Forgive us as we forgive!

Matthew 6:7-15

7And in your prayer do not make use of the same words again and again, as the Gentiles do: for they have the idea that God will give attention to them because of the number of their words. 8So be not like them; because your Father has knowledge of your needs even before you make your requests to him. 9Let this then be your prayer: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. 10Let your kingdom come. Let your pleasure be done, as in heaven, so on earth. 11Give us this day bread for our needs. 12And make us free of our debts, as we have made those free who are in debt to us. 13And let us not be put to the test, but keep us safe from the Evil One. 14For if you let men have forgiveness for their sins, you will have forgiveness from your Father in heaven. 15But if you do not let men have forgiveness for their sins, you will not have forgiveness from your Father for your sins.

Food for thought!

Jesus teaches us something very important: "And make us free of our debts, as we have made those free who are in debt to us. ... For if you let men have forgiveness for their sins, you will have forgiveness from your Father in heaven. But if you do not let men have forgiveness for their sins, you will not have forgiveness from your Father for your sins."

Why did Jesus teach us this? Because he knows us all; Jesus knows that deep in man is Sin. Many of us resent being treated as sinners. The trouble is that most people have a wrong conception of sin. They would readily agree that the burglar, the drunkard, the murderer, the adulterer, the suicide bomber is a sinner. And since many people are not guilty of none of these sins, since many people live decent, ordinary, respectable lives, and have never even been in danger of appearing in court, or going to prison, or getting some notoriety in the newspapers, they therefore feel that sin has nothing to do with them. Many Christians don't know their sins. It is always the others who sin, not ourselves. So we think.

So, we do well to consider sin. What is sin, according to the Bible? The Bible uses different words for sin.

It uses the word sin to mean a missing of the target. To fail to hit the target is sin. Therefore sin is the failure to be what we might have been and could have been; when we fail to be what God made us to be, we sin. Are we as good husbands or wives as we could be? Are we as good sons or daughters as we could be? Are we as good workmen or employers as we could be? Is there anyone who will dare to claim that he is all he might have been, and has done all he could have done? When we realize that sin means the failure to hit the target, the failure to be all that we might have been and could have been, then it is clear that every one of us is a sinner.

The Bible uses sin to mean a debt. It means a failure to pay that which is due, a failure in duty. There can be no man or woman who will ever dare to claim that he has perfectly fulfilled his duty to man and to God. So, then, when we come to see what sin really is, we come to see that it is a universal disease in which everybody is involved. Outward respectability in the sight of man, and inward sinfulness in the sight of God may well go hand in hand. This, in fact, is a petition of the Lord's Prayer which every one of us needs to pray.

The Bible uses the word sin to mean a stepping across. Sin is the stepping across the line which is drawn between right and wrong. Do we always stay on the right side of the line which divides honesty and dishonesty? Is there never any such thing as a petty dishonesty in our lives? Do we always stay on the right side of the line which divides truth and falsehood? Do we never, by word or by silence, twist or evade or distort the truth? Do we always stay on the right side of the line which divides kindness and courtesy from selfishness and harshness? Is there never an unkind action or a discourteous word in our lives? When we think of it in this way, there can be none who can claim always to have remained on the right side of the dividing line. For this reason, Jesus taught the Our Father, not to some people but to all of us; to you and me.