"And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. . . . . . For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
Matthew 6:12, 14-15 (NASB)
Some of us, in fact too many of us have a memory problem. It's not what you may think.
It's not that we have a difficult time remembering things. We have that problem too. But
we too often have the memory problem that keeps us from forgetting things.
You see, when people have wronged us, we tend to hold grudges against them. We do not
forget. And that can be the most damaging memory problem of all.
Some grudges can last for years, even outliving the reason for the bad feelings I the
first place. Take, for example, the notorious Hatfield-McCoy feud.
It hit newspaper front pages in the 1880's, when the Hatfield clan feuded with the
McCoy clan from across the border in Kentucky. Historians disagree on the cause of the
feud which captured the imagination of the nation during a 10-year run. Some cite Civil
War tensions - McCoys sympathized with the Union, Hatfields with the Confederacy. Others
say it began when the McCoys blamed the Hatfields for stealing hogs. As many as 100 men,
women and children died.
In May 1976, Jim McCoy and Willis Hatfield - the last two survivors of the original
families - shook hands at a public ceremony dedicating a monument to six of the victims.
Jim McCoy died Feb. 11, 1984, at age 99. He bore no grudges - and had his burial handled
by the Hatfield Funeral Home in Toler, KY.
All of us have experienced the sting of someone doing us wrong, and we all have
struggled with attitudes of anger, bitterness, and even the desire for revenge. We have
even felt justified in these feelings to do someone hurt. After all, they certainly
deserve it, don't they?
The irony in this kind of thinking is that it fails to take in the reality that if God
treated us in the same way and held us to the same standard, we would all be in deep
trouble. We fail to realize that we have wronged God Himself.
How do we live with this tension? How can we deal with others in light of our own
situation before God? How can we find the forgiveness we need, both from others and
especially from God? These are questions which Jesus addresses in this section of the
Pattern Prayer.
"And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (Matthew
6:13a)
Our problem is squarely faced in this part of the prayer. We have debts. In this
context debts refer to our sins. We are debtors, or sinners. And it is quite clear
from Scripture that we can never repay God for what we have done.
The Bible teaches that each of us are sinful. We have a nature that is inherited from
our original parents, Adam and Eve. It is a nature which is fundamentally alienated from
God. We are sinners by nature and by choice. This sin nature finds expression in acts of
sin, which we call sins. This is the supreme problem of humankind. It puts us into a
position of being cut off from God's acceptance.
Various Scriptures make this clear. Romans 3:23 says, "for all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God" Sin is a falling short or a missing the
mark of God's perfect righteousness. Romans 3:10-11 says, "There is none
righteous, not even one. There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for
God." Sins derive from our unrighteous nature - from a nature that is set
against God. And Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." The penalty for our
sins is death - eternal death and condemnation. We are the recipients of the just wrath of
a holy God whose law we have violated.
This is our real problem, you see. We stand guilty as charged. We are all sinners. None
of us is excluded. None is without sin.
Our problem of sin creates our need for forgiveness. So this is our plea, "forgive
us." Forgiveness is one of the essential needs of all people. We need to both be
forgiven and to forgive others.
We all have experienced feelings of guilt. They can be quite compelling. Some people
have difficulty functioning with these feelings. I heard of one person so guilty over his
income taxes that he wrote a letter to the IRS. It read, Gentlemen: Enclosed you will find
a check for $150. I cheated on my income tax return last year and have not been able to
sleep ever since. If I still have trouble sleeping I will send you the rest. Sincerely, A
Tax Payer.
Guilty? Yes. But not feeling guilty enough to do the right thing. Even so, people will
try to appease these guilty feelings by whatever means possible, even if those means sound
ridiculous. Take, for example, a new product called "Disposable Guilt Bags"
which appeared in the marketplace. It consisted of a set of ten ordinary brown bags on
which were printed the following instructions: "Place the bag securely over your
mouth, take a deep breath and blow all your guilt out, then dispose of the bag
immediately." The wonder of this is that the Associated Press reported that 2500 kits
had been quickly sold at $2.50 per kit.
Unfortunately, you can not dispose of the guilty feelings you have so easily. Guilty
feelings, you see, are there for a reason. We are not simply dealing with feeling. We feel
guilty because we are guilty. The problem with guilty feelings is the guilt
which underlies it. We have true guilt because we have done things of which we are guilty.
