GOD's FAMILY

Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Matthew 6:12

People are messy. All people are messy. Given our collective powers of logic, this means that you are I are messy. 

With David we can say we have been birthed and raised in dysfunction. And while our dysfunctions may differ from one another and the damage that it causes in our relationships may vary, we all carry our own quota of sin and brokenness. What are we going to do about it?

Here Jesus teaches us to pray for our relationships knowing that they will inevitably be spaces full of enmity and strife, whereas the way of the Kingdom is one of peace and forgiveness. 

Forgiveness, though, does not come naturally to the human heart and even a redeemed heart has to be gifted the forgiveness it seeks to mete out. That’s why Jesus connects our forgiveness of others with God’s forgiveness of us. The same paradigm works in both relationships, but the order is incredibly important.

Jesus is not saying that God’s forgiveness of us is contingent upon our forgiveness of others—he is displaying in human form (our interpersonal forgiveness) what divine forgiveness looks like: cancellation of debts. Moreover, he is showing us here that the source of both kinds of forgiveness find their source in God. 

Corrie Ten Boom recounts how she wrestled with forgiveness given the trauma she endured at the hands of Nazi soldiers:

"Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ has died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me forgive him. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness. 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."

This is a beautiful and embodied picture of what Jesus means when he directs us to pray “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” 

And so, is there someone in your life who has repented of their debts, but you haven’t been able to forgive? Are you withholding God’s gracious gift of forgiveness from a brother or sister? Have you “left your gift at the altar and returned to your brother or sister to reconcile" (Matthew 5:24)? How can the vision of God being a forgiving King shape our character this day?

Lord, forgive me, a sinner!