|
|
|
"LORD TEACH US TO PRAY" FORGIVE US OUR DEBTSMatthew 6:12, 14-15 with 1 John 1:8-10 & Col. 3:12-13INTRODUCTION When I first became a Christian I was told that prayer was simply talking with God, just like talking with a human being. While in prayer we do talk with God as a person; prayer is far more than simply talking with God. Prayer, at least prayer that God listens to, is not merely me saying whatever happens to come into my head. I’m not just “shooting the breeze” with my buddy. It is not simply me asking God for whatever I want but me learning to want what God wants and then asking him to give me what I want, which is also what he wants. It’s not a matter of my vocabulary or how good my grammar is. Prayer is not we trying to talk God into wanting what we want but of we asking God to do what he wants to do which, for the Christian, is what we want. The reason that Jesus, in the Lord's prayer, must tell us what to pray is because these are not the things that we naturally want or ask God to do. This prayer is not merely a prayer but a reorientation of our entire way of thinking, feeling and living. It really is true that in true prayer we are transformed as we learn to yearn for that which God yearns. The petition we are considering today, “Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors” requires a massive reorientation in our thinking about how it is that God is our Father and how we are to relate to him. Jesus tells us that every day we are to ask God to forgive our debts and every day tell him that we have forgiven those who are in debt to us. We know we are to do this every day because of the fourth petition which says, “Give us this day our daily bread.” In other words, the entire prayer is to be prayed on a daily basis. There isn’t a day that goes by that we do not need forgiveness. Why is forgiveness so necessary in our relationship to God and to other people? Asking for and giving forgiveness are the only way that sinful persons can enter into loving relationships. Forgiveness matters because love matters. God cannot love us and we cannot love God if there is an outstanding debt between us. We cannot love others and they cannot love us if there is an outstanding debt between us. When there are unpaid and unforgiven debts we can only relate to one another in an adversarial relationship. It is only when the debts have been removed by asking for and the giving of forgiveness that we are free to love each other. Try loving someone you haven’t forgiven or who hasn’t asked to be forgiven. Or, try enjoying a close, loving relationship with someone who hasn’t forgiven you. I doubt there is anyone in here over the age of ten who has not experienced the fracturing of a relationship due to one party or the other being offended and then forgiveness not being asked for and given. My mom’s aunts and uncles did not speak to each other for over 50 years because of some conflict over the inheritance from their parents. I never knew what happened only that no one ever asked for forgiveness and no one ever forgave and several of the siblings went to their death without speaking to their own brothers and sisters for the last 50 years of their lives. Forgiveness is the oil that keeps the gears of relationships from grinding to a halt, including our relationship to God. MAIN POINT Jesus commands us to daily ask God to forgive our sins because… Every day our sins place us in debt to God In our relationships with humans we are sometimes the offending person who needs to ask for forgiveness and we are sometimes the offended person who needs to give forgiveness. However in our relationship with God we are always in the position of being the offending person. We are always in his debt, he is never in our debt. Therefore, when we pray, every day we must ask God to forgive our sins because every day our sins place us in his debt. The Scriptures use a variety of metaphors to describe our status as sinners in relationship to God. Sometimes we are described as criminals, lawbreakers who stand before the judge. Sometimes we are described as an adulterous wife in relation to her faithful and loving husband. Sometimes we are described as lost sheep that need their shepherd or a sick person in need of a doctor. Sometimes we are described as prisoners or slaves who need to be set free. Sometimes we are likened to the rebellious children of a loving Father. Sometimes we are compared to traitors and betrayers of our great and gracious king. No single metaphor captures the hopelessness of our condition completely or expresses the nature of our relation to God fully, that is why so many different metaphors are used. In this case, Jesus is using the language of economics. Think of our condition before God like this. Imagine that I got myself into massive debt through the use of credit cards. Let’s say I have $100,000 of credit card debt. I go to a bank and consolidate all my debt into one loan from the bank. In addition I take out a $50,000 loan to start my own business in order to provide income to pay back my loan. However, as soon as I receive the check, I go directly to Ho-Chunk casino and in less than a day I lose the entire $50,000 and take on another $20,000 of debt to the casino from my losses. I’ve had to sell everything to pay off the casino and