Grace to You Resources
Grace to You - Resource

Let's open our Bibles to Luke chapter 11 and return again to this wonderful, wonderful passage which we have entitled, "Lord, Teach Us to Pray," borrowing the words of a disciple who spoke to Jesus.  And it's good for us to set the prayer in our minds, so let me read verses 1 through 4.

"And it came about that while He was praying in a certain place, after He had finished one of His disciples said to Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.'  And He said to them, 'When you pray, say, “Father, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come.  Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation.”'"




Now we've already talked about the problem, which is sin.  And then last week we talked about the provision, which is available forgiveness, and now we come to this prerequisite.  And what our Lord is saying here is, "Don't expect to be forgiven by God, your Father, if you haven't forgiven others."  This introduces then to this whole subject of being a forgiving person, being a forgiving Christian.  Now remember: The main emphasis of the petition, forgive us our sins, is directed at believers.  This is teaching us how to pray, those of us who are disciples who've already been saved.  We've already been regenerated.  We've already been born again.  We've already been justified.  We've already received eternal life.  We already have all of our sins judicially forgiven. Forensically we have been declared righteous by God because Jesus paid in full the penalty of our sins and we have had the righteousness of God therefore imputed to us.


It is amazing in some sense to me that of all the things that God could have identified as a specific way to short-circuit blessing, He picked this.  There are all kinds of sins we could commit and any and all of those sins...any and all those sins will cut us off from blessing until they're confessed.  It's when we ask for forgiveness that we receive it on that day-to-day basis.  You remember the illustration of Peter, the Lord said to Peter, "You don't need a bath, you had a bath, you just need your feet washed."  Your bath occurred when you were saved, but as you go through the world you accumulate mud and dirt on your feet and regularly and routinely you need to ask Me to keep you clean and to wash you so that you can know the joy of salvation, so that you can have a clean heart, and as David said, a renewed spirit, and get the song back in your life and then will you “show transgressors Your ways,” God's ways, and sinners will be converted.  Then you'll have an impact evangelistically.





Now the Bible talks about forgiveness extensively.  In fact, it gives seventy-five different word pictures of forgiveness, seventy-five different word pictures of forgiveness, seventy-five different analogies.  Let me just give you a few.

To forgive someone is to turn the key, open the cell and let the prisoner out.  To forgive someone is to write across a debt "nothing owed, paid in full."  To forgive someone is to pound the gavel in the court and declare "not guilty."  Biblically, to forgive someone is to shoot an arrow so far it can never be found.  To forgive someone is to take out the garbage and dispose of it, leaving the house smelling fresh and clean.  To forgive someone in the Bible is to loose the anchor and set the ship free to sail.  To forgive is to grant a full pardon to a condemned and sentenced criminal.  To forgive is to loosen a stranglehold on the neck of a wrestling opponent, or an enemy in a war.  To forgive is to sandblast a wall of graffiti, leaving it clean.  Also in the Bible, to forgive is to take a pot and smash it into a thousand pieces so it can never be put back together again.  It is to once and for all destroy the memory of that offense.

This is a marvelous act.  This is a virtuous act.  This is a noble act.  This is a liberating act.  This is a loving act.  This is a sensible act.  Why do you want to become a prisoner to the pain and make the person who inflicted it your jailer?  One writer says this, only the brave know how to forgive.  He's speaking about the nobility of forgiveness.  He says, "It is the most refined and generous element of human virtue to forgive, and only the brave do it."  He said, "Cowards have done good deeds and cowards have performed kind acts on occasion.  Cowards have even fought and conquered when they had to.  But a coward never forgives.  It's not in his nature.  It's not in his heart because the power to forgive flows only from strength and greatness of soul, conscious of its own humility and able to rise above all the little temptations of resenting every fruitless attempt to steal your happiness."  I like that.  I mean, that's prosaic stuff.  I want to be thought of as a noble human being and brave.  I want to rise above the hoi polloi of the proud and self-protective who pick at everybody's accusations and everybody's offenses.  I want to rise above that.  I want to be among the brave, big enough to forgive, conscious of my own humility, never taking any offense against me too seriously because I'm nothing anyway.  And that's good, I like that noble philosophy.




