Today's Reading: The Fifth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer
Daily Lectionary: Genesis 44:1-18, 32-34; Mark 12:28-44
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
What does this mean?We pray in this petition that our Father in heaven would not look at our sins, or deny our prayer because of them. We are neither worthy of the things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them, but we ask that He would give them all to us by grace, for we daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment. So we too will sincerely forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against us.
Happy Lent! In the name of Jesus. Amen. It’s hard, so hard to forgive those who sin against us. The things they have done, the evil they have done...it hurts. It hurts a lot.
Before we look at what they have done, what about us? The evil we do, to each other and to other people. We hurt them. We hurt them so much. We despise them. We treat them so terribly. Sometimes, we don’t even know it.
How could the Lord answer our prayers if He counted our sins? How could He love us at all if He didn’t have mercy upon us?
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. His holiness demands blood, a sacrifice, and justice for sins. What could we give up, what could we do, to gain His forgiveness? No amount of “I’m sorry” can possibly cleanse our guilt.
But Jesus fixed our relationship with the Father. In Him, God is no longer our enemy, He is our Father. Despite our sins, despite the unforgivable things we have done, He took upon Himself all our crimes and bore the punishment for our sins. The Father took out all His wrath upon Jesus.
God abandoned Him, and didn’t answer His prayer on the Cross, so that our prayers will always be heard. God hears our prayers, He has mercy on us and is gracious to us solely because of what Jesus did for us on the Cross. “God be merciful to me,” we pray. If He’s merciful to you...shouldn’t you be merciful to that person who did that thing to you? He has forgiven you of your sins, shouldn’t you have mercy on the person who sinned against you. Is that little sin (or big one, for that matter) they did to you as bad as what you did to God?
No, it’s not. So, we pray in this petition that God will enliven us to pass on to those who have sinned against us the forgiveness that He achieved and delivered to us in His gifts. It’s His forgiveness, it’s Jesus’ cross-won forgiveness that we give to others, not our own. Our forgiveness has limits and conditions, His doesn’t.
God be merciful to us. Forgive us. God forgive them, too. God help us forgive them. Happy Lent. In the name of Jesus. Amen.