Lord’s Prayer: Part 5 Forgive Us

The next line in the Lord’s Prayer is about forgiveness.

Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.

Forgiveness is often seen as the heart of the Christian faith. Modern Christianity, probably through the rise of Protestant Evangelicalism in the 19th Century, has strongly emphasised the element of personal forgiveness over other areas, like corporate salvation, the spiritual disciples and good works.

One thing I notice in the Lord’s Prayer is that the petition is said as a collective, not as an individual. It is us, not I.

This makes we think it was designed to be said corporately, or at least with the awareness that a person is saved as part of the Body of Christ and not as their own individual entity.

We are saved by Christ as a community of believers, not solely by ourselves. A good analogy is the story of Noah’s Ark, where Noah and his family were saved together on one boat. Not on several boats, occupied by a single person. But saved as one group.

Another element of this line is when we ask that God forgive us as we forgive others. We see this mentioned in the parable of the Unmerciful Servant in Matthew 18.

Here a servant is forgiven a debt by his master, but then goes on to persecute someone who owes him money. The master then throws this unmerciful servant into prison.

This parable seems to suggest that unless we forgive others, we won’t be forgiven.

Forgiveness is a spiritual discipline. Like all spiritual disciplines, it helps align us with God’s will. It prepares us to correctly act and live. If we forgive those who sin against us, we are then within a pattern of forgiveness, meaning we can receive God’s pardon for our own sins.

There is a practicality to forgiveness. As we forgive others, then love abounds. A community practicing forgiveness, can help the backslidden and repentant to come back to God.

The Progressive Church has often over emphasised forgiveness, and thereby diminished the role for justice. A sobering phrase I have heard is, ‘Mercy to the criminal is punishment to the victim’.

As sin multiplies, injustices increase in a community. Forgiveness is essential, but so is justice.

‘Why did Jesus die?’ is a common question. If we are in the Protestant Church we might say, He became our sacrifice to appease God. Also known as Penal Substitution, where God punished Christ for our sins. This is a very common understanding of what happened at the Cross. At its extreme, Penal Substitution can lead us to fall into bad theology. I’ve heard preachers who hold an extreme version of this view, suggest the Trinity was shattered at the Cross. This is verging on heresy.

Penal substitution isn’t the only theological model of Christ’s death and resurrection. This is a highly complex area of theology, and so I won’t touch on here. But Penal Substitution is a relatively new idea, whereas the medieval world, and the early Church had different beliefs.

You may want to research them yourself. Here is a list of the different models:

• Random Victory model

• Sacrifice model

• Exemplarist model

There are more contemporary models too, which have been developed over the last few centuries.

I personally take a multi-dimensional view, because I don’t know which is more correct. I believe His death and resurrection cannot be fully understood in this life and even within one lifetime of study. And that the greatest act of love cannot be fully described fully in human terms or even language.

Forgiveness is linked to repentance. Without being willing to submit, the person asking for forgiveness cannot be forgiven. Some say, there is nothing we can’t do in order to be forgiven by God, but there is. Forgiveness is received through submission to God.

Penance, a term unfamiliar in Protestant circles, can help Christians to get their life back on track. It can help break sinful patterns of behaviour and lead us to greater submission to God. It shows the local church community that the person is serious about walking with God and renewing their commitment to the Church.

Another uncomfortable part of Scripture is that all people are judged on their deeds.

Revelation 20 v 12

And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.

Everyone will be judged according to what they’ve done, not on what they’ve believed. Christians may be forgiven through believing in Christ, but there is still justice. And justice must be served.

One analogy is a defendant is judged guilty by a judge, and is fined. The judge then gets out his wallet and pays the fine himself. As with any illustration about the Cross, it isn’t perfect. But it shows that justice was still served, it’s just the judge paid the sanction.

If we are judged on our deeds, then do good works add to our salvation. If we know someone who made a declaration of faith in Christ, but continues to get drunk, engage with sex outside of marriage, abuse others and curse God on a frequent basis. Then we’d say they weren’t very Christian.

If on the other have, they strived to carry out spiritual practices. They attended church regularly, helped the poor and showed love to people in their life, then those good works would show their heart.

We are not saved by our good works, but without them we are not living out the pattern of the Christian life. We are not fulfilling the commands of Christ and submitting to Him. We need to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2 v 12). It is through our repentance and daily submission to God that we are open to receive His forgiveness.

We don’t fully know what the judgement of God will consist of for each of us, but if we do not take the Christian life seriously, then I am unsure whether we can be confident in our salvation. This is why we need to forgive others, because through this pattern, we are forgiven. Though we are not saved because we forgive, but we are saved because we are forgiven.

As we work to forgive those who have, in some cases wounded us so deeply, we know that if we stay in this attitude of forgiveness, then we can confidently trust in Christ. And that Christ will be merciful to us and save us from all our sins.