so now I am unemployed and homeless. All I possess are the clothes I am wearing. Then I go back to the bank and ask them to give me another loan for me to live on and start my own business. What is the likelihood that the bank will give me another loan? Would it be right for them to give me another loan? Jesus, by commanding us to ask God to forgive our debts is saying that every time we pray we are approaching God as a bankrupt, unemployed person approaching the bank to which he is in debt to get another loan. I am asking to be forgiven for squandering what was given to me in order that I can then borrow more to live on for this day. God has given me everything I am and I possess. Every day I have used what he has given me, not to increase the glory of his name or to help his kingdom spread or to do his will. Rather I have used the resources he has given me to do exactly the opposite of that for which he gave me the resources. Every day I am going to the one who has given me everything and I am asking him to give me more, even though I’ve squandered everything he already gave me. Therefore, each and every day I need to ask him to forgive my ever-growing debt. I have no ability to pay off any part of this debt. I am entirely at his mercy. I can give him no reason to forgive my debt. I can’t promise that I won’t squander what he gives me, as it has always been my pattern to squander what he gives. There is nothing I can do to earn or convince or manipulate God into forgiving my debt and giving me more to misuse. I cannot demand to be forgiven. I cannot tell God that he must forgive me. I can only ask him to forgive my debt. If my debt is forgiven, then it will not be because of anything in me but must entirely be based upon God’s nature and his work. I am asking him to absorb the loss and to not punish me in any way for defaulting on the loan. I am asking him to continue to give me additional resources in spite of the fact that there is no reason to believe that I won’t be back tomorrow in the same predicament. Do not miss that Jesus is telling Christians to every day ask the Father to forgive our debts. Even though we have new hearts and we truly do want God's name glorified and his kingdom to come and his will to be done and even though we do use some of God's resources each day to glorify his name and work for his kingdom and do his will, yet we also, every day use his time, his money, his eyes, his mouth, his ears, his hands, his feet, his brain, his life to invest in those things that are opposed to his glory, kingdom and will. We come to church and sing songs of praise and put money in the collection plate and then on the way home we yell at the kids or get mad about what someone said to us or didn't say to us after church or we ignore our wife and watch football all day. We help our elderly neighbor rake his lawn while we lust over the cute girl walking down the street. We read the Bible with our children but then ignore a girlfriend because she hasn’t called me for a week. It is the fact of our existence that every day we place ourselves in God's debt by using what he has given us, not for the purposes he has given them but for ourselves. Jesus commands us to daily ask God to forgive our sins because...
II. Every day we need to trust the finished work of Christ for us Everyone who truly believes that we are in the condition of the bankrupt, unemployed, homeless person that I have described going to the bank to ask to be forgiven of our debt in order that we can get another loan, knows that there is no reason for the bank to forgive us or to give us another loan. When we go to God and ask him to forgive us we are confronted with this same problem, only in much greater ways. Why should God forgive our debt and give us more of his resources? What reason can there be? Some would argue that God forgives and gives simply because that is his nature. However, God is not only loving, he is also just and wise. What kind of God would he be if he just kept saying that he didn't care that we were squandering his money by investing in the things that he hates? There would be no ground for saying that anything is right or wrong if God simply forgives and gives without regard to our debt, to the injustice of what we are doing. Maybe if I change the metaphor a little you will feel the perverseness of what we are doing. Imagine that I work for a bank and am in charge of managing the trust funds that families have established at our bank to care for injured and disabled family members. I proceed to embezzle the money. I don't give the money to the families but I use it to buy houses and cars for myself and pay for vacations for my family. I'm caught doing this and I ask to be forgiven and placed back in the same position in the bank. If you are one of the families who have been stolen from and who has suffered this injustice, do you want to forgive me and give me back my job? That is exactly what we are asking from God each day we ask him to forgive our debts. How would it ever be right for God to do this? I did a study on the word translated "forgive" as it is used in the OT. What I found out is that in almost every case where it means "to forgive" it is the result of a sacrifice being made or intercession being made. For example, in Leviticus 6:7 it