The Christ-Born Love For Sinners Who Sin

By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts From Parson Farms:

Forgiveness and the Debt Paid For By the Savior

Good Morning,

This part of the Lord’s Prayer may be the most difficult for us to handle. Mostly because it involves us doing two things we don’t like to do: being vulnerable with God and being open with each other. Admitting we are sinners in need of forgiveness is not something that comes naturally to us as human beings. Our pride and fear of shame often prevent us from receiving the spiritual healing that we need. Adam and Eve hiding in the Garden is the position we often find ourselves assuming, especially when our transgressions find us out. However, just as our LORD does for His first couple He comes to us in mercy and grace and calls us unto Himself, not by ignoring what we have done, but by providing a sacrifice by which the penalty and power of sin is taken away forever.

Here is the joy we deny ourselves when we refuse to be humble before God.

As we consider the gospel and the goodness of His love this morning there is hope to be found in reconciliation, and not just that which exists between us and Jehovah in Christ. There is also an important aspect we need to remember, and that is the way forgiveness brings men and women who are at odds with one another over all kinds of situations, both deserved and undeserved, from being enemies to being friends once more. Here is today’s Q/A from the WLC:

Q. 194. What do we pray for in the fifth petition?

A. In the fifth petition, (which is, Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, ) acknowledging, that we and all others are guilty both of original and actual sin, and thereby become debtors to the justice of God; and that neither we, nor any other creature, can make the least satisfaction for that debt: we pray for ourselves and others, that God of his free grace would, through the obedience and satisfaction of Christ, apprehended and applied by faith, acquit us both from the guilt and punishment of sin, accept us in his Beloved; continue his favour and grace to us, pardon our daily failings, and fill us with peace and joy, in giving us daily more and more assurance of forgiveness; which we are the rather emboldened to ask, and encouraged to expect, when we have this testimony in ourselves, that we from the heart forgive others their offences.

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