Prayer & Forgiveness

We are still in our “Series within a series” as we are looking at what Jesus taught us about prayer in Matthew 6.

This section is in the middle of what is called the Sermon on the Mount, which Jesus preached to his twelve closest disciples while crowds from all over gathered and listened in.

So far, Jesus has told us to pray to our Father in heaven, who loves us, sees what is done in secret, knows what we need, and must still be treated with respect as we honor and revere his name. He has modeled for us to pray that more and more people will follow his plan and submit to his rule and reign over earth. It is based off that framework that we then ask God to give us and others what we need for today, trusting that he is working it all out in his time.

Today, Jesus is going to model another aspect of prayer that may be the most difficult part of it.

From the verses we will cover together this morning, we are going to see that as we pray, we are called to seek our Father’s forgiveness.

Jesus makes some challenging statements in this, so we want to take time to read and unpack it all.

Start with me in Matthew 6:9, and let’s read all the way through verse 15 this morning.

We are going to cover verses 12, 14-15 as we learn to pray to ask our Father to forgive us.

In fact, that’s the first truth we want to unpack this morning. Jesus commands us to:

1) Seek fatherly forgiveness daily.

That’s the clear statement that Jesus makes in verse 12.

Just like we ask for our daily bread, we are also called to ask for daily forgiveness.

One man taught me to lay in bed at night and think through my day, confessing everything I could think of that I had done that day that was sinful.

That isn’t a terrible idea, but I would encourage you not to wait until bedtime. Instead, ask God to cultivate in you a sensitivity to sin so that you seek his forgiveness right after you sin instead of just waiting until the evening.

Back up a second, though: who is the Sermon on the Mount directed at? Remember, Jesus is teaching his disciples—those who have already placed their trust in him and are following him. He is talking to Kingdom citizens.

We know that anyone who has put their trust in Christ has been forgiven of their sins, so why do we need to ask for forgiveness if we have already been forgiven?

After listing out several categories of sin, Paul said this to the church at Corinth:

1 Corinthians 6:11 CSB

And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

We have been washed, set apart, and declared righteous. Then why do we need to ask God to do it every day?

Stay with me this morning while we explain some theology, to put this into context.

John MacArthur, Wayne Grudem, and others point out that there are basically two different kinds of forgiveness from God that the New Testament hints at. We’ll call them judicial and fatherly.

When God draws a person to Himself and they respond by faith to his gracious offer of forgiveness through Christ, they immediately receive judicial forgiveness. We use the term “justification” for that. You may have heard it said that when you are justified, it means that God looks at me “just as if I’d never sinned”. That’s judicial forgiveness.

Colossians 2:13-14 speaks of the fact that He cancelled our debt and we are now forgiven.

Colossians 2:13–14 CSB

And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive with him and forgave us all our trespasses. He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.

That leads back to our question, then: why do I need to ask God to forgive me?

Jesus is teaching us to pray for that second kind of forgiveness, which we have called fatherly forgiveness.

As a loving and gracious God, He has removed from us the condemnation of sin. Yet, as we sin, we break the fellowship we have with God.

Do you remember doing something wrong when you were a kid and your parents hadn’t found out yet? Think back to the tension you felt and how awkward you were around them as you tried to play it cool.

Or maybe your mom was one of those “Wait until your father gets home” kind of people, and you had that disconnect from your mom and dad until the issue had been straightened out.

You were still their child in those moments, but your ability to enjoy their company was disrupted because of your actions.

God isn’t like the dad you may have had who flew off the handle, or the mom you had who held grudges and never got over something wrong you did.

However, there is the aspect of our relationship to him that he is our Father, and when we sin, it disrupts our ability to enjoy all his goodness, mercy, compassion, and joy.

So the forgiveness Jesus teaches us to ask for is to go to our Dad, tell him what we’ve done, and ask him to forgive us and restore that fellowship with us.

You never lost that judicial forgiveness, but you can’t enjoy the benefits of it because your relationship is strained because of your sin.

How do you deal with this? Just like you would if you had disobeyed your parents or had tension with your spouse or kids. You need to tell the other person you messed up, you need to ask them forgiveness, and you need to move on.

When there is reconciliation, it takes a load off your shoulders and you have freedom again as you don’t have this strained relationship hanging over your head.

Do you feel like you’re in that situation with God? You know that you have sin in your life and it is keeping you from a right relationship with Him, and you know it?

If you recognize that there is sin in your heart, then ask Him to forgive you! Claim the promise of 1 John 1:9:

1 John 1:9 CSB

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

A part of your regular prayer life must be to ask God for forgiveness for your daily, hourly, moment-by-moment sin.

The beautiful promise that he makes is that he will forgive that sin, and he will cleanse you completely, so you can enjoy the relationship God wants me to have with him.

The challenging part is that Jesus doesn’t stop there.

It is hard to admit that we have been wrong, but when we compare our lives to who and what God is, we can admit that we need his forgiveness.

Did you catch the rest of the verses, though?

Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness goes above and beyond when we see that we must also…

2) Extend forgiveness if you expect forgiveness.

