Someone wise once said that the definition of human should always include something about the need for forgiveness. Certainly it is universal. Everyone of us fail at sometime in our relationships, and the only thing that can keep those relationships stable is the will to forgive. Without it the relationship of marriage has little hope. Void of forgiveness the parent child relationship turns bitter. Most of all, without the reality of forgiveness, the relationship between God and us could not exist...The Lord teaches us to pray about forgiveness because it is a daily need in our relationship with Him. Daily we do our own thing, though it is His will that we are made to follow. Daily we sin, and fall short of His will for us. This is a debt that is too severe for us to handle, for it separates us from our source of life, our source for everything. It is also too immense for us too handle for we do not have the resource that such sin demands-our life. To pay the debt within ourselves means that we would condemn ourselves too eternal judgement. We need the LORD’s forgiveness of our sins.
Morning Mercies is a podcast dedicated to the deepening of trust with God, our maker, through a relationship with Jesus Christ. He has become our Master, our teacher, and so we follow Him with our lives, be they what they are. They are brief, and follow the simple format of scripture, meditation, and prayer.
Morning Mercies are posted several times a week on all major podcast platforms, and are presented by Michael Mullen.
“Forgive us Our sins…”
Someone wise once said that the definition of human should always include something about the need for forgiveness. Certainly it is universal. Everyone of us fail at sometime in our relationships, and the only thing that can keep those relationships stable is the will to forgive. Without it the relationship of marriage has little hope. Void of forgiveness the parent child relationship turns bitter. Most of all, without the reality of forgiveness, the relationship between God and us could not exist.
To forgive literally means to release a debt, to declare that what is owed to you is paid or need not be paid. Sometimes we we forgive monetary debt, and other times we release the debt of personal pain. We say that the loan that was given need not be paid back, or that in the hurt that was done to us we now release the demand of justice that is owed to us.
The Lord teaches us to pray about forgiveness because it is a daily need in our relationship with Him. Daily we do our own thing, though it is His will that we are made to follow. Daily we sin, and fall short of His will for us. This is a debt that is too severe for us to handle, for it separates us from our source of life, our source for everything. It is also too immense for us too handle for we do not have the resource that such sin demands-our life. To pay the debt within ourselves means that we would condemn ourselves too eternal judgement. We need the LORD’s forgiveness of our sins.
The Good News of the Gospel is that this is exactly what Christ provides for us, a means of God’s forgiveness for our debt of sin. Jesus, the Son of God, died for us, for the payment of our sin, that we might have forgiveness and live as children of God. He was without sin, having always lived according to the Will of the Father. He had an unhindered relationship with His Father, but in every way identified with us, taking our sin on himself. In other words, he takes our debt of sin and pays it, for “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6.23).
By praying “forgive us our sins” we in turn identify ourselves with Him, the one who has taken our debt and paid it. He is with us in our sinfulness, and we are with Him in His graciousness. He never participates in any sin, but he takes our sin and made it his own on the cross, dying for us, paying for us what we ourselves could never pay. That’s why we call it “good news.” That’s why we give him our lives, not out of debt, but out of love.
Jesus teaches us to pray this every day because the forgiveness of our sin is needed constantly, and we need to remember this. Its memory shapes who we are, how we live, and what kind of person we will become. And it is for this reason Jesus teaches us the next phrase of this prayer, “as we forgive those who have sinned against us.” We cannot incorporate the grace of God’s forgiveness and not become forgiving. That is the assumption and lesson of this phrase. Do we make the forgiveness of God contingent upon our forgiving others? I don’t think so. Instead, I believe that as we have been forgiven, our hearts are transformed, and forgiveness becomes a reality to us, and through us to others. If we do not become forgiving, what then?
Jesus once told a story in Matthew 18 that addresses this in very vivid terms.
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
Forgiveness is something that is very vital for our lives. Without it we will suffer and die spiritually forever, for this is a debt neither you nor I can pay. But it goes the other way as well, for if we cannot learn to forgive we will die and suffer as well. Without forgiveness our souls, all that is us, will not survive this world.
There is more to forgiveness than I can say in this lesson on the Lord’s Prayer. I want to assure you that our Lord is a patient teacher, and will assist you in forgiving those hurts that you have so deep within your soul. It is true that there are some that don’t deserve our forgiveness, but then we never deserved His either. Yet by grace, we are forgiven. So we must forgive. There is no room for anything less. His forgiveness is simply too big for something less.
If we will make the commitment to forgive even those who were horrible to us, we will begin to experience the freedom of being forgiven ourselves. Eventually we may even be healed from the hurt, if we go the path where we are forgiven, and in turn forgive those others.