In the last three petitions of the Lord’s prayer, the Lord teaches us to ask of God everything that is necessary for us. In the fourth petition he teaches us to ask for everything that we need to maintain the life of the body for service to him in his world. In the other two petitions he teaches su to ask our Father in heaven for the things that are necessary for our spiritual life: forgiveness and sanctification.
We need forgiveness so that we have the right to bear the name children of God and to live with him in his house. We need sanctification so that we may be, as children, formed in the image of our Father.
Jesus teaches us in this petition to use the language of debt and payment, both about our sins against our Father and about our brothers’ sins against us.
- We ask for forgiveness of debt
The law of God imposes obligations on us which we may call debts.
The first of the obligations that the law of God imposes on us is the obligation of obedience. Obedience to the law is not optional for us or for anyone. God’s law is universal and unchangeable. God is our master, our Lord and king. We, as his servants, owe him obedience to all his statutes and decrees.
The second obligation that the law imposes on us is the obligation to pay the penalty prescribed by the law if we transgress. The law has sanctions, or penalties, for transgressors. When we transgress, we owe the payment of the prescribed penalty. That penalty is death—”the wages of sin is death”—, and the bearing of the anger, or displeasure, of God throughout all of life.
God can express his anger in various ways: by his withdrawal from us, his curse, his hatred, troubles of all kinds, rebukes, threats, the sending of evil spirits against us, even the giving of good things to set us in slippery places.
So what are we praying for when we say, forgive us our debts?
When we pray forgive us our debts we are not praying to be relieved of the obligation of obedience to his law. That obligation continues unchanged for everyone whether in a state of nature or in a state of grace. It would, in fact, be very wrong to ask God to take any of those obligations away. He requires conformity to his law because that means conformity to himself, being like him. He does not change, and he cannot therefore change the standard by which he requires us to live; “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”
Nor are we necessarily praying to be relieved of all chastisement of our sins. The difference between punishment and chastisement is not in their outward forms. God may use any means to do either. He punished Ahab by using Jehu to destroy his house, but chastised David by Absalom’s rebellion. When God forgives us our sins, he doesn’t necessarily relieve us of all chastisement. Though he forgave David’s sin against Uriah and Bathsheba as soon as David confessed it, he nevertheless told David that there would be serious consequences, chastisements, of that sin for the rest of his life.
We may even pray for relief from chastisement. David prayed for the life of Bathsheba’s son. In fact, of course, we sometimes do find God’s chastisements to be very heavy and hard to bear, and so ask him to remove them. Psalm 38:1,2 is a good example:
O LORD, do not rebuke me in Your wrath, Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure! For Your arrows pierce me deeply, And Your hand presses me down. But the removal of chastisement is not the purpose of this petition. When we pray “forgive us our debts” we are asking that God remove from us the obligation to pay the penalty required by the law. We are asking that he not deal with us as we deserve, that he not let loose against us his hatred and his curse, that he not destroy us for what we have done, and that, whatever form his anger against us may take, it not be aimed at driving us out of his presence, but at restoring us to the right way and to his favor. The Heidelberg Catechism puts it this way: "be pleased… not to impute to us miserable sinners our manifold transgressions." That word impute means to reckon to the account of. If you take out a mortgage to buy a house, then the bank will write that up as a debt you owe. It will impute the borrowed money to your account. The imputation of it to your account means that you must pay it off. Just so God, as the righteous judge, reckons to our account every sin, noting that this is something for which we owe a debt that must be paid. When we ask him to forgive our transgressions, we are asking that he not write them up in this way, that he not reckon them as having created a debt that must be paid. We recognize that he may do other things about them and with them, such as rebuking us or chastising us. This prayer is not directly concerned with those other things that God may do. It is, instead, concerned with just one thing: the exacting of the obligation incurred. We ask, do not require of us that we pay the penalty that our transgressions deserve. It is a plea for mercy. 2. We ask for forgiveness for the sake of Christ’s blood However, it is a plea for mercy to a righteous judge. He is a judge who cannot just forget about justice, set it aside and ignore its demands. That’s what Lord’s Day 4 teaches us. Sometimes you can get human parents, and even human judges, to change the rules. There is a law on the books that you have broken, but you come to your father or your judge looking very pitiful, and your judge decides to wipe the rule off the books. Instant justification. More commonly, the parent or judge simply does not punish as the crime deserves. He excuses you on the grounds that your education was poor, that the environment you grew up in was bad, that you were abused as a child, that you are his friend, that he sympathizes with your case, or that he dislikes the very idea of punishment, whatever. With God such reasons for mercy do not work. He is strictly righteous. He will neither change the rules nor fail to apply a just penalty. Therefore, when you ask for mercy, it must be an asking for mercy that conforms also to justice. You may not ask for anything else. You may not ask for a mercy that conflicts with justice. You must ask for a just mercy or ask for nothing at all. But how is that possible? God’s justice requires your death, physical, spiritual and eternal. You are asking for less than death. There is only one way it is possible. That is through the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. If you seek the righteousness of the law, you will not attain to righteousness. But the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ is his free gift. We are asking that God forgive our sins for the sake of Christ’s blood. There are two things we need to say about it. That blood has been shed. It has paid the penalty for our sins. It has wiped out our debt. When we pray “forgive us our debts,” we are not asking that the blood of Christ be shed again. That would be, at best, a gross misunderstanding of the sacrifice that our Lord Jesus Christ has already made. He does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. Heb 7:27. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. Heb 10:11-14 Nor are we asking that the payment of the debt be applied to our account. If our Lord’s death is effective, then the payment has already been applied to our account. As Hebrews 10 shows us, the debt is already paid. In verse 14 the apostle talks about two things, a thing that is finished and a thing that is still ongoing. The ongoing thing is sanctification (those who are being sanctified). But the apostle says of those who are being sanctified that he has perfected them forever. That word perfected refers back to Hebrews 9:9: It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience. And also to 10:1-3: For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. What’s the point in all these passages? That he makes our consciences perfect. That he cleanses them from the guilt of sin. That’s the main point, and we’ll come back to it shortly. But that is possible because the sacrifice of Christ is different from the Old Testament sacrifices that were offered year by year continually. The law made nothing perfect; on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God. (7:19) What is the difference? It’s not specifically stated here, but implied. The difference is that those sacrifices could not make atonement, could not pay the debt. Christ’s death did make atonement. The debt is paid off. We are free of it. Therefore, we are not asking that payment of the debt be applied to our account with God. It has already been applied. Our debt is paid. We are justified. Rather, we are asking that the blood of Christ may be applied to our minds and hearts. We ask that our guilty consciences be quieted and that we hear the voice of God declaring his free forgiveness and favor. We ask that he take away from us the terror of death, and dread of him.
