The Lord's Prayer, line by line

Forgive Us Our Debts, as We Forgive Our Debtors

Petition 6 of 8 · Matthew 6:12 · The Lord's Prayer

Jesus teaches us to ask for forgiveness, naming our sins honestly as debts we cannot pay, and in the same breath to forgive those who have wronged us. Mercy received and mercy given belong together. The forgiven are called to forgive, not to earn God's pardon but because they have truly tasted it.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.Matthew 6:12 (KJV)

The prayer we most need

Bread keeps the body alive; forgiveness keeps the soul alive. Having taught us to bring our bodily needs to God, Jesus turns at once to our deepest need, to be forgiven. This is the petition no one outgrows. The oldest saint and the newest believer stand on the same ground here, needing mercy every day.

And it is the one petition Jesus stops to underline. When the prayer is finished, he adds a word about this line alone: if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not, neither will your Father forgive you. He knew how tightly we hold our grudges, and how deadly they are to a forgiven heart.

What the words mean

Debts is a searching way to name our sins. A debt is something owed that we cannot repay. It says that in sinning we have not merely made mistakes but have failed to give God and others what we owed them, and have run up an account we can never settle ourselves. It is honest about the weight of what we have done, and honest that we are bankrupt before God, with nothing to offer but a plea for mercy.

Forgive us asks God to cancel the debt, to release us from what we owe, to no longer hold it against us. It is the language of a debt torn up, a record wiped clean. This is what God delights to do, to blot out our transgressions and remember our sins no more, and the prayer teaches us to come and ask for it freshly, every day.

As we forgive our debtors is the hinge, and it is startling. Jesus ties our asking for mercy to our giving of it. He does not mean that we earn God's forgiveness by forgiving others, as though our mercy purchased his. He means that the two cannot be separated, that a heart which has truly received forgiveness will extend it, and a heart that refuses to forgive shows it has not really understood the mercy it claims to want.

Jesus pressed this home with a story of a servant forgiven an unpayable debt by his king, who then went out and seized a fellow servant by the throat over a trifling sum. The point is not that God's mercy is fragile but that unforgiveness in the forgiven is a monstrous contradiction, and it exposes a heart that has not really taken in the size of its own pardon. We forgive because we have been forgiven so much more. The little debts owed to us shrink to nothing beside the mountain of debt God has cancelled for us in Christ.

Why it stands here

It follows daily bread and belongs with it, for we need forgiveness as daily as food. We sin every day and must be pardoned every day. Jesus does not treat forgiveness as a one-time transaction at the start of the Christian life but as a daily bread of its own, sought each morning and each night.

It also comes before the prayer for protection, and the order is wise. We ask to be forgiven for the past before we ask to be kept in the future. A soul unburdened of guilt is far readier to face temptation than one still weighed down by yesterday's failures. Forgiveness clears the ground on which the fight for holiness is fought.

What it teaches about God, and about us

About God it teaches that he is merciful, ready to forgive, a Father who runs to meet the returning child. The whole petition rests on the confidence that God wants to pardon, that his heart is not reluctant but eager, and that no debt we bring is too great for his mercy in Christ.

About us it teaches two things at once. First, that we are sinners who need mercy daily, and that pretending otherwise cuts us off from the very grace we need. Second, that we are debtors who have been forgiven much and are therefore called to forgive. The mercy we have received is meant to flow through us, and when it will not flow out, we may fairly ask whether it has really flowed in. To hold a grudge while begging for pardon is to want from God what we refuse to give.

A common misunderstanding

Some read as we forgive our debtors and conclude that God's forgiveness is a reward we earn by forgiving others. But the gospel is clear that we are forgiven freely, by grace, through Christ, not as wages for our own good behavior. Our forgiving does not buy God's; rather, having been forgiven, we forgive, and if we will not forgive, it reveals that we have not truly grasped or received the mercy shown to us. The condition is not a price but a sign.

Others think that to forgive means to pretend the wrong did not happen, or to feel no more pain, or to force ourselves to trust the untrustworthy. But forgiveness is not denial of the wrong; it is the release of the debt. It is choosing not to hold the offense against the offender, not to nurse revenge, but to hand the account over to God. It can be costly and slow, and it does not always mean the relationship is restored, but it always means we let the debt go.

How to pray this line

Come honestly. Do not pray it in vague generalities but bring your actual sins to God, name them, and ask him to forgive them for Christ's sake. Then believe that he does, for he has promised that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us. Do not leave this line still carrying what God has agreed to take.

Then let the second half search you. As you ask to be forgiven, bring to mind the person you are holding something against, and, in the presence of the mercy you are receiving, begin to release the debt they owe you. If you cannot yet feel it, choose it, and ask God for the grace to mean it. Praying this line rightly will slowly empty your heart of bitterness, because you cannot keep drinking mercy and pouring out poison.

The heart of the gospel here

This petition asks the very thing the cross was for. We could pray forgive us our debts a thousand times, but the debt is real and must be dealt with, not merely overlooked. And it was. On the cross Jesus took the debt we could not pay upon himself, cancelling the record that stood against us, nailing it to his cross. God's forgiveness is not a shrug; it is a purchase, bought with the blood of his Son.

So when we pray forgive us, we are not asking God to lower his standards but to apply to us what Christ has already done. The debt is paid in full, and we are asked only to receive it. And having received such mercy, so vast and so free, how can we clutch the small debts others owe us? The forgiven heart forgives, because it has stood at the cross and seen how much it has been forgiven. That is the gospel in this line: God so pardons us in Christ that we become, at last, a people who can pardon.

The other petitions and more: Our Father which art in heaven · Hallowed be thy name · Thy kingdom come · Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven · Give us this day our daily bread · And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil · For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen · The whole prayer · How to pray · Prayer