Thursday
Thursday
Forgive Us Our Sins
Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Matthew 6:12
Marghanita Laski, the well-known twentieth-century English novelist and critic, made no secret of her atheism. But one day, in a surprising moment of candor on television, she blurted out, “What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have no one to forgive me.” She was right. Forgiveness is at the heart of the gospel. Indeed, it is as indispensable to the life and health of the soul as food is to the body.
So the next petition in the Lord’s Prayer is “Forgive us our debts.” Sin is likened to a debt because it deserves to be punished and because when God forgives us he remits the penalty and drops the charge against us.
The addition of the words “as we also have forgiven our debtors” is further emphasized in verses 14 and 15, which follow the prayer and state that our Father will forgive us if we have forgiven others but will not forgive us if we refuse to forgive others. This certainly does not mean that our forgiveness of others earns us the right to be forgiven. It is rather that God forgives only the penitent, and that one of the chief evidences of true penitence is a forgiving spirit. Once our eyes have been opened to see the enormity of our offense against God, the injuries that others may have done to us appear by comparison extremely trifling. If, on the other hand, we have an exaggerated view of the offenses of others, it proves that we have minimized our own. It is the disparity between the size of debts that is the main point of the parable of the unmerciful servant. Its conclusion is, “I canceled all that debt of yours [which was huge]…. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant [whose debt was insignificant] just as I had on you?” (18:32–33).
For further reading: Matthew 18:23–35