Forgive us our sins, as we forgive others

This Sunday we come to an episode in Mark’s Gospel which is all about prayer, and the disciples’ lack thereof. Prayerlessness is an indictment on them, and Jesus gives them gentle correction which sees them grow and mature in their faith upon Christ. Of course, it’s so relieving and helpful for the desperate dad in that scene to rely upon Jesus too. The application for our hearts is so profound, and as people who can admit that we are often wrong and always weak - to admit that we need to rely upon God in everything by prayer is so powerfully helpful for us. We can truly cry out: “I believe, yet help my unbelief!”

In all this time of meditating on God’s word, and shepherding God’s people with the Chief Shepherd’s word of Scripture - it makes me reflect also upon the way in which Jesus taught us to pray, and how we really need to take heed. For as a church we pray the Lord’s Prayer publicly (Matthew 6:9-13, Luke 11:2-4) every month when we have communion in the Lord’s Supper together as a church. What this means is that we pray this line, and we ought to mean it… “forgive us our sins, as we forgive others.”

Here is my pastoral observation, which has much Scriptural support: If we don’t forgive others, we presume upon the gospel of grace for ourselves.

Now, I know that there are questions of complicated relationships and answers of wisdom here, with a whole genre of the Bible dedicated to that end - but for us as a church that is made up of a bunch of different people (as churches should be), then we will need to believe this prayer privately in our hearts. We need to be people who pray the Lord’s prayer publicly with our hearts holding it true, and not just with lips that let the words pass through.

So what will this mean for us, up close and personal?

It will mean that when people sin against us, and especially when they repent - we forgive them.

It will mean that when we disagree with someone in our church, and especially when it’s on a matter of tertiary or even secondary importance - we don’t divide off from them.

It will mean that when someone who is a brother of sister in Christ has a misunderstanding with us - we don’t turn that into multiple reasons to move away.

Rather, because the gospel of grace saves us and reforms us - we show the same measure of grace, love and liberating forgiveness that God by his immeasurable grace has given us in Christ. So that, the very one who gave us this way to pray, we see is the very one who empowers us to believe it by living it out in real time, with real forgiveness for others.

And if we can’t do that, or won’t do that, then we’ve got bigger issues than someone else - and we need to focus on the first clause of that prayer… father, forgive us our sins.”