When I kept silent, my bones grew old Through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Ps 32 3. We ask for forgiveness as we forgive There is one more thing. When we pray for forgiveness of our debts, Jesus teaches us to add “as we forgive our debtors.” We do not have to add this every time we ask for forgiveness of our sins. There are many prayers for pardon in the Scriptures that do not include it. But, even if we do not say it every time we ask for forgiveness, we must not forget that Jesus said: For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matt 6:14,15 Even if you do not say the specific words the Lord’s prayer teaches us, you must remember that this is always true: if you do not forgive, God will not forgive you. Is Jesus then telling us that we must show ourselves to be worthy of forgiveness before he will forgive us? Obviously not. Then our righteousness would be in the law and not in him. What does he mean? Jesus explained this further in the parable of the unforgiving servant. That’s not found here in Matthew 6, but rather in Matthew 18:21-35. He concludes that parable with words very similar to those we find in Matthew 6: "So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses." Matt 18:35. The order is, forgive your brother and your Father will forgive you. But now look at the parable. The order in the parable is not the same. Jesus does not begin with the servant not forgiving his fellow-servant, and then show us that unforgiving servant asking for forgiveness and being refused. He shows the servant being forgiven, and being forgiven a massive, completely unpayable, debt. That servant, then, having received forgiveness of so great a debt, refuses to forgive his fellow servant a very small debt. The point that Jesus is making is this, that our forgiveness of our brothers flows out of his forgiveness. We forgive our brothers because he has forgiven us. We reckon their debts to us to be minuscule in comparison with the debt we owed to our Father in heaven, and we forgive gladly. What then if we refuse to forgive our brother? It’s very simple. You show that you have not been forgiven, that you have not taken hold of the righteousness of God in Christ, that you have not trusted in Christ, that you do not know what the blessedness of forgiveness is. If you had really trusted in Christ and really loved him, you would not have acted that way toward your brother. We can put it a different way. Your brother has sinned against you and has come to you to ask for forgiveness. You refuse him the forgiveness he asks, or you mouth some empty words and continue to resent him and to hold a grudge against him in your heart. Now you come to church on Sunday morning and you confess your sins to God and ask him to forgive. He won’t do it. You will receive no forgiveness. Why not? Because the faith that you profess in confessing and asking for forgiveness is a dead faith. That you did not forgive shows that you do not believe that there is forgiveness in Christ. The faith that receives forgiveness is a living faith, a faith that works by love, a faith that is active in obedience and forgiveness, as James teaches us. We can put it still another way. When you confess your sins and ask forgiveness, you are saying that you are sorry and, based on the blood of Christ and the promise of God, you are expecting forgiveness. Yet you have refused to forgive your brother when he was sorry and expected forgiveness from you. How is it possible that you could do that? How can you deny to him what you expected for yourself? How can you deny such a little forgiveness to him, when you expect a mountain of forgiveness from God? If you do not forgive your brother, then you do not know your own sin, you do not know what it means to confess your sin, you don’t know what forgiveness is. Jesus is saying that denying forgiveness to your brother and receiving it from God are absolutely incompatible. So, even when we do not say the words that we find in the Lord’s prayer, that “as we forgive our debtors” is implicit in every request for forgiveness. And it means these two things: 1) if I have not forgiven my debtor, do not forgive me, and 2) forgive me in the same manner that I have forgiven my brother: “forgive us our debts, AS we have forgiven our debtors.” If my forgiveness is grudging and incomplete, let yours be also. If I seek to deceive him by mouthing empty words while keeping my grudge, then let me also be deceived about your forgiveness. But Jesus also says, If you forgive your brother his trespasses, then your heavenly Father will also forgive you your trespasses. That’s his promise. On that promise we rely when we pray, “Our Father who art in heaven… forgive us our debts.” And he keeps his promise: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 Jn 1:9 Why? Because if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. 1 Jn 2:1,2