You cannot expect God to grant the fatherly forgiveness you need if you aren’t willing to extend that same forgiveness to other people.

Have you asked God to forgive you and it doesn’t seem like he has?

There are a couple of reasons for that. One could be that you struggle with doubt and think you’ve gone too far and God couldn’t forgive. That couldn’t be farther from the truth because we have already seen that Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection can cleanse us from every sin.

There may be another reason you aren’t experiencing God’s forgiveness on a daily basis. As Jesus tells us here, we may not be feeling forgiven because we aren’t!

Why would a loving God not forgive? Look at the words of the prayer…”as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Skip down to verses 14-15….

Jesus says here that if you won’t forgive others, God will not forgive your offenses. Although you may be saved and forgiven judicially, he will not remove that barrier in your relationship.

We see this kind of reaction in the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 18, where Jesus tells a story about a master and two servants. You may remember this from when we looked at the parables a while back. The one slave owed his master a huge amount (in today’s terms, over $14 billion). His master graciously forgave the debt and set him free. Right after that, the slave finds another slave who owed him less than $1000. The forgiven slave won’t give forgiveness to this guy who owes him so little in comparison, so the master gets furious and throws the first slave back in prison until he had paid every last dime.

Remember what Jesus says at the end of that?

Matthew 18:35 CSB

So also my heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart.”

From what Jesus says, then, God clearly has an expectation that we will forgive those who wrong us.

When we harbor unforgiveness in our heart, we cripple the work of God in our lives, and Jesus clearly says here that He will not restore that fellowship without us forgiving the people who have hurt us the worst.

You might say, “But Sean, you don’t know what they’ve done!” You’re right. I don’t ever want to downplay the hurt, heartache, and pain that you have experienced from someone else.

However, I would challenge you with this: What could they do to you that was worse than what you have done to God? Look at the pictures throughout Scripture, dwell on the horrific death of the only one who has never messed up, even once, and tell me that what they did was worse than that.

Every moment of our life before we came to Christ was lived in selfishness and sin. Paul paints the picture this way in Romans 3:

Romans 3:10–18 CSB

as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they deceive with their tongues. Vipers’ venom is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and wretchedness are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

In Romans 5, God tells us that we were His enemies. Isaiah 53 says that we all turned our backs on the God who made us and created us for a relationship with us.

If you are having difficulty forgiving, it may very well be because you don’t have an adequate picture of your own sin.

As someone has wisely said, you have to acknowledge that...

“I am a sinner first before I am sinned against.”

I have sinned against God in greater ways than anyone could ever sin against me.

Hear this: I am not saying you deserved what happened to you, I am not saying that you had it coming to you for your own sin. I am simply saying that God has extended to you the greatest imaginable forgiveness and expects you to do the same.

Forgiving someone of the hurt they have caused you doesn’t excuse them from what they have done. It doesn’t let them off the hook. Instead, it frees you to let go of what happened and allow God to take care of it as He sees fit.

Who do you need to forgive today? It may be that there is no one you have not yet forgiven.

However, see if any of these strike a nerve with you:

Every time I think of _____, I still feel angry.

I have a subtle, secret desire to see _____ pay for what they did to me.

Deep in my heart, I wouldn’t mind if something bad happened to the people who have hurt me.

I find myself telling others of how ______ hurt me.

If ______’s name comes up, I am much more likely to say something negative than something positive about them.

I cannot thank God for _________.

If those statements are true, it is very likely that you haven’t extended forgiveness to that person.

One definition of forgiveness I have heard is,

“Forgiveness means I release the offender from His debt. It means fully clearing his record. It is a promise never to bring up the offense against him again (to God, others, or the offender himself).” (Life Action Ministries)

This is the expectation that God has of kingdom citizens:

Colossians 3:12–13 CSB

Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive.

We are to forgive as generously and as graciously as God forgave us.

Not only that, but there is no limit to how many times we are to forgive. Just before Jesus told the parable of the slave who didn’t forgive, He had this discussion with Peter:

Matthew 18:21–22 CSB

Then Peter approached him and asked, “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times?” “I tell you, not as many as seven,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven.

Jewish tradition said you only had to forgive someone 3 times, so Peter raised the bar to seven. Jesus raises it to an even higher standard when He raises it to 70 times 7—You are to forgive for more than you can keep track of (BTW, remember that 1 Corinthians 13 teaches us that “love keeps no record of wrongs?”—If 490 was the limit, then how would you know when you got there?)

I know this is an incredibly tough subject, because all of us have been hurt by someone. For some of us, that hurt has cut deeper than we would like to admit and caused years of pain and heartache.

I am sharing this with you this morning because I want you to experience true freedom, both in your relationship with God and your relationship with others.

In fact, I want you to have a tool to take home with you this morning. On your way out, you will find a handout that will guide you through the process of examining your heart for unforgiveness. You may have seen it before, but it is a worth looking at again to allow God to sort through your heart and help you see if you are harboring unforgiveness.

As you work through the process of forgiving others, make sure you are allowing God to show you the sin in your own life regularly, and that when he does, you confess it and ask him to forgiveness.