“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.“
Matthew 6:12
Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. 2009. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.
We begin with an addition. This thought should be seen as an appendix to the previous article, tacked onto the end of the prior petition. The premise of our daily bread travels with us into the verse in question. Forgiveness is a daily need. In a legal sense, we have all broken the moral law of God (Rm. 3:23). Each morning we are all of us in need of a renewed sense of God’s faithful mercy (Lm. 3:22-24). In The Cost of Discipleship, pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer ordered that Jesus-followers daily “acknowledge and bewail their guilt” (p. 167). Every person owes God in the currency of righteousness a debt no man can pay. Apart from Jesus, all mankind is spatially under sin and hierarchically dominated by it (Rm. 3:9-10).
Now we must address the sin in our lives. In regard to Jesus’ model prayer, the word translated as “debt” seems to be pointing back to an Old Testament idea found in Deuteronomy 15. There we are told of ‘the seventh year, the year of canceling debts’(v. 9). The Israelites were warned not to be stingy, grudging or wicked when dealing with those indebted to them. In fact they were to lend to others but never borrow themselves. All loans must be released and forgiven. God was attempting to teach the Israelites about His nature. God desires to forgive us our debts. In light of His forgiveness we hurry to forgive those who are indebted to us, knowing that God has forgiven us much (Mt. 7:12; Mt. 17:4).
“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are. But in the love of Christ we know all about every conceivable sin and guilt; for we know how Jesus suffered, and how all men have been forgiven at the foot of the cross. Christian love sees the fellow-man under the cross and therefore sees with clarity.”
(Bonhoeffer, p. 185)
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Simon & Schuster Press, 1995.
The Jesus-follower has received grace from God covering their sinful condition. God is seen as the Divine Creditor who accepts Jesus’ own full balance to cover all human indebtedness. This is available to all who will accept this free and extravagant gift. Jesus thereby ransoms that life as His own possession, held by a reciprocated love between man and savior. The human life found in Jesus is not his or her own. That life now belongs to Jesus who bought and paid for it with His life (Gl. 2:19-20). For the Jesus-follower, our lives are not longer our possession. Our possessions are no longer ours to claim. When we are immersed in Jesus, He claims all of us. The person saved and in Him claims all of Jesus as well.
This is the love of Jesus that Bonhoeffer references. In this love we can truly forgive. In this love we can truly love. We look across at our fellow Jesus-followers and we see a reflection of our own standing with Jesus. We can love others because He first loved us. It is sure that if we forgive, we have been forgiven. This is not conditional but an assurance. We are not forgiven based on our forgiveness, but if we forgive we are surely being forgiven by God (Mt. 6:14-15). Those who have complied for themselves a laundry list of debts, when they are forgiven, are most thankful (Lk. 7:41-13). When we remember the book of evils we racked up for ourselves, we can enter into a state of forgiveness-producing gratefulness that should permeate our days as long as we live.
“Have I been asking God to give me money for something I want, while refusing to pay someone what I owe him? Have I been asking God for liberty while I am withholding it from someone who belongs to me? Have I refused to forgive someone, and have I been unkind to that person? Have I been living as God’s child among my relatives and friends?“
(Chambers, August 24)
Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest: an Updated Edition in Todays Language: the Golden Book of Oswald Chambers. Discovery House Publishers, 1992.
It is this gratefulness that draws us into tender moments of self-reflection and personal soul searching. We should ask ourselves the questions posed by Oswald Chambers above. Jesus’ act of extreme divine love allows the Christian the ability to love, forgive, heal, and reconcile with fellow Jesus-followers and the world in a way previously unknown to our hearts and minds. This is the glorious good news that brings the Kingdom of God to bear in our world today and holds the power to save souls in a real way. Jesus prays that all people could be reconciled in God to such an extremely close extent that our bond would reflect the relational harmony among the Trinity (Jn. 17:21).
