Forgive Us

Invite everyone to stand and read Matthew 6:9-13- 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.

From God-centered requests to the needs of man.

What do we need in order to accomplish the first three petitions?

First daily bread to keep our physical bodies alive. What next?

Read Matthew 6:12- ...and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Pray.

Moving from our greatest physical need to our greatest spiritual need.

From bread for physical life, to forgiveness for spiritual life.

Forgiveness will be foundational- God promises much, but in order for Him to do anything that He promises, it must begin with the forgiveness of our sins, the cancelling of debt.

Once we are forgiven, then we become children of God.

Only the forgiven who can pray, “Our Father.”

God promises to adopt, to sanctify, to purify, to make holy, to crown His children. All of it hinges on whether or not your sins have been forgiven.

Thus, we find this particular petition, that our debts, or sins, would be forgiven, to be central to who we are as followers of Jesus.

As we focus on the first half of verse 12, what questions come to mind?

1. Why are sins referred to as debts?

Perhaps you’ve memorized this passage differently.

NLT- Forgive us our sins.

Sin can be understood in many different ways.

Missing the mark, trespassing, impurity.

Here, we have debts.

Rightly translated. Debts, or that which is owed.

Romans 4:4- Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.

Why debts? Why is sin described in this particular way? Perhaps this is not an idea with which we are overly comfortable.

We like feeling even, we don’t tend to like people being in our debt, and even more often we don’t like being in someone else’s debt.

Having homework due that I had not yet done.

We find here that our spiritual condition is one of indebtedness. We owe God something.

Thomas Watson- “A debt arises upon non-payment of money, or the not paying of that which is one’s due. We owe to God exact obedience, and not paying what is due, we are in debt.”

Why do we owe God complete obedience? A couple of answers.

All of humanity, created by God in His image according to His design.

We owe our very creation to God.

“I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it.”

Believers owe our very spiritual creation to God.

God’s saving of our spiritual lives assumes complete obedience, or a change in behavior.

Kids on the monkey bars.

Shown most clearly in the giving of the decalogue, or the 10 commandments. Notice how they begin.

Exodus 20:1-3- And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me...”

Notice the order of what God has done. God has created Israel, given her life. But then, God had set her free from her captors. Total obedience was owed- shaped by the decalogue.

When we sin, we become indebted to God.

And this is our major issue, even more important than our greatest physical need.

We know the outcome of having an outstanding debt.

Romans 6:23- For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The wages, or what we are owed, for our sin, or our debt, is death.

And not merely physical death, as horrifying as that is. Look at the second half of the verse.

This is not talking about a one time death, it’s talking about more. Gift of God is spiritual life. Wages of sin is spiritual death.

And so here we find the need that makes necessary the petition, “Forgive us our debts.”

2. How does our need highlight God’s grace?

Remember, the entire prayer highlights the providing nature of God, meaning that everything asked depends upon God’s grace in order to be received.

How does that fit into our particular petition.

Let’s consider for a moment how we tend to deal with our own sin, or our indebtedness to God.

Deny our sin.

Either through dishonesty or redefining altogether.

Dishonesty- Tax collector and Pharisee

Redefining sin- Did God really say? You will not surely die.

Excuse our sin by blaming others.

Genesis 3.

I cannot be guilty if it is someone else’s fault.

Resolve to try harder.

Matthew 18- Parable of the unforgiving servant- When confronted with debt, he begged for more time. Be patient with me and I will pay back everything.

Completely impossible.

Thomas Watson- “We have nothing to pay; all our duties are mixed with sin, and so we cannot pay God in current coin.”

Give in to shame and run away.

This is, unfortunately, my go to. Hide. Garden of Eden.

In some ways, a mixture of everything else.

Deny the sin by pretending it doesn’t exist, shift the blame as we flee, seek more time to overcome. All in hiding.

Wrong approaches to dealing with our debts.

Instead, admit, repent, and ask for a cancellation of the debt.

I cannot make it right, God. But you have promised you would forgive my sins, you would cancel my debt.

1 John 1:9- If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Here is what we must learn. There is nothing we can do. We cannot dig ourselves out of our hole. We are lacking the proper equipment.

So we honestly and humbly rely on the grace of God.

3. Why must we continually ask for forgiveness?

If we have been forgiven all of our sins, past, present and future, then why do we continually ask for forgiveness?

The Lord’s Prayer anticipates a returning. Asking daily for daily bread. Asking daily for forgiveness of our debts.

Why must this be the case?

The address of “Our Father in heaven” is crucial here.

We are speaking to a loving Father. The prayer is constantly relational.

For many of us, we don’t tend to see God this way. Instead, we see God as a judge. Always.

When we sin, we are unlikely to confess our guilt to a judge. There is no relationship, and we have no desire for consequence.

However, we are much more likely to confess our sins and ask forgiveness of a Father when we have sinned against Him.

The Father has proven Himself to be good. And loving. And for our good. And merciful. And wise.

When we see God as our Father, we find ourselves more willing to daily come to him in repentance, asking that our debts would be cancelled.

Think of our own relationships with our children.

My desire is for them to always know that they can and will be forgiven. They must not fear being cast out of my home, or my love. In that way, they are always living in light of forgiveness.

But, they will at times need to come and ask forgiveness for things they’ve done. And my hope is that I will continue to be happy to forgive those offenses.

Now consider God.

Hebrews 8:12- For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.

God will not hold His children in His wrath. He loves His children, and in a big picture way, He has forgiven all of our sins. We need not fear being cast out of His love and once again into His wrath.

Hebrews 12:10- For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

God is both merciful and still disciplines, but always for our good.

When we see God in this way, it is no longer unheard of for us to come to Him in repentance.

My hope is that my kids will always come to me to ask forgiveness, and that they begin to see God as such a Father as well.

My hope is the same for all of us. May we know forgiveness and may we seek forgiveness.

Conclude:

Have you considered that your debts can be paid?

Judge would not be right to cancel a punishment. That is not justice.

God, as judge and Father, has placed our punishment upon His Son Jesus.

1 Peter 3:18- For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit...

This is the good news of the Gospel, and this is what the Lord’s Prayer always has in view. We ask forgiveness, for a cancelling of our debts. It takes place only in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Has your world been recreated completely around Jesus?