. Think of the times when someone forgave you for something you did wrong and give that same gift to those who have hurt you. Forgiveness is a gift that we give to those who don't deserve it. C stands for commit to forgive others like Jesus forgave you.

Remember that you only have a relationship with God and hope for the future because God forgave you through faith in Jesus Christ. And extend that same grace, that same undeserved forgiveness to other people. Finally, H stands for hold on to forgiveness. Maybe you could write a note in your diary saying, I forgive such and such for hurting me. And every time the negative feelings come back, read that note and hold on to your commitment to forgive.

Forgiveness is something worth reaching for. So I want to finish by asking you: who do you need to forgive? You can't pray, Father forgive me my debt, and then not forgive others the debt that they have in you or they owe you. Forgiveness doesn't mean downplaying what they've done. It doesn't necessarily mean reconciling with them.

It doesn't mean they shouldn't face certain consequences. It doesn't mean you should start trusting them without any discernment. But it does mean not seeking revenge. It does mean letting go of bitterness. It means seeking their good.

It means cancelling their debt. I said earlier that the first half of this prayer Jesus never had to pray. But He certainly had to pray the second half and practice it. In fact, whilst He was hanging on the cross, dying unjustly, Jesus prayed, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. If we're to follow Jesus, if we're to be like Jesus, we need to practice the same forgiveness that He displayed on the cross towards you and me.

Like we pray for our daily bread, so we need to be praying every day that our Father in heaven would forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. May you not only pray for forgiveness from God this week, but may you also practice forgiving other people. Let's pray. Dear heavenly Father we come before Your throne of grace because we need Your grace. Lord we confess that we fall short of Your glory.

Lord we confess that we trespass Your law. Lord we confess that we don't do Your will. And Lord, each one of us knows in our own hearts the ways in which we have sinned against You. Not just years ago, but even in the last week. So Lord we want to take a moment to silently lift up these things before You and to pray that You would forgive us through the sacrifice of Your Son Jesus.

Lord we thank You that You are faithful and just and that You promise to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. That Lord when we confess our sins to You, You wash us clean in the blood of Jesus. Lord we thank You that in Him we have been made right with You. But Lord we also pray this morning that You would help us forgive those who have hurt us, who have sinned against us.

And Lord sometimes those sins are grievous. Lord sometimes they cut to the very core of our being. Lord we don't want to minimise the hurt that they've done. We don't want to minimise the evil that they've perpetrated. But Lord we also don't want to demonise them.

We don't want to paint a caricature of that person as only having one dimension in their life. Lord just like them we too are sinners. Just like them we have hurt other people. So Lord like You have given us, we pray for Your Spirit to work in us, that we might forgive those who have hurt us. Lord help us not seek revenge.

Lord help us let go of bitterness. Lord help us cancel others' debts and to seek their good. Lord help us to be more like You who have so freely forgiven us our huge debt. Lord forgive us when we struggle with this. Lord forgive us when we forget all that Jesus has done for us on the cross.

And Lord help us to be more like You. Lord we thank You that You have forgiven us and we thank You for Your Spirit and for Your Son and we pray these things in His name. Amen.