says, “And the priest shall make atonement (offer an animal sacrifice) for him before the Lord and he shall be forgiven for any of the things that one may do and thereby become guilty.” In Numbers 14:19, Moses prays for the Israelites who are in the midst of rebelling against God and about whom God has just said he is going to wipe them all out for their sins, “Forgive the sin of this people according to your great mercy, just as you have been merciful to them from Egypt until now.” In other words, when Jesus gives this prayer to these Jewish disciples they don't think of forgiveness in terms of God merely forgiving with no regard to justice. They always think of forgiveness as coming as a result of the death of an animal in their place or as a result of the intercession of a prophet on their behalf. They don't think that God forgives for no reason. They believe what Hebrews 9:22 says, “…and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” I want you to turn with me to 1 John 1:8-10 to see plainly spelled out the basis upon which God forgives our debts. The first thing I want you to notice is vv. 8 & 10. John says here what Jesus says by telling us to ask God to forgive our debts every day: Christians commit sin. Anyone who says that they do not sin or that they are not sinners is self-deceived, lying and not living according to the truth. Rather than ignoring, denying or attempting to justify our sin, we are commanded to confess our sin. The word “confess” means to agree with God about our sin and to ask him to forgive it. We are to tell God what we have done, thought or said that is a violation of his perfect will and we are to ask him to release us from the debt that our sin has placed us in. We are to ask him to not punish us or withhold his blessing from us as would be just but that he would continue to love us and provide for us and take us to live with him in heaven in spite of our sins. What is so important for you to see is what John tells us is the reason that God forgives us. God does not forgive us because we confess. Confession is not the cause of forgiveness. We can see that confession does not earn forgiveness by this simple illustration. Imagine that someone had murdered your family. He was caught, put on trial and found guilty. Then when it came time for the judge to pass sentence the murderer stood before the judge and while weeping real tears of sorrow he told the judge that he was so sorry for what he had done and that he promises to never murder again and he asks to be forgiven. Would it be right for the judge to forgive the murderer because he was truly repentant and wanted to be forgiven? Of course not. Confession doesn't earn forgiveness, it merely expresses the desire to be forgiven. It is the request for forgiveness that is not deserved. If forgiveness is to be given then it depends entirely upon the one who is offended to give it. If you will notice we are told in v. 9 that God forgives us because he is faithful and just. If I owed Shawn Lynes $20,000 and I went to him and told him that there was no way that I could ever repay him the money and asked him to forgive me and he did forgive me, what words would I use to describe what he did for me? I would say that he was kind and merciful and gracious and generous. I would not say that he forgave me because he was faithful and just. Why does John use these two words? What does it mean to say that someone is faithful? It means he or she is true to his or her word. He does what he says. She keeps her promises. What promise has God made to the Christian that would be the reason he would forgive our debt? God has promised the Christian that due to the life and death and resurrection of Jesus that our sins are forgiven. They are forgiven not because I confess but because God has promised to all who believe in Jesus that Jesus' work has satisfied his justice. I want to unpack that thought a little bit in light of our debt analogy. God the Father gave God the Son all that he has. Everything that belongs to the Father belongs to the Son. When the Son of God took on human flesh, when perfect divinity was joined to perfect humanity, he used all that he was given to do exactly and always what God the Father wanted done. Jesus said about himself that he always did the will of the Father. He never invested any of the resources God gave him in anything but the glory of God, the kingdom of God and the will of God. He has no debt, which he must repay, but rather only profits. He increased the glory of God in the universe by investing God’s resources in God’s program. He has an infinite amount of righteousness that deserves to be rewarded with infinite glory in heaven. When a sinner, who is in debt to God, places his faith in Jesus, all the wealth that Jesus has accrued through his obedient life is credited to the account of the believing sinner. His debt is wiped out and his account of righteousness is filled up with the righteousness of Christ. In addition, Christ, by offering himself up to death on the cross was not suffering this death as the just punishment due him for embezzling the funds of God. He is the only human being who did not deserve to die. Rather he offers his death in place of every believing sinner. We should suffer death and hell for the perverse embezzlement that