Whenever you pray then, Jesus says, ask for this routine, consistent, experiential, relational cleansing.  No matter what the sin.  There's no... There's no caveat here.  He doesn't say, "Except if you do this, or unless you do this." Whatever the sin is, ask for forgiveness.  And the condition is not that it's a sort of a venial sin instead of a mortal sin, or sort of a insignificant sin instead of a very significant sin.  Now, the caveat is if you forgive others. That's the only condition.   Whatever the sin is, your Father will forgive it.  Is that wonderful to hear?   There is the prerequisite. The one who prays for God's ongoing forgiveness, the believer, the disciple, that's who we're talking about here, who prays for God's ongoing forgiveness must himself or herself be forgiving.  See, unforgiveness is a serious sin. Here it is of all the sins possible to be discussed, it is presented at that sin which blocks forgiveness.

Now just to show you how important this is in this prayer, go back to Matthew chapter 6 where Jesus there even made it a bigger issue.  In Matthew 6 Jesus says in verse 12 in this initial instruction on these lines, Matthew 6:12, He went through the “Our Father, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done and give us our daily bread.”  And then He comes to this same petition, "When you pray, pray in this way, 'Our Father, forgive us our debts,’” opheilēma, because every sin, every hamartia, every missing of the mark is incurring a debt against God.  You owe Him love, you owe Him respect, you owe Him honor. You owe Him worship. You owe Him obedience.  And every sin defrauds God of what He is owed and so you are accumulating a debt to God.  And so, when you ask forgiveness for your sins, in effect you're asking to be forgiven your debt. Only the creditor can forgive the debtor and God will do that.  Verse 12: "As we also have forgiven our debtors."  When people sin against us, it is true, they have violated us, they have defrauded us, they have taken something from us that is not theirs; maybe our good reputation, maybe our physical well-being, our health, maybe our money.  They have a debt but as we forgive that debt, God forgives our debt.


We're not talking about eternal forgiveness here, remember that?  Eternal forgiveness we have in our justification.  That settles the issue of heavenly joy.  This is temporal forgiveness we need in our sanctification that settles the issue of earthly joy.  And, you know, you look at many people who are Christian people and you look at their life and you wonder why they don't have any joy, why they don't seem to have any peace, why they don't have assurance.  They're dry in their spirit, they lack joy, they lack power; they lack usefulness.  They stumble and bumble their way around.  It may well be that they just can't experience joy; they cannot experience peace, not because they don't believe it's available, not because the Holy Spirit doesn't dwell in them, but because they have in their hearts bitterness and an unforgiving attitude.  And so withheld from them are all the blessings of forgiveness, and in their place, all the hardness of disciplining by the hand of the Lord Himself.


An unforgiving Christian is a contradiction.  That is a proud, selfish, and I think weak-memoried Christian who has overestimated his own value and overestimated the importance of any offense against him, and underestimated the grace of God.  If you can't forgive somebody, boy, do you have a short memory.  Jesus was beginning the Sermon on the Mount. He gave what are called the Beatitudes and one of them in verse 7 is this, Matthew 5:7, "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy."  It's the people who give mercy who get mercy.



Now, that might be all we need to say about this verse, but it's not because it opens up for us this whole subject of forgiveness and how important it is.  The most important reason why you do it is right there.  The Lord picked the most important reason.  You do it because if you don't do it, you won't be forgiven.  Boy, that ought to send you out of here running in every direction from the heart to forgive any grudge you're holding against anybody, an ex-wife, an ex-husband, a parent who did this or that to you, a neighbor, a friend, a person at work, whatever.  But there are more reasons and you know me, as I start to think about things like this, the list gets longer and longer and longer.


