Why Do Christians Pray, “Forgive Us Our Debts”?
Photo by Luis Galvez on Unsplash
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Editor’s note: This is the sixth installment of a series on the Lord’s Prayer, line by line. Rev. Campbell Markham is a Presbyterian minister in Perth, Australia.
“And forgive us our debts.” — Matthew 6:12 (NASB 1977)
At high school I tagged along with some boys lobbing apples into a quadrangle packed with students sitting down for lunch. Such fun.
When the fearsome deputy caught us, I had an old apple in my hand, ready for launch. He paused a moment from the excoriation to address me personally: “Take that pained look off your face.”
I know why he said that. I’d twisted my face into a portrait of aggrieved innocence. “I hadn’t thrown anything!” (Yet.) My honor was as bruised as my apple.
Asking our heavenly Father for forgiveness expresses a heart humbled and broken for sin.
Contrast my wounded self-righteousness with the woman that Luke describes in chapter seven:
And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment. (Luke 7:37)
“A woman of the city, who was a sinner.” Perhaps she had committed adultery or was a prostitute. Luke doesn’t specify so that every sinner might identify with her.
When she heard that Jesus was dining with a prominent Pharisee, she hurried there with an alabaster jar of perfume, a terrifically expensive luxury item.
And standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. (Luke 7:38)
Every line of this exquisite sketch expresses a heart humbled and broken over sin. The woman prostrates herself behind Jesus. She sobs. Her tears wet his feet. She wipes his feet with her hair—his lowest part with her highest part. (Paul called a woman’s hair “her glory” in 1 Corinthians 11:15.) She kisses his feet. She pours the perfume on them—it was perhaps her entire saved wealth.
Every sin we commit is ultimately a sin against God.
Why Jesus? Every sinful thought, word, and deed, though harming those near to us, is ultimately a crime against our Creator. David took Uriah’s wife and ordered his murder, yet confessed to the LORD, “Against you, you only, have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4).
The sinful woman crumpled herself before the Lord, against whom she had ultimately rebelled. Yet, she expressed much more than abjection. We see her love for Jesus welling up from her deepest soul: extravagant, unbridled, and entirely appropriate love.
It was relieved gratitude and love for the one who had forgiven her sin. It was love for him—no doubt she had heard the awesome prophecy of the one who would give himself, out of his personal love for her, to be “pierced for her transgressions” (Isa. 53:5).
She washes and anoints the very feet through which nails will soon be hammered. The victim of her sins chooses to die for her sins.
Look carefully at this woman. She shows us what it means to pray, “Forgive us our debts.”
