9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
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Does anyone remember the hope of
flying cars? I got Boys’ Life magazine
as a child, and they constantly focused on flying cars to the point that it
seemed to me we would all be navigating the skies by the year 2000. We’d have flying cars and flying cities and
flying-whatever-the-heck-we-wanted.
Now, in the year 2014, I’m reading
about how they’re redesigning the Toyota Corolla. Not quite as exciting as flying cars.
I have a theory about what it is
that captures the imagination the way that flying cars do. They symbolize complete independence. When your car can fly, you don’t need to
depend on or worry about anyone else.
You can just fly out of your driveway and to wherever you please. You are as free as a bird, with no need to
worry about where the road might lead.
You are free. When you’re sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic with a
thousand of your closest friends each and every morning, the idea of not being
limited by anyone or anything is pretty tempting.
We all long for independence. Since we’ve been little children, we’ve had
it drilled into our heads that we should all dream of being our own master, of
mastering our own fate and being lords of our own domains. As Americans, we celebrate independence and
teach and preach it whenever we get the chance.
We threw off the shackles of the British, and now we each are free to do
and be what we please.
If we’re truly free, we’re not
indebted to anyone, right? If we owe a
debt to anyone, they are a master over us.
They can control us. I owe over
$100,000 to Suntrust Bank, and if I shrug off this obligation, they will kick
me out of my house. Now, they don’t ask
too much of me, only that I send them a rather sizable check every month, but I
am a debtor to them. I am not completely
free to do whatever I want.
Jesus, here in this petition, is
reminding us of another debt, one far greater than any financial obligation you
or I could rack up in our lives.
Currently, the most expensive home for sale in Chattanooga is a nice little
7 bedroom number on Missionary Ridge that lists for just under $3 million. You could buy that, never pay a dime on your
mortgage, and your debt would scarcely register compared to the debt to which
Jesus is referring.
We have offended God. We have sinned against God, which is the
greatest offense we could ever commit in our lives. To the one who created us in his image, we
have turned our backs. To the one who
promises to be as a bride to us, we have cheated. To the one who pledges to love us eternally,
we have spurned. Since the fall of
humanity in the garden of Eden, each and every human heart has, in some way,
turned from the worship of God and chosen to worship false images, false gods,
false idols. We have pursued our own
independence at the neglect of God and others, and we have strayed from the
narrow pathway that leads to life everlasting.
In our sin, we have racked up a debt to God.
Now, the debt of sin is not as
easily paid as other debts. If I make
enough mortgage payments over the next few decades, I’ll repay my debt to
Suntrust. There is no possible way I
will ever make enough payments to God to make up for the debt I have
accumulated by my sin. It is simply
impossible.
Fortunately, we worship a God of
grace who, in Jesus Christ, has forgiven our sins. Colossians 2:13 tells us that we were dead in
our sins but were made alive in Christ Jesus, who forgives us our sins and
cancels the debt that stood against us.
In Christ, God has canceled our debt to him, making it possible for us
to have life with him. What we could not
pay, Jesus paid for us. He who had no
sin became sin so that we might have life.
It’s a free gift.
So why, you might ask, does Jesus
teach us to pray for forgiveness? If we
have been forgiven for sins, why bother asking for it? We’re not in the habit of continuing to ask
for things we’ve already received.
In this petition, Jesus is
reminding us that we are not our own lords and masters. We do not exist to serve ourselves. We have not been created so that we might
make much of ourselves. In this prayer,
we acknowledge that we need forgiveness, that we depend on God, that we are not
our own master. We remember our
sinfulness, lest we begin to believe that we are better than we are.
But in remembering our sinfulness,
we also remember God’s grace. In praying
for forgiveness, we remember that God has forgiven our sins. We remember the grace of God that has made it
possible for us to be redeemed from the hand of sin and death, and we can
rejoice that our sin does not condemn us to an eternity far from God.
So Jesus teaches us to be reminded
that we are not independent, but we are rather recipients of a great gift, and
that God is a great and gracious God.
Then he continues, and we begin to
wonder about God’s generosity.
Forgive
our debts, as we forgive our debtors, we are told to pray.
And we wonder about that little
‘as’.
I once heard someone call it the
most dangerous preposition in the Bible.
If we’re honest, we’ve all stared at
that little word and wondered how big of a difference it makes. If we’re honest, we can confess that we’ve
wondered if God will only forgive us to the extent that we forgive others. We’ve wondered if we’re doomed to an eternity
with only a fraction of the grace God has poured out.
In short, I’d like to offer this
rejoinder to all those questions: No.
By no, I mean we don’t control
God. Jesus isn’t telling us that
forgiveness is offered by God to the same extent that we offer it to
others. God doesn’t take our limitations
as a basis for his actions. When Jesus
was on the cross and he looked upon his Roman executioners, he didn’t cry out, Father, forgive them to the extent they
figure out what all this means and offer some grace later on to those that
might owe them something. No, he
cried out, so that all could hear, Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do. When Jesus ascended the cross, he didn’t do
so to bleed a little, offering a pint of blood, because that’s all our
forgiveness was worth. No, he died on
the cross, offering himself as the sacrifice to pay for all of our sins, past,
present and future. We cannot control
God, and let us be grateful for that, for God is always more gracious and
loving than we can imagine.
So what does this little word ‘as’
mean? What does it mean to pray for
forgiveness as we forgive others?
What Jesus is doing is linking our
relationship with God to the relationships we have with those around us. Jesus is teaching us that our relationships
with our fellow humans should be shaped and defined by our relationship with
God. Jesus is telling us that a
religious life is not just the intimate connection you have with God—it bleeds
over, explodes out of us and affects every single part of our lives. We who
have graciously received unbounded and unlimited grace and love from God should
be so transformed by the experience that we are then willing to seek to
duplicate this love of God as we interact with those around us. If we understand what it means to be forgiven,
we cannot help but want to offer this to others, to give grace and love and
pray that it transforms lives. In doing
so, we point others to God.
It’s easy for us to get caught up
in our individual relationship with God, and we start to believe that is all
that matters. What Jesus is teaching us
is that we can’t get too comfortable in that.
We have to let Christ transform all of life, so that we’re not just
worried about worshiping rightly, but also about acting properly. Jesus tells a parable about this later in the
Gospel, portraying a servant who owes 15 years worth of wages to his
master. The servant is forgiven freely,
and while he is so grateful, he is unable to see how this should affect the
rest of his life, so that when he meets a fellow servant who owes him a
fraction of what he has been forgiven, he has the man thrown in prison when he
is unable to pay. Rather than extend
grace, he uses his newfound freedom to imprison others. The gift has failed to transform his
heart. He doesn’t understand the gift.
And so we must see that how we treat others is
a consequence, not a condition, of how we have been treated by God. If our faith is truly shaping us, if it has
truly transformed us, our interactions will be shaped by grace and forgiveness. To forgive is to be selfless, to give up the
right to something that is owed to us.
To forgive is giving up the right to selfishness, to make much of
ourselves. To forgive means we are
giving up something that belongs to us.
When we do this, we imitate Christ,
who gave up everything he deserved and lavished it upon us. The honor and glory he rightly deserved is
poured upon us, and the indignation and scorn we deserved was poured out upon
him. Our gratitude for this selfless act
should shape our hearts and minds, that we go forth as a forgiven and grateful
people, not looking to make much of ourselves, not set on independence for us,
but rather looking to make much of God and of his eternal love, and may we do
so as we forgive and love those around us.
Let us pray
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