Pentecost Week 22 - The Lord’s Prayer Pt. 4
Scripture Reading
*Explain the context: “This week, we will read the next part of Jesus’ model prayer, the Lord’s Prayer.”
Matthew 6:12, 14-15
Big Idea (For Parents)
God’s forgiveness of our unpayable debts to him necessarily transforms us into forgivers ourselves.
Family Reflection
(Read aloud or summarize)
The second manward request of the Lord’s Prayer is that God forgive us our debts to him as we also have forgiven people who owe debts to us. A “debt” is owing somebody something. When a debt is forgiven, the debtor is no longer required to repay that which he owed. Jesus further explained this prayer request a couple of verses later (Matthew 6:14-15) using the language of “trespasses.”
In Israel’s sacrificial system, the “trespass offering” concerned wrongs—or “trespasses”—that were intentionally committed as well as mistreatment of that which belonged to another, whether to God or to another person. These trespasses incurred debts requiring repayment. The “trespass offering” itself was part of the repayment, and for offenses against other people, there was also an additional repayment—commonly the full value of the thing involved in the offense plus one-fifth of its value.
With this background, in the Lord’s Prayer, we here confess that our wrongdoing, especially when it is intentional, creates a debt to God which his justice requires be paid. But we cannot pay it ourselves, for it is impossibly huge! Furthermore, since debts in the bible lead to shame and slavery, we confess that our wrongs make us into powerless debt-slaves under the control of sin and Satan. We therefore plead with God to forgive us. Out of his own riches of grace in Christ, he gladly does so (Ephesians 2:4-5). But since we nevertheless continue at times to commit sins and trespasses, we continue to ask for ongoing forgiveness to continue to enjoy the benefits of Christ’s once-for-all great “trespass offering” for us on the cross.
Finally, in the Lord’s Prayer, we affirm that God’s forgiveness of us necessarily transforms us into forgivers. We pray this rightly only as those ready and eager to forgive others as we have been forgiven.
Discussion Questions
(Choose 1-2. Adjust for age.)
1- When is one time you knew you intentionally did the wrong thing and you needed to be forgiven? How did you respond to the situation? Were you forgiven?
2- When is one time someone else asked you for forgiveness? How did you feel? How did you respond to their request for forgiveness?
3- Because debts lead to slavery, being forgiven our debts empowers us to live freely. But what kind of freedom does God’s forgiveness provide? Is it absolute freedom to do whatever we want all the time without considering what God wants?
Practice—Giving and Receiving Forgiveness
Is there anything right now for which any family members need to confess and ask forgiveness, and to thereby be forgiven? If so, confess and forgive one another now.
If there are no present needs for giving and receiving forgiveness within your family, consider the following. Jesus teaches us to forgive others as we have been forgiven. We are forgiven when we confess and choose to stop sinning (“repent”). So we also must forgive others when they confess and say they have chosen to stop sinning. Sometimes, however, other people are still doing wrong things that hurt us (or the society in which we live) and they have not yet confessed and chosen to stop. Must we forgive them immediately anyway? No, not yet. But we can and should prepare our hearts to gladly forgive them if and when they do. And we should pray that God works in them, in part through us if he wishes, to move them to confess and choose to stop, so that we might gladly forgive them.
Close in prayer asking for God’s continued forgiveness even as you commit to continue to forgive others in like manner.
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