We've said this, haven't we, throughout this study of verse 4, the greatest need that we have is to be what? Forgiven of our sins.  And therefore the greatest thing that God does to display Himself is to forgive us.  When God introduces Himself in Exodus 34, listen to what He says, "The Lord,” verse 6, “the Lord God,” and this is God speaking, “I am the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness and faithfulness who keeps loving-kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin."  God says, let me introduce Myself: I am compassionate, gracious, patient, loving, faithful and as a result, I forgive iniquity, transgression and sin.  That's who I am. And that sets God apart from every other God in the plethora and the panoply of deities.  There's no such thing as a loving, compassionate, gracious, tender-hearted, merciful, faithful, forgiving deity.  There wasn't any in the Old Testament. There hasn't been any in the human history.  God says, "I'm not like the false gods, I'm compassionate." When God introduces Himself He says, "Let Me show you My loving-kindness, let Me show you My tender mercy, let Me show you My grace, let Me show you My forgiveness."  You are never more like God than when you forgive, never.

Now we would then expect that when God puts Himself on display in the Scripture, He would display Himself as a God of forgiveness.  There is no greater picture than that then a story Jesus told in Luke 15 about the prodigal, remember that?  In the story of the prodigal son, it's really... I wish I could retitle it. Throughout all of church history the title ought to be changed, the title of that story is, “The Forgiving Father.” Forget the son, he's barely worth remembering.  It's the story of the forgiving father. That is the monumental aspect of the story.  The son in the story of Luke 15 was not unlike many sons. In fact he was not unlike all of humanity.  He represents all of lost humanity, all sinners, greedy.  They want to get their hands on everything God has provided and use it wastefully, humanly foolish, giving Himself over to people who exploit Him and ending up in misery when the money runs out.  He's the picture of every sinner, destitute, eating pig slop. Slowly comes to his senses dying of hunger in a pig sty. Pig sty mirrors his life, no future, no hope.  He's at the end of himself, spiritually bankrupt, brokenhearted.  He says to himself: "My father's servants live better than I do.  I'll go back. I'll go back.  I don't expect to be forgiven.  I don't expect to ever be a son again.  I don't expect privilege. I'll just go back and be a slave.  At least I'll have food better than this and shelter."  All he wanted was a roof over his head and food better than pig slop and he started on the road back.

And at that point we see how God forgives.  The father doesn't even wait for him to get there, right?  He sees him coming. What's the next line?  "Far away." And what does he do?  Does he hide?  Boy, I hope he doesn't find me because I don't want to deal with this kid.  No.  He runs to him.  He runs after him and when he finally gets to him, he doesn't say, "Ah, you've come to your senses, did you, buddy?  And what do you think we're going to do about it?"  Throws his arms around his neck, starts kissing him and embracing him.  And all he wants is a shelter and some decent food and the father gets the best ring and the best robe and kills the fatted calf and calls for a celebration and a party, the likes of which nobody has ever experienced.  And that's how God forgives.  It is lavish.  It is instant.  It is complete.  It is rich.  As soon as God sees the sinner start back and knows the attitude — the attitude is of a broken and a contrite heart — and the sinner wants to be back in the father's house. The father runs to him.  This is the lavish forgiveness.  Contrast the other son who had no forgiveness in his heart, who pouted and saw the father as a fool for forgiving his stupid brother.  That's how... That's how false religionists in Judaism saw God because God was that father.

The other brother thought he ought to send the kid back to the pig sty where he belongs.  The forgiveness of God is just overwhelming and that's God.  And that's how God forgives, and you're never more like God than when you forgive like that.  Jesus illustrated it hanging on the cross.  Looks down at the people killing Him, "Father (what?) forgive them.” Forgive them. This is God-like and because it is God-like, it's how we should react to those who have offended us.  Listen to Ephesians 4:32, "Be ye kind to one another,” writes Paul, “be tender-hearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.”  Mirror or reflect the forgiveness of God.  By the way, when Paul wrote that he was in prison.  He had been mistreated, misjudged, unjustly ad hatefully persecuted and imprisoned.  And it is from that vantage point that he says, verse 31, don't be bitter, don't have wrath, don't have anger, don't have slander, just be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving the way your Father forgives.  In Colossians 3, also written from prison, verse 13 Paul says, "Forgive each other. Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you." And again, the standard is, you say you belong to God, then do what God does, forgive the way He forgives.

