THE PRAYER OF GOD’S NEW COVENANT PEOPLE
MATTHEW 6:12
THE GOSPEL FOUNDATION OF THE LORD’S PRAYER
We are a nation of debtors. Millions of young people are on the verge of bankruptcy with unpayable credit card debt that compounds yet more interest every month. The problem of school debt, often running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, has now become a national crisis. Even the federal government is in debt—debt that has soared into untold trillions of dollars.
Yet while many Americans view debt as an annoyance, in the ancient world debt was punishable by prison sentence. In the Roman Empire, prisons were not generally filled with criminals; they were populated with debtors. Most convicted criminals were executed or were forced to serve some other form of punishment for their crimes, but those who could not make good on their payments were incarcerated until they could pay what they owed. This system was meant to put pressure on the families of the incarcerated debtor to find the necessary money to pay their debts to free their loved one from prison.
In the Roman Empire, then, debt typically meant severe pain and tragedy for an individual and a family. In our day we experience frustration and anxiety with debt, but in the days of Jesus, debt was a matter of life and death. This is the context in which Jesus teaches us to pray “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus’ use of the word debts is meant to evoke in our mind both a serious offense and a corresponding serious punishment. To be forgiven a debt was no mere trifle, but an act of extravagant mercy.
If the petition “give us this day our daily bread” emphasizes our most urgent physical needs, the petition “forgive us our debts” emphasizes our most urgent spiritual need. Saying we owe a debt to God means that we have failed to give him the obedience he is rightly due. We owe God our obedience, and we have failed to pay up. Thus, as sinners, we stand before God condemned, rightly deserving his just wrath. Only God’s forgiveness can clear our guilt and establish a meaningful relationship between God and us.
This petition reminds us that the Lord’s Prayer is not a casual prayer for the generically religious. This prayer is a gospel prayer. We can only say these words and ask these things of God when we stand on the finished, atoning work of Jesus Christ. Indeed, this petition demonstrates that the theological bedrock of the Lord’s Prayer is nothing less than the gospel. We can only rightly pray the Lord’s Prayer when we recognize that we are deeply sinful and only God’s grace in Christ can remedy our souls.
GETTING THE GOSPEL RIGHT
The logic of this particular petition in the Lord’s Prayer has been misconstrued so often that we would do well to remind ourselves of what Scripture teaches about the gospel. Nothing is more central to the message of Scripture than the gospel. If we err on this point, we err on all others. Many interpreters believe that Jesus is saying that God only forgives us when we earn his forgiveness through forgiving others. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, this petition does not say “forgive us our debts because we forgive our debtors,” but “forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.” The difference between those two phrases, as we shall see, is the difference between the gospel of Jesus Christ and no gospel at all.
The sum and substance of the gospel is that a holy and righteous God who must claim a full penalty for our sin both demands that penalty and provides it. His self-substitution is Jesus Christ the Son, whose perfect obedience and perfectly accomplished atonement on the cross purchased all that is necessary for our salvation. Jesus Christ met the full demands of the righteousness and justice of God against our sin.
Paul summarized the work of Christ in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Christ is our substitute and his life is sacrificed for our sin so that God’s wrath against us is removed.
How then do we benefit from the sacrifice of Christ for us? Paul answered that we do not earn the righteousness of God in Christ; instead it is given to us freely when we believe the gospel: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23–24). Indeed, nothing in us or achieved by us is the grounds of our acceptance with God. Instead, as Paul made clear, “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5).
The gospel humbles all human pride and destroys any notion of self-righteousness. We do not come before the throne of grace presenting our so-called good works to God. Instead, we cling to the sacrifice and righteousness of Christ with the empty hand of faith. As the old hymn “Rock of Ages” states, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”
Yet, once we believe in Christ, we no longer live and act as we did before trusting in him. True conversion is marked by lifelong repentance and a new life of holiness. Not only does God forgive us of our sins, but he also gives us a new life that responds to his Word and has new desires for the things of God. As the author of Hebrews reminded us, once we are included in the new covenant, God writes his law on our minds and on our hearts (Heb. 8:10) and even puts his Spirit within us (Ezek. 36:26). Good works always accompany true salvation, but they are the fruit of salvation, not the root of salvation.
In theological terms, sanctification always follows justification. This means that when God saves a sinner, he will always conform that person into the image of Christ (Rom. 8:28–30). Paul summarized this comprehensive portrait of the gospel in Ephesians 2:8–10:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
The apostle was very clear. We are saved by faith alone in the work of Christ. All this comes from the grace of God. But we are not freed just from the penalty of sin; we are also freed from the power of sin. While our salvation is not a “result of works,” Paul noted that it does result in works, ones that God himself prepared for us to do. The portrait of the gospel is indeed astounding. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, which then results in our being transformed into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). Indeed the whole of our salvation proclaims the ineffable glory of God.
