A Deeply Personal, Difficult Prayer

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.  (Matt 6:9-12)

A friend of mine, a Baptist pastor, taught from this passage a few weeks ago. I was impressed. I don’t know what he said or if they prayed this together or if he urged them to pray this. But, I thought it was cool that he at least taught from it.

Jesus said, After this manner therefore pray ye. I believe he meant us to actually pray this prayer. Tertullian, in his work On Prayer, said, "How many duties are simultaneously discharged! The honour of God in the Father; the testimony of faith in the Name; the offering of obedience in the Will; the commemoration of hope in the Kingdom; the petition for life in the Bread; the full acknowledgment of debts in the prayer for their Forgiveness; the anxious dread of temptation in the request for Protection. What wonder? God alone could teach how he wished Himself prayed to." Amen!

There are seven petitions in this prayer. I only want to focus on one: forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Actually, I am only thinking about the last part of this petition, as we forgive our debtors.

First, Jesus calls sin a debt. Sin as debt? This is the proper translation of the Greek word. A few of the older English Bibles translated it trespass (Tyndale was one, and the Anglican / Episcopal church appears to have followed him). Some of the modern translations go with sin or guilt. But the word is debt (Jesus went with this idea again in Matt 18). The Anglo-Saxon Bible had: "forgyf us ure geltas swa swa we forgyfeð ure geltenden." This surely clears it up! The word Jesus used means debt. Just ask the person sinned against, they will make it clear - you owe them something. Even if it is just the right to be mad at you, you owe them something. Now, to make it personal, the person who has sinned against me, owes me. I may not even be sure what it will take to make it right, but they owe me. Very few of us are that honest about it, and we may even be unaware of this, but it is true. Otherwise Jesus would never have said anything about it. And I repeat, Matthew 18 is a commentary on this idea.

Second, Jesus taught us to pray: as we forgive our debtors. Forgiveness of those who have wronged us is one of the chief Christian virtues. This word for forgive means to cancel or forgive, to let go. If I forgive you it means I let it go, you don't owe me any more. This is sweet. This is powerful. This is supernatural!

This is also more precious and rare than one might think. Do you know how hard this is? The more grievous the sin, the deeper the hurt, the more precious and rare forgiveness is. We are reluctant to give up our right to be repaid! We often make an outward profession of forgiveness, yet in many ways, in our attitude and in remarks we make, this is still held over the offender.

Is it just the people I have sinned against who have this problem? I think not. I struggle with this as well. There are people I have offended. There are people who have offended me. We each have to learn to live this. What do I do if I have asked forgiveness and it has not been granted? What do I do if those who have offended me never asked me to forgive them? These are tough questions and I have to be able to answer them.

If I have asked forgiveness and nothing has come of it, I have done my part. I can pray for them but there is not much else I can do. If they have never asked me for forgiveness, I still have to forgive them in my heart. I can't grant the forgiveness, but I have to let it go in my heart. And this is where we need the grace of God.

The power of forgiveness can be seen in a powerful way in Jim and Elisabeth Elliot. They were missionaires to Ecuador. While there they came up with a plan to reach an unreached tribe, the Auca Indians. In January 1956, in an attempt to contact these people, Jim and four other men were killed by Aucas. Elisabeth and her 10 month old daughter remained in Ecuador to minister to this tribe. Two years after her husband's death, Elisabeth and her daughter moved into the village of the men who killed her husband, in order to teach them the Gospel! That is forgiveness! I want to live like that. By the way, several of the men who had helped to kill Jim Elliot and his friends became Christians. One of them, when giving his testimony, counted on his fingers and said, “I have killed twelve people with my spear. But I did that when my heart was black. Now Jesus’ blood has washed my heart clean, so I don’t live like that anymore.” God’s love had changed his life! God's love as revealed in Christ and manifested in Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint, in forgiving those who killed their husbands. And they did this in their hearts, way before the offenders confessed this and asked for forgiveness.

forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. My walking in this grace will probably not be as dramatic as this, but it will bear fruit in my life: in my walk with God and in the lives of those around me. May God so work in me that this virtue abounds in my life.


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A petition for pardon is a full confession; because 
he who begs for pardon fully admits his guilt. Tertullian