“We” are the speakers in Jesus’ model prayer. This is to be the prayer of a gathered people. They are gathered in devotion to God the Father. They are gathered to honor His name. They gather to bring the Kingdom on earth. They gather to be content with the bread they need for survival, and they are gathered to ask for forgiveness, confident that if the Lord used the measure that they forgive each other with, it would be sufficient to cover their debts. They have a collective understanding that the love they share, if demonstrated on the part of God, would completely forgive every slight and right every wrong.
“Do not owe anyone anything [leave no debt], except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.“
Romans 13:8
Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. 2009. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.
This is the character to which all Jesus-followers should aspire. The only debt we owe to each other is a drink of that love which is drawn up from the wellspring of the Water of Life. The only thing the Jesus-follower is bound by their Lord to return is love. In a real way, this affection completes what could not be accomplished in the law of the Old Testament. Our justification in Jesus seals the deal and makes room for gracious giving and forgiving bound by the bonds of love. We are to measure reconciliation and forgiveness by the Cross. As much as Christ willingly covers, so should His followers also cover up willingly in love (Col. 3:12-13).
This debt is specifically a debt of slight or the failure to repay that which we are owed. Matthew Henry summarizes the point when he comments “we must forbear, and forgive, and forget the affronts put upon us, and the wrongs done us”. We must consciously choose to put the wrongs done to us behind us. When we are in full control of exacting justice on someone who is indebted to us we must repent in the knowledge that God could sink us if He wished. The world will come to a greater understanding of the character of our God when they see our loving graciousness with those who betray and cross us.
“Justification is not about ‘how I get my sins forgiven.’ It is about how God creates, in the Messiah Jesus and in the Spirit, a single family, celebrating their once-for-all forgiveness and their assured ‘no condemnation’ in Christ, through who his purposes can now be extended into the wider world.“
(Wright, p. 248)
Wright, N. T.. Justification : God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, InterVarsity Press, 2009.
By our justification in Christ, many sons will be brought to repentance and faith in Jesus. In each act of forgiveness, the Kingdom of God stands a little stronger. The domain of the holy is made more present with each reconciliation. As individuals become brothers and sisters through faith in Jesus Christ, we see God’s supreme design for our world more clearly. The foundation of Jesus’ justification is the firm base for the furtherance of the message of Good News.
“And more than all, the privileges thou mightest have enjoyed, if thou hadst never sinned, are thine now that thou art justified. All the blessings which thou wouldst have had if thou hadst kept the law, and more, are thine, because Christ has kept it for thee. All the love and the acceptance which perfect obedience could have obtained for God, belong to thee, because Christ was perfectly obedient on thy behalf, and hath imputed all His merits to thy account, that thou mightest be exceeding rich through Him, who for thy sake became exceeding poor.“
(Spurgeon, February 12)
Spurgeon, C. H. Morning and Evening: the Classic Daily Devotional. Barbour Publishing, 2018.
In the forgiveness of Jesus, His followers have the full benefits of the son-ship and daughter-ship of God. In the prayer for the forgiveness of sins, the Jesus-follower is placed in the seat of favor in the eyes of God. God the Father looks with pride on the lives of Jesus’ followers and sees the perfect righteousness of His Son. The blood of His cross has covered over our lives, permeated every detail and brought us to familial closeness with our Father in heaven (Col. 1:20). In Jesus Christ is all rightness and all richness and all peace with God.
Let every Jesus-follower pray the prayer for the forgiveness of debts. Let every Jesus-follower have the confidence to pray to God that He, using the selfsame measure by which that individual portioned out grace to others, would apportion grace to their own life. May we forgive in the measure by which we pray to be forgiven. Let us pray the prayer of proportional forgiveness. May we never ask to be forgiven more than we are willing to forgive ourselves that we may not pull down judgement on our heads. May we make the Kingdom of God known in the portions of forgiveness we dispense and the reconciliation we foster for the glory of God alone.
“Remember, God is as Great as He is Good!“
Noah R. Hunt
POIEMA: Created for Truth 