Day Five

Matthew 6:12

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Some people keep a gift box in their house. The idea of such a box is that every time you are given a gift but think that you might not use it, you put it in this box. Then whenever a big occasion comes around, maybe a family birthday or a friend gets engaged, instead of going out to the shops and buying something new, they simply take something they have already been given out of this box and regift it. Our purpose today is not to contemplate the ethics of such actions but to study the principle that we give to others what we have first been given.

Just as God provides for our physical needs by giving us our daily bread so too, He meets our spiritual needs with fresh grace for our sins. Sin creates a debt before a holy God, a debt so great we could never pay, and that is why we need a sinless Saviour to take our place and pay the huge debt we owe. Since we are trusting in Jesus why do we need to ask God to forgive us our debts? Did we not do that the moment we first trusted in Jesus? Are there different levels to God’s forgiveness or is His forgiveness something that can be lost? The Christian must always remember that once we have trusted in Jesus for salvation, God is no longer only our Judge, but now our Father also. When we remember the truth of our adoption alongside the words of Roman 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” we can be assured that salvation is not something which can be lost.

We cannot lose our salvation for God will not abandon His sons and daughters, however although our relationship with our Father cannot be destroyed, it can be damaged and disrupted. Sin cannot break our relationship with God, but the presence of sin certainly means that our relationship is not in the best condition. A father never ceases to love his child though at times he may be displeased with his child. Our heavenly Father never ceases to love us as there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, yet sin still brings guilt and therefore when we do something deserving of punishment, we ought to say sorry and seek forgiveness.

J.I. Packer has some very wise and helpful words for us on this point, “The Lord’s Prayer is a family prayer, in which God’s adopted children address their Father, and though their daily failures do not overthrow their justification, things will not be right between them and their Father till they have said ‘sorry’ and asked Him to overlook the ways they have let Him down.” Committing some verses of Scripture to memory will serve us well in the Christian life and the words of 1 John 1:9 would be a good place to start: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

This part of the Lord’s Prayer concerns our relationship with God and our relationships with other people. We are to forgive others because God has first forgiven us. God forgives our sins by His grace, which we can think about as undeserved kindness, and this forgiving grace must be considered a gift because it is undeserved as there is nothing we can do to earn it. This is the greatest gift we can ever receive, and it is not one we would ever put in a box or want to give up. Indeed, if God has forgiven our sins, then we will not want to keep that forgiveness secret but will instead try to show it to others as one of the clearest proofs that God has forgiven us for all the wrongs we have done against Him is if we are willing to forgive those who have done wrong to us.

We do not forgive others to try and coerce God into forgiving us, as if we could make ourselves deserving of forgiveness, but rather once we have experienced forgiveness from God, we will find ourselves truly able to forgive other people. The temptation we all face is to turn a blind eye our own sins but to hold deep grudges against those who have sinned against us, however if we take this verse of the Lord’s Prayer seriously then we will instead examine ourselves and not simply forget our grudges but truly forgive as we have been forgiven.