One other text on this point: Matthew 5, back to that Sermon on the Mount.  In verses 44 and 45, this is specific.  Matthew 5:44, "I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."  This is Jesus saying love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, "in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven."  You will display who it is that you belong to by your forgiveness, by your forgiveness.  So you are a son of your Father in heaven?  Then forgive the way He forgives.

So number one in my little list, strengthening the text here, is that you forgive because you're never more like God than when you forgive.  Number two, you are forbidden not to forgive by the sixth commandment. You are forbidden not to forgive. You are...yes, you are forbidden not... It's a double negative but it works. You are forbidden not to forgive by the sixth commandment.  If you like it better, it is not murder only which is forbidden by the sixth commandment.  You say, "What are you talking about?"  The sixth commandment says, "Thou shalt not kill."  Inherent in that forbidding is the idea that you must forgive.  You say, "Well I don't see that in the text of Exodus 20."  No you don't, but I'll show you where you do see it.  You're in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5; you were looking at verse 44 and 45, go back to verse 21.  And what you have in the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus doing an interpretation and explanation and exposition, if you will, of this commandment.  Verse 21, "You've heard that the ancients were told you shall not commit murder and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.  But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court and whoever shall say to his brother 'raca' shall be guilty before the supreme court.  And whoever shall say 'you fool' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell."  Jesus is saying, you know, you guys really limited the Ten Commandments.  It said you shall not commit murder.  But there was much more behind that than just that statement.  Just like down in verse 27, "You have heard it said you shall not commit adultery, but I'm telling you, if you look on a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery in your heart already."  Jesus is interpreting these commandments to say there's something deeper than just the act, there's the attitude underneath that.  And the rabbis of old, of course, because at the time of Jesus, they were godless, they had a religion, a form of religion without the knowledge of God, and so they couldn't restrain their evil flesh, they might not kill somebody but they were full of hate and animosity and bitterness and they had ways to express it. They were angry. They threw epithets at people like "raca." They called people "fools."  And this was supposed to be OK because they didn't kill.  They took the most narrowing and limited interpretation of those commandments.

Jesus just blew that to ribbons.  He was very, very aware of the prevailing attitudes that they had because they were being directed at Him.  They hated Jesus.  They were angry with Jesus.  They cursed Jesus.  And eventually, sort of wiping their own hands, they had the Romans murder Jesus.  So He says, "You've heard one thing from the ancients, the old rabbis, you shall not commit murder, if you do you'll be liable to the court."  You kill somebody and we'll have to take you to court.  "But I say to you, there's a lot more there than just that. Whoever is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court."  First John 3:15 says, "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer."  If you hate your brother, you're the same as a murderer.  And with that, He swept away all self-righteousness.  With that He unmasked the murderous vice of unforgiveness that wants somebody dead.   If you say to your brother, "raca."  What is that?  I don't know.  It was a four-letter word. That's the best we can say.  I don't... You know, every generation has its curses, doesn't it?  Every generation has its epithets.  Every generation has those words and they usually somewhere in them have a hard consonant, a consonant which allows you to put an emphasis on it.  This was ... This was a common epithet in the ancient Hebrew environment.  It has no modern equivalent, so it's just translated out of the Hebrew, “raca,” a term of abuse, a term of derision, a term of disdain, really the lowest of the low.  When you say that to somebody, you are just giving hate to them.




Well next Sunday we'll cover the six remaining reasons to forgive.


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Unleashing God’s Truth, One Verse at a Time
Since 1969



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