01.08. Forgive Debts, also have Forgiven

Chapter VIII. Forgive us our Debts as we also have forgiven our debtors

THERE is no better means of distinguishing true religion from false, than by ascertaining whether its desire is to be redeemed from sin, or to be merely let off from punishment of sin. False religion is everywhere occupied in persuading its God, by means of intercessors or expiatory sacrifices or prayers, to let it off the punishment to which its sins have laid it open. True religion is never occupied with the thought of punishment. Indeed, it recognizes that it is better to be punished when we have done wrong.

What it asks is to be rid of the sin itself, its pollution, its guilt, and its power. Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. That is always its cry, and the response is always, I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: a new heart will I give you, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. This being so, we are pulled up short by this petition in the Lord’s Prayer, because at first sight it seems to express just the view of sin which falls short of the truth. It represents the sinner as a debtor who asks to be let off his debts, which, as we know very well, from common experience, is just the request which has least moral reality about it, and involves least moral effort.

We may think of sin, first of all, as the taint, or flaw, or weakness in bur own nature. Considered from this point of view, like the disease or weakness of the body, it cries out for nothing else except actual healing, it admits of no other remedy than that we should again be made whole and strong and full of life. There is no possibility here of our dreaming of being let off without being changed. We can no more be let off our sins than a diseased heart or a defiled blood can be ignored or overlooked. Sins must be healed, and probably by painful remedies.

Secondly, we may think about sin as an offence against our fellow-men. Selfishness, lust, cruelty, in justice, malice, dishonesty, are wrongs against society, and society is quite right in utterly repudiating any idea of forgiving us these things unless we amend and show a disposition to practise the contrary virtues, and make what reparation lies in our power for the wrong that we have done our fellow-men. There ought to be no social forgiveness, except where signs are shown of a new recognition of social duty.

Thirdly, we may regard sin as an offence against God. The character of sin in this relationship is best under stood by the wrong which a lawless, rebellious, ungrateful son does to the heart of his father and mother. The hearts of the parents will yearn over their son in any case, but they cannot be satisfied with anything less than some sign of amendment. They will not love him the less for all his outrages. But he cannot come back into the fellowship of home-life (except in a purely external way) unless he shows a change of heart; that is, sorrow for the wrong he has done and the grief he has caused, the sort of sorrow that means amendment for the future a frank recognition of the laws of home, a loyal obedience to the righteous will which rules there. Looking at sin in these ways, we must pray, Heal our inward diseases, or, Give us a new heart, or, Grant us true conversion of spirit. But sin may also be regarded from a point of view which, in the simplest sense, we may call legal. When a man outrages another’s rights, or fails to give him what is his due, society holds him guilty; regards him as under an obligation to restore or to make reparation. And this attitude towards wrong-doing is a reflection of the mind of God. Sin is an outrage upon God’s rights it makes us a debtor; and the debt we can never pay, because we cannot undo the wrong that we have done. Thus, as sin is a debt, the only prayer we can pray is that it shall be remitted: let us off ow debt. Are we to say that this is a shallow prayer?

Or, occurring as it does in the Lord’s Prayer, must we not alter the question, and ask, Why is this not a shallow prayer? I would answer this question thus, 1. The petition is guarded by the place it holds in the whole. We most naturally put confession of sins and prayer for forgiveness at the beginning of ser vices, but it is very noticeable that in the Lord’s Prayer it comes at the end, and to pray the previous clauses of the prayer ensures in the heart of him who offers it everything that is most opposed to a shallow view of forgiveness. No one who has not a changed heart and a new spirit, no one who has not the generosity and nobility of true sonship, can possibly pray that God’s name may be hallowed, and His kingdom come, and His will be done.

2. The clause is guarded by what follows it As we have forgiven our debtors. God deals with us as we deal with our fellow-men. There is no possibility, therefore, of this prayer allowing any one to suppose that he can get God to let him off the punishment of his sins and live in the divine favour, while he remains selfish and ungenerous towards his fellow-men.

There is no mere insistence upon our rights towards our fellow-men possible, so long as we retain the hope that God is not going to insist on His legal rights towards us. It is only merciful men who can be forgiven.

3. It is evident from all our Lord’s teaching in what sense He would have His disciples pray to have their offences forgiven. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, that is, whom the Lord loveth He punisheth. So God is recorded by the Psalmist to have dealt with His saints of old. Thou answerest them, Lord our God; thou art a God that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their doings/ l So it was with Moses and Aaron among his priests. Truly whom the Lord loveth He punisheth. Christ Himself, so far from being exempted from the punishment of human sins, even though the sins were not His own, was conspicuous just for this, that the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all, that is, suffered Him to bear the consequences of other men’s sins.

There are, we may say, two kinds of punishment for sin. There is the eternal penalty which consists in alienation from God, and that is over when the sinful attitude is over. But there is also the temporal punishment which in the course of nature is so allotted to sin as to follow naturally from it; and when we are forgiven, that becomes the healing chastisement which the penitent heart awaits, with trembling indeed but also with joy. To have our debts remitted then does not mean to be let off all the temporal chastisement due to our sins, but to have in our hearts the

1 Psalms 99:8. consciousness that God has nothing against us that as He has given us a changed heart, so He has no more in mind the outrages against His majesty and His love of which in the past we have been guilty.

4. To confess the wrongs we have done to the righteousness of God, to own that we cannot undo the past, and then simply to receive of God’s undeserved mercy free forgiveness this is what lays the heart of man under a special sense of gratitude. There is no joyfulness or willingness of service more glad than that of the child who has done wrong and been sorry for it and has been forgiven, and experiences all the rebound of gratitude and love. So the absolved sinner experiences the gratitude of the emancipated heart, emancipated by the simple act of the divine bounty, and the gratitude can show itself in nothing but service.

5. Forgive us our sins. There is no forgiveness for ourselves unless we are solicitous that others may be forgiven too. St. John talks about the Christian when he sees a brother sin a sin not unto death, asking God for him and thus obtaining for him the bounty of a fresh gift of spiritual life. 1 Such free interchange of spiritual gifts from brother to brother is not possible where the sin is most grievous where it is the sin unto death; but where it is, as we say,

1 John 5:16. a venial sin, there the continual saying of the Lord’s Prayer is the winning of a continual and free remission, as for our sins so for the sins of others. Would to God that before we criticize any one of our fellows or our superiors we would say this prayer for him and for ourselves, Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.

Once for all the sacrifice of Christ won for men acceptance with God and forgiveness of their sins.

Into that mystery we will not inquire. But we believe that we are admitted within the scope of that forgiveness when we become members of the body of Christ.

Out of that holy fellowship we may indeed, by our persistent wilfulness, fall. But so long as we abide in it, we bask altogether in the sunshine of the for giving love, as a child under the face of his father and his mother, and if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.