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“Forgive Us Our Sins”
Praying The Lord’s Prayer, Part
7
Matthew 6:12
Lord, Teach Us to Pray
April 6, 2003
On a snowy day in Baltimore, the 2003 baseball season opened as the Cleveland Indians played the Baltimore Orioles. As most of you know, the new Indians are not the same team of the mid- to late-nineties. No longer is there a Jim Thome or a Sandy Alomar or a Kenny Lofton or a Manny Ramirez on the team. Only one player from that era remains, Omar Visquel, who is as great as he has ever been, if not better. A team of rookies and near-rookies took the field. And as 13 innings were played, it became evident that this team is very athletic, and very young. Four errors and a passed ball cost the team the game. Their performance did not measure up to the high standards of the great teams of the 90’s. They won the next two games, mostly on the basis of good pitching and timely hitting, and because they eliminated the errors. One day the Indians were inept rookies, the next, they were winners—all based on that day’s performance.
We all know the pressure to perform. In Little League you felt the pressure. In Peewee Football, you felt it. If you were in high school sports, you felt it. If you were not in sports you felt it—pressure to perform for grades, pressure to perform for popularity, pressure to be accepted, pressure to perform in a variety of ways for a variety of people for a variety of reasons. You feel pressure to perform at work—if you don’t meet a quota, or if a project is not completed on time and in just the right way, or if you don’t produce enough for your company’s bottom line.
When your performance slips, you received criticism. Sometimes, you lose your job. Sometimes, you lose your friends.
In virtually every aspect of our lives, we are evaluated and rewarded based on our performance. And, we all know that in just about every aspect of our lives, we will inevitably fail.
But there is one place where performance is not the basis of acceptance; there is one relationship that will not be lost based on your performance; there is one vocation that is not endangered by your failure to perform.
The Christian message is this: You are accepted as a member of God’s family based on your
failure and Jesus Christ’s performance! The church is the one organization in the world that has as its criterion for admittance the failure of every one of its members!
I am a moral, ethical, and spiritual failure. My attitudes and my actions all show that I have broken not just one of the Ten Commandments, but all of them. And so have you. If I had to perform in order for God to love me and to accept me as his child, I would be in big trouble! So, what do I rely on to be accepted by God? My performance? NO! Jesus made the PERFECT SACRIFICE on my behalf, doing what only
he could do, in order to bring me into relationship with the Trinity. When I realized that I was helpless to perform up to God’s standards, I cast myself upon the mercy of God.
That was when I experienced the grace of God—he said something like, “You’re as guilty as Hell! But I forgive you. Because you have placed your trust in my Son Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for you to pay for your miserable failure, I now proclaimed you righteous in my sight.”
This is what theologians call “Justification”—we are declared
righteous. At that moment, I was indwelt with the Living God, the Holy Spirit. He started to transform this miserable failure into the kind of person I was meant to be. My character began a life-long process of sanctification—being made, from the inside out, more and more holy as I cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s work in me.
And I began an ever-deepening relationship with God.
Whereas my relationship with God is secure and not based on my performance, it still is a
relationship. And just like any other relationship, I can do things that can seriously hinder the development of that relationship. Just like any other relationship, it is not simply one-way; it is a reciprocal interaction of two persons—myself and God.
And just as I needed God’s grace to initiate this relationship, I need God’s grace to
develop this relationship. In initiating the relationship in the first place, I asked for forgiveness for my sinfulness, I repented of seeking first my sinful desires of being my own god and I bowed to God to be my God, and I asked for the grace of God to overwhelm me.
In keeping the relationship growing, I need to ask each day for forgiveness of my daily sins. I need to repent from the darkness that still resides in my heart, and ask God for the grace to overwhelm me—again, every day, every moment.
Thus, Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer,
“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
(Matthew 6:12)
Or as Luke records in another time Jesus taught how to pray,
“Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” (Luke 11:4)
Jesus spoke in Aramaic, and the word he used there probably was the one that had both connotations: In Aramaic, when we sin against somebody, we owe them a debt. Matthew and Luke used synonymous words for what Jesus said when they recorded his words in Greek.
Sin is like a “debt” because it deserves to be punished. Sin is like a “debt” because it has got to either be paid or reconciled or released. Until this happens, the debt remains. Therefore, if someone were to sin against you, they owe you a debt—they have incurred a cost upon you, which must be reconciled. If you fail to release him from the debt, it remains and relationship is harmed.
Jesus told a story that illustrates this perfectly. Look at Matthew 18:23-35.
“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
“The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.”
This parable tells us something quite profound: It is not that we forgive others so that we can receive forgiveness from God. That would be a performance thing all over again! We do not deserve forgiveness, we cannot earn forgiveness, we cannot do anything to merit God’s forgiveness. If that were true, then there would be no grace!
No, what Jesus is teaching is this: When we are forgiven such an amazingly huge debt (our terrible sinful nature that permeates everything about us individually and as a people), then how dare we
not forgive others who owe us because of the smaller sins they have committed against us!
In 1913, the Federal Government held a 50th anniversary reunion at Gettysburg. It lasted three days. Thousands of survivors bivouacked in the old battlefield, swapping stories, looking up comrades.