we have engaged in and we continue to engage in. However, God places us in Christ through faith and therefore the death that Jesus died he died in the place of all who trust in him. This is the promise that God has made to every true Christian. Our debt is paid off. We have been given perfect righteousness. Our just punishment due us has been paid. Therefore, because God has promised us that this is the case for us in Christ, he forgives our sins as we confess our sins. We are not adding to forgiveness when we confess, we are merely claiming the forgiveness that is already ours when we confess. Confession is what Christians love to do because God is faithful to forgive. However, John also says we are forgiven because God is just. What does justice have to do with forgiveness? Justice means that we are given what we deserve. How can it be just for God to forgive when what I am telling him is my sin, which only deserves death? God cannot require that we repay our debt, that we suffer the punishment due us for embezzlement because Jesus has already paid our debt and given us his profits and has suffered the punishment due us. It would be unjust for God to punish us, to require we repay our debt since he has already been repaid through the obedient life and death of Christ. If my uncle repays the bank the $150,000 I owe them, it would be unjust for them to collect another $150,000 from me. In fact, it would be unjust for them to require a single dollar from me, as they have been fully satisfied. It is the same in our relationship to God. For everyone who trusts in Christ, it would be unjust for God to not forgive us and give us more credit because we stand before him as those who have had all their debts repaid and have infinite resources for repaying every debt that we may incur in the future through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God is not obligated to forgive us when we ask to be forgiven because of whom we are or how sincere we are. Rather, God is obligated to reward Jesus because he has earned infinite credit through living out a perfectly righteous life and by offering his own perfect life as the satisfaction of the punishment due us for embezzling God’s wealth. God forgives us because he is obligated to honor Christ’s faithful investment of his life. I want to emphasize here that our daily confession does not earn or merit our salvation in any way. We are commanded to continually confess because we daily sin and need to continually depend upon what Christ has done for us. Confession is how Christians deal with their daily sins. Jesus wants us to live in the freedom and joy of his infinite wealth and his suffering our punishment and so he wants us to daily ask God to release us from our debts. We are forgiven from the moment we trust in Christ and we enjoy that forgiveness each day as we confess our sins. Jesus commands us to daily ask God to forgive our sins because...
III. Every person whom God forgives also forgives others. All this would be so simple if it were not for the second thing that Jesus tells us to do when we confess our sins. He wants us, when we ask God to forgive our debts to tell God that we have also forgiven all those who are in our debt. Why does he want us to do this? The first thing we need to see is this: our forgiving others does not cause God to forgive us. After showing that God forgives us because of his faithfulness and his justice, Jesus is not now telling us that he didn't mean it and that the basis upon which he forgives us is our forgiveness of others. I know that when we read vv. 14-15 it sounds as if the ground of God's forgiveness is our forgiveness of others. But that is not the point of what Jesus is saying. First, let me use a simple illustration. Imagine that I owe Shawn Lynes $20,000 and Jeff McCabe owes me $20. Jeff asks me to forgive his debt and I do so. I don't require him to repay the $20. Then I go to Shawn and say to him, "Shawn, I am asking you to forgive the debt I owe you and the reason you must do so is because I forgave Jeff McCabe the $20 he owed me.” Can my forgiveness of Jeff be the just cause of Shawn's forgiving me? Of course not. There has to be a different cause than my forgiving Jeff. Second, the grammatical construction of vv. 14-15 is caused a "condition of fact" statement. What that means is that these two things always go together. It is not telling us how these two things go together, only that they go together. Everyone who is forgiven their debts by God forgives the debts of others. If you do not forgive the debts of others, then that simply shows that you have not been forgiven your debts. Actually, Jesus tells us how these two things, his forgiving our debts and our forgiving the debts of others, are related to each other in Matthew 18. In this passage Jesus first explains what we are to do when someone sins against us. We are to go to our offending brother and to tell him how he has offended us. The purpose of this is so that our brother will ask us to forgive him and we will forgive him and therefore we will be reconciled to each other. In other words, the debt that stood between us will be removed. Well, Peter, as he listens to Jesus and as he thinks about how his life goes, asks a very astute question. He wants to know just how many times do I