"The Lord's Prayer: Forgive Us Our Debts as We Forgive Our Debtors"

Pastor Laura Guy

February 8, 2009

Here's an instant replay of what happened in worship:

We wondered why there are three different words for this line of the Lord's Prayer - debts, trespasses and sins. Which one is the right one? It turns out that they all are. In Matthew and Luke, there are three different Greek words used by Jesus to convey this same meaning. Different denominations have chosen one or the other in their version of the Lord's Prayer to convey what they feel is Jesus' original meaning.
We recognized that the word "debts" is the most difficult to understand because it means a literal monetary debt. Why would Jesus use that word to talk about needing forgiveness? Perhaps Jesus wanted us to stop and ask ourselves, "Are we indebted to God? Is there something we owe God?" We can easily answer "yes" to these questions. We have failed to do and say what God has asked of us, and each of those undone deeds is a debt we owe.
We also realized that Jesus used the topic of debt in one of his most famous parables - the ungrateful servant. In that parable, a king forgave a servant of an enormous debt. But then the servant went out and punished someone who owed him a small debt. Jesus makes it clear that we are expected to forgive others as God has forgiven us.
We wrestled with the idea that God would withhold forgiveness from us if we don't forgive others. We looked at the context of Jesus' teaching. He is teaching the Lord's Prayer to believers, people who are already in a relationship with God. He is not talking about the forgiveness God offers when we surrender our lives to Him. Jesus is talking about the day-to-day forgiveness that we need in order to stay in relationship to God, in order to be drawn closer and closer to the heart of God. We cannot bring our pain and hurt - our unforgiveness - with us because there is no room for it.
We prayed for God's help to forgive as we have been forgiven.
We celebrated communion around the table of love.