For the most part the old men got along well enough, but over dinner at a restaurant one evening harsh words were passed between a Yankee and a Rebel and they went at one another with forks: One of them, with 50 years of bitterness, was almost fatally wounded with tableware!
The climax of the gathering was a reenactment of Pickett’s Charge. Thousands of spectators gathered to watch as the Union veterans took their positions on Cemetery Ridge, and waited as their old adversaries emerged from the woods on Seminary Ridge and started toward them again, across the long, flat fields.
On historian who witnessed this wrote, “We could see not rifles and bayonets but canes and crutches. We soon could distinguish the more agile ones aiding those less able to maintain their places in the ranks.”
As they neared the northern line, they broke into one final, defiant rebel yell. At the sound, “after half a century of silence, a moan, a sigh, a gigantic gasp of unbelief” rose from the Union men on cemetery Ridge. “It was
then that the Yankees, unable to restrain themselves longer, burst from behind the stone wall, and flung themselves upon their former enemies ... not in mortal combat, but re-united in brotherly love and affection.” (--
Myers, The Civil War, p. 412. From the files of Leadership.)
What debts are you allowing to grow as you allow the years to make you more and more bitter toward the one who did you wrong?
In his book, Lee: The Last Years, Charles Bracelen Flood reports that after the Civil War Robert E. Lee visited a Kentucky lady who took him to the remains of a grand old tree in front of her house. There she bitterly cried that its limbs and trunk had been destroyed by Federal Artillery fire. She looked to Lee for a word condemning the North. After a brief silence, Lee said, “Cut it down, my dear Madam, and forget it.”
We need to heed the words of the Holy Scripture, “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” (Hebrews 12:14-15) It is better to forgive the injustices of the past than to allow them to remain, to let bitterness take root and poison the rest of our life.
How are you doing with your friends? With your enemies? With your family? With the people in the church?
In order to live a healthy life in your family, everyone must be constantly saying, “I'm sorry,” “I forgive you,” and “I love you” over and over again.
Author Jerry Jenkins wrote in the magazine, Marriage Partnership (Vol. 12, no. 1) “Even the most heinous grounds for divorce are also grounds for forgiveness.”
Florence Littauer wrote, “I used to gather up [my husband] Fred's faults with the fervor of a child picking berries. I had a whole shelf of overflowing baskets before the concept of forgiveness fell heavily upon me. To be spiritual I plucked out a few of Fred’s faults and forgave them, but I didn't want to clear the whole shelf. Where would I go for future reference material?”
(“After Every Wedding Comes a Marriage.”
Christianity Today, Vol. 34, no. 13.)
Jesus’ words make us pause and reflect! “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Do not hold on to anything, for that is not forgiving. Love
“keeps no records of wrongs” according to 1 Corinthians 13:5.
You cannot perform to receive the forgiveness of God. What makes you seek to make others perform in order for you to forgive them?
In 1st century Rome, when a business debt had been paid, a word was written across the certificate of debt. The word that the Romans wrote was the Greek word
tetelestai, meaning “It is finished,” or in context, “paid in full.” The certificate of debt with
tetelestai written on it was a person’s receipt guaranteeing no more further payments needed to be made.
In 1st century Rome, the same word was written across the page that listed a person’s criminal charges once a person paid their debt to society. When the word
tetelestai was written on the page, the convicted criminal was released from further punishment. In capital crimes, the criminals were nailed to crosses, with the charge written above their head so that all that pass by can see the gruesome penalty of breaking the Roman law.
In Colossians 2:13-14, we read, “While you were dead in your transgressions and your sinful nature was not yet cut away, God made you alive together with him (Christ), having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of charges against us, that stood opposed to us; and he has taken it away—nailed it to the cross.” (my translation)
Our written charge was nailed to the cross of Christ. Picture it! The document that lists all your failure to live up to God’s glorious standard of living—all that you do on purpose and all that you do just because you are a imperfect human being—is nailed there with Christ: all your bad attitudes, all your bad actions, all your bad intentions, all your selfishness, all your greed, all your lust, all your pride. The entire list of the history of all the sin, trespass, and transgression of your life (past, present and future!) is there on the certificate of debt consisting of the charges against you. I don’t know about you, but my certificate is pretty stinkin’ long!
When Jesus was crucified, this document was nailed on the cross with him. Our sin was the reason that Jesus, in his love, committed himself to die a brutal death on that cross. He was paying the price to cancel our certificate of debt.
Just before Jesus died he yelled out one word. What was it?
Tetelestai!
“It is finished!” It is “PAID IN FULL!”
No matter what others may tell you, this is Jesus’ yell of triumph! In that
instant, God took each of our Certificates of Debt and canceled them.
He wrote across them, tetelesthai: It is Finished, it is Paid in Full.
Now, having been forgiven our debt, as Kingdom People, as the Spirit-indwelt People of God, we are now called to live out that forgiveness toward others. If I fail to forgive others, I have not yet come to grips with the overwhelming amount of forgiveness that God has granted me.
As followers of Jesus, empowered by his Spirit and called out of the world as agents of forgiveness and reconciliation, we pray as Francis of Assisi once did,
“Lord, make me an instrument of peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
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