have to forgive my brother? Peter knows that in a relationship you do not need to forgive just once, but many times. Isn't that why relationships end? “I'm tired of being treated like this. I'm not going to love you anymore and let you keep hurting me like this. I deserve better treatment than this.” Peter, wants to put a limit on how many times he is going to have to go through this. He says he's willing to forgive an offending brother seven times, but after that he doesn't want to have anything to do with him. He wants permission from Jesus to end his relationship with those who sin against him eight or more times. Jesus on the other hand tells Peter that forgiveness is to be given every time it is required to restore a relationship. Then he tells a parable to show the reason that Christians are not stingy about forgiveness. He tells a parable that shows us why we are to keep going to our offending brothers and sisters, showing them how they've offended and then forgiving them so we can be reconciled to one another. He tells them this story. A king called all his servants into the throne room in order to settle accounts with them. One servant comes before him who owes him millions of dollars. He has taken all the money the king has given him to further the work of the kingdom and used them on himself and has nothing with which to repay the king. He has no ability to pay back the debt and so the king commands that he be thrown into debtors prison along with his wife and children, where they can work for the rest of their lives to pay off their debt and experience the punishment due them for squandering their master's resources. The slave begs the king to forgive him and the king does. He lets him go free and keeps him as a servant in his kingdom. Immediately upon his leaving the throne room with this declaration of forgiveness ringing in his ears he spies a fellow slave who owes him $5000. He immediately runs up to him, grabs him around the throat and begins to choke him demanding that he repay the money. His fellow servant asks for more time to repay. However, the forgiven slave refuses to give him more time or to forgive him the debt and has him thrown into the debtor’s prison that he just escaped. When the king finds out what the forgiven slave did he is enraged and has him arrested and thrown into prison to be tortured for the rest of his life. Jesus says this is what will happen to everyone who does not forgive his brother from his heart. The point here is this. If you are forgiven an infinite debt by God then you are going to be the most generous of all people out of your joy at being forgiven. There is an irresistible effect caused by God's forgiveness and that is that we delight to forgive others. These two things always go together. Forgiveness is first of all an attitude I have towards others and then an action I take with others. When someone offends me, whether they intended to do so or not, I am disposed to think the best about them and to not be angry or bitter with them. I want to live in a loving relationship with them. So I have to make a decision. Is this an offense that is going to stand between them and me if it is not resolved? There are many offenses that we simply let love cover over without bringing them up and without withdrawing from our relationship. However, some offenses need to be resolved. How do I decide which offenses I must go to my brother about? The answer is in Matthew 7:1-5. I first need to take the plank out of my own eye so I can see clearly to help my brother with the speck in his eye. In other words, I must view my own sin as a greater problem than what this person has done. If you view the other person’s sin as a bigger problem than your sin, chances are you are judging your brother and not interested in loving your brother. Am I sure that this is a true sin against me or am I simply judging my brother for not being perfect or for not treating me the way I deserve to be treated? If I decide this is a real sin, which will harm my brother and our relationship, if not dealt with, then I go to the person who has offended me and I describe what they did and how it affected me. I do not go to them in order to punish them or in order to defend myself but because I know that we cannot love each other as we ought without resolving this issue. As soon as the brother or sister asks for forgiveness, I offer it to them and then continue to enjoy their company and their friendship. This is what we are supposed to be doing with those who are in our debt. You cannot have loving relationships with others without going through this process on a very regular basis. We should plan on people sinning against us and always be ready to exercise forgiveness. Daily you are being offended and so daily you must release others from their debt to you in such a way that you are able to continue to relate to them in a loving manner. If the other person does not want to confess and ask your forgiveness you cannot force them to have a relationship with you, and you may be forced to withdraw from them. However, you are always ready to restore the relationship because you have forgiven them in your heart and yearn to be restored to them. Jesus commands us to daily ask God to forgive our sins because...
© Copyright
2004 John Swanson. |