22. Forgive Us

“Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

If people were given the opportunity to edit the Lord’s Prayer and remove their least favorite part, it seems pretty likely that the bit about forgiveness would be the first to go. Forgiveness is really hard. God’s will, His holiness, daily bread, sure. But forgiveness? Let’s just skip over that part. Can you relate? Does the idea of forgiveness make you want to change the subject? It’s great to be on the receiving end of forgiveness. When someone you’ve hurt is quick to forgive you, when they choose not to make you grovel or beg for forgiveness, it’s like receiving an amazing gift. On the flip side, it can also feel pretty good to nurse our grievances, to hold the power of unforgiveness over someone and convince ourselves we’re in control. Forgiveness is something we all want to receive, but at the same time, it’s something most of us struggle to give out.

You may have come across a couple different versions of the Lord’s Prayer. Sometimes we read “forgive us our debts,” and other times it’s “forgive us our trespasses.” In the original language, it could be either. And really, it’s both. The word debts refers more to what we’ve failed to do on behalf of our neighbor—the failure to show compassion or to love them well. Trespasses refers to the wrong we’ve done to our neighbors. The prayer is that the Lord would forgive us for the ways we’ve hurt the people around us—both in the wrong we’ve done and in the good we’ve left undone.

It’s no small coincidence that daily bread and forgiveness sit beside each other in the Lord’s Prayer. Like the food we eat, forgiveness is a vital part of our daily sustenance. It has to be something we practice daily. Because, the reality is that people are messy. And when we live our lives in close proximity to other people, it is inevitable that we will step on each other’s toes. We have to be willing to live in radical generosity toward each other. If we are going to live the shared life of God’s kingdom, we have to be really good at forgiving each other quickly.

The hardest part about forgiveness is that we humans love justice. When someone has wronged us, especially when it comes to very deep wrongs, we want to know that they are going to pay for it. We want to know that there will be justice. It’s easy to be tempted to take justice into our own hands. We can deceive ourselves into believing that by withholding forgiveness, we are making someone pay for what they’ve done. But the Lord tells us that it’s His job to carry out justice. When we forgive someone, we’re not ignoring justice. Rather, we’re trusting God to carry out justice on our behalf.

God’s plan for justice and forgiveness is in the cross. Jesus walked the path of forgiveness for us when He was crucified. While He was dying, and before anyone even had the chance to ask for forgiveness, Jesus asked His Father to forgive the men who crucified Him. And then, in His death and resurrection, He extended that same forgiveness to all of His lost children. God’s plan for justice is that none of us get what we deserve. Instead of getting what’s coming to us, by the blood of Jesus, we receive forgiveness instead. It is only when we stand in the power of the resurrected Christ, transformed by His forgiveness, that we have the power to forgive those around us.

In the same way that we can trust Jesus to lead us in the way of forgiveness, we can also trust him to lead us through the pitfalls of evil and temptation. He knows us and He knows this broken world—He walked through it and He knows what it means to be human. There is no better guide, there is no one better to follow. When we pray, “lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil,” we’re asking Him to be our guide in the wilderness of this fallen world. He knows us better than we know ourselves and if we will tune our hearts to hear His voice, He will guide us away from the pitfalls we so easily fall into.

As we wrap up our time in the Lord’s Prayer, consider how remarkable it is that the God of all Creation left us a written account of how we should pray. First and foremost, He tells us to come to Him as a good father, and to come to Him together, as His children. Next, He gives us three big picture requests we should ask of Him that have to do with the story of all people everywhere—that He would be seen as who He truly is and that His will and His kingdom would be as true on earth as in heaven. He ends the prayer by giving us three personal requests for our daily lives—that we would trust in His daily provision, that He would give us His power to live in forgiveness and that He would be our guide through the dark and broken world inhabit. Remember that the prayer is for “us” not for “me”. As often as we can, we should come together as the children of God and ask Him to make the whole world right and to provide daily for our needs and the needs of our neighbors. We can pray all this with confidence because we know that He’s near, He’s listening and His love is beyond imagining.