THE GOSPEL THEOLOGY OF “FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS”
The petition “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” summarizes all the theology in the section above. This request is a gospel primer in miniature. First, this prayer establishes that we are sinners in need of forgiveness. Jesus identifies that our deepest, most urgent spiritual problem is nothing less than personal rebellion against a holy God. Our fundamental spiritual problem is not a lack of education, lack of opportunity, an inability to express ourselves, or unmet social needs. Our problem is sin. We have transgressed God’s law and spurned his commandments. As a result, we need his forgiveness.
Second, Jesus teaches us not only that we have sinned but also that we have the hope of forgiveness. It is easy to miss just how audacious the words of Jesus actually are. Jesus is teaching sinners, rebels against God, to have the audacity to approach God’s throne—a throne established in justice and holiness—and ask for forgiveness. The only thing that can account for this boldness is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Only the work of Christ on behalf of sinners could possibly enable a sinner to go before God’s holy throne to petition that God forgive his debts. Only those with hearts fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ and his atoning work on the cross can appeal to God’s mercy and redemption.
Third, we see in this passage that God is willing to forgive sin. By teaching us to pray in this way, Jesus implies that God desires to forgive our sin. Scripture repeatedly makes this point:
[God] desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. 2:4)
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)
Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? (Ezek. 18:23)
Indeed, the only thing that surpasses our constant need for forgiveness is God’s determination to forgive sin. As the puritan Richard Sibbes famously said, “There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.”1 Sibbes’s pithy maxim is nothing more than a summary of the teaching of the apostles. The apostle John made this same point in his first epistle:
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8–10)
Finally, this petition demonstrates the relational character of the kingdom of God. The Lord’s Prayer is ultimately about the arrival of God’s kingdom and about the character of its members. This petition is yet another reminder that the kingdom of Christ is radically unlike the kingdoms of this world. The citizens of earthly kingdoms are committed first and foremost to themselves and to their own power, and are characterized by selfish ambition, self-promotion, and cruelty. True forgiveness has no real foothold in the kingdoms of man. But citizens of God’s kingdom are characterized by mercy, kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. We are included in God’s kingdom only by his act of forgiving us and, as a result, we are those who forgive one another—even when we might want to do otherwise. The kingdom of God is no place for malice and unchecked bitterness. The King himself makes us citizens by forgiving us, and thus the kingdom’s citizens forgive one another.
If you have ever been tempted to think that the gospel is nowhere present in the Lord’s Prayer, think again! This petition only makes sense in the context of Christ’s provision for us. By agreeing with God that we are sinners and repenting of that sin by asking for forgiveness, God clears our debts on account of Christ’s work for us.
If this does not shock us, then we have grown far too familiar with the gospel and the glory of God’s grace. The extravagant mercy of God shown in this petition should be on our lips and in our hearts daily. When we recognize we are debtors, then we see ourselves as we truly are, beggars at the throne of grace. Martin Luther, the great Reformer of the sixteenth century, certainly understood and reveled in this truth. When Luther came to die, his last moments were characterized by delirium and moving in and out of consciousness. Yet in one last moment of clarity Luther said (mixing German with Latin), “Wir sind bettler. Hoc est verum”—We are beggars, this is true.
FROM FORGIVEN TO FORGIVING: THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF GOD’S FORGIVENESS
Not only does Jesus teach us to petition God for forgiveness, he also teaches us to pray that God forgive us in the same way that we forgive our debtors. Now we must be very careful with this clause so that we don’t take it to mean something that Jesus would not affirm. Jesus is decidedly not saying that we are forgiven by God because we have forgiven other people. That would make the grounds of our acceptance with God our own works and not God’s grace. Scripture is very clear that we are justified before God by faith alone, not by works of the law.
What Jesus is affirming in these words is that when we experience God’s forgiveness, we are fundamentally transformed into forgiving people. In other words, one way we can know if we have experienced God’s forgiveness is to see if we have become a forgiving people. It is simply impossible to experience the richness of God’s grace and remain a stubborn, obstinate, coldhearted person. Those who truly know the forgiveness of sins, forgive others.
Jesus emphasized this point a number of times throughout his ministry:
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.” (Matt. 18:21–22)
Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven. (Luke 6:37)
Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, “I repent,” you must forgive him. (Luke 17:3–4)
In fact, one of Jesus’ most well-known parables, the parable of the unforgiving servant, focuses on the principle of forgiveness and specifically delineates why those who have been forgiven are themselves forgiving.
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, “Pay what you owe.” So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. (Matt. 18:23–35)
Jesus’ words on forgiveness are clear. Without forgiving others we will not be forgiven. Again, the grounds of our forgiveness is never our own works. But forgiveness is a necessary evidence that we have received forgiveness. If we do not forgive, we will not be forgiven. Hard hearts have no place in the kingdom of God. The reason, of course, is that the King himself is a forgiving king. Just as he forgives us when we rebel against him, so the citizens of God’s kingdom forgive one another.