That is why we need forgiveness. We do not need to deny our guilt, we need to confess
our sin. So we pray to the only One who can set us free from sin and the guilt of sin, our
Father who is in heaven. We say, "Lord, forgive us. We have sinned against
you."
The Bible gives us clear teaching on this point. 1 John 1:8-9 says, "If we
say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we
confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness."
To confess means to "agree" with God concerning your sin. In other words, we
call sin what it is - sin. We then bring it to God in humble repentance. As we do, the
Lord hears our prayer and forgives our sins. Only the Lord can forgive and cleanse us from
sin. Only He can take away our guilt.
"And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors."
(Matthew 6:13a)
The prayer, however, that Jesus taught us to pray has a stipulation to the petition for
forgiveness. We pray for the forgiveness of God on the basis of how we also have
forgiven our debtors. In other words, there is a relationship between whether we
forgive and our forgiveness.
To underscore the importance of this issue, Jesus revisits it at the end of the prayer.
It is as if, at the close of the prayer, He turns on His heel and says, "For if
you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But
if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions."
What He is saying is absolutely clear. If we are a forgiving person, we will be forgiven. As
we also have forgiven we will experience the forgiveness of the Lord. But, if our
hearts are hard, and we refuse to forgive, we will not be forgiven. In fact, it may even
indicate that we have never been forgiven in the first place.
A forgiving heart, you see, is one of the marks of a Christian. Those who have been
forgiven know how important forgiveness is to someone who needs it.
The following is simply called It.
They laugh and smile and talk and embrace and I do too.
But sometimes my smile covers a tear.
And no one knows.
Right now my tear is from an it.
I'm sorry, so very sorry I did it.
I feel like a broken record and the skip
is the it that never completely goes away.
What would they think if they knew my it?
Would the laughs vanish? The smiles disappear?
Would the talk be hurled at me? The embrace taken back?
Do they have an it?
What do they do with it?
Why do we act for each other when there is no play?
There is only life.
And that life includes a lot of it.
The point is not to celebrate it
but only to admit to it.
I am told Jesus knows everything
which means he know about it.
And yet he whispers
in words too good to be true
I died for you - don't worry about it.
If Jesus can forgive "it," so must we. We must forgive because it is a mark
of being forgiven. We must forgive because it is a way of life for the believer.
Do you have difficulty forgiving? Many do. Others have. Sir Walter Scott had difficulty
with the idea of "turning the other cheek." But Jesus' words took on special
meaning one day when Scott threw a rock at a stray dog to chase it away. His aim was
straighter and his delivery stronger than he had intended, for he hit the animal and broke
its leg. Instead of running off, however, the dog limped over to him and licked his hand.
Sir Walter never forgot that touching response. He said, "That dog preached the
Sermon on the Mount to me as few ministers have ever presented it." Scott said he had
not found human beings so ready to forgive their enemies. Yet, by the power of Christ, it
is possible to forgive - even when we have been horribly wronged.
Corrie Ten Boom shares this true story in her book, The Hiding Place:
It was a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there - the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie's pain-blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. "How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein," he said. "To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!"
His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.
In this prayer we find the secret to inner peace and forgiveness. It is forgiving
others. It will set us free.
Let me give you three keys for living the Lord's prayer in this regard:
First, pray for your own forgiveness. Confess your sins to God. Pray even for
forgiveness for not forgiving others. That is a sin also. Ask God to soften your heart and
give you His love and mercy instead of your bitterness and anger.
Second, forgive others. Are there those you have not forgiven? If there are, you need
to willfully and deliberately forgive them. If you do not and will not, you harm yourself
the most. I have known people who were eaten up with unforgiveness. The had become bitter,
miserable people because of the resentment inside. You could see it on their faces. They
were unhappy people - people without peace. Forgive others. Tell God you forgive them. If
appropriate, tell them you forgive them.
Third, ask God to give you the grace to maintain an attitude of forgiveness. You know
that there will be those who sin against you, who wrong you. Set your heart to forgive
them. Let that be the natural response.
As you live this way, you will find the blessing of God poured forth over your life.
You will be able to cease struggling with others, because you will be able to commend them
into the hands of God. He can deal with them. And you will find what you need - the
forgiveness of God for your sins.
Copyright (C) 1995 J. David Hoke. This data file is the sole property
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