Forgive Our Debts

Matthew chapter 6, we are going to be looking specifically at verse 12 and 14 through 15.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Somewhere in your life today, in this very moment, there's an empty chair.

Somewhere in your life, there is an empty chair.

Maybe it's the one next to you that you've hoped would be filled by a person that you love, yet week after week, it is empty.

Maybe it's the one at your dinner table.

One that was once filled by someone that you used to call a friend until the relational deficit between you got too large to settle.

This morning we get to watch 11 people take this step of faith, but ultimately be seated at a family table through the forgiveness and reconciliation that only Jesus accomplishes for us.

And the joy of this morning is that there is this family eager and waiting, gathered around them, ready to welcome them home.

But some of us in this room, we still find ourselves standing outside of a table, not really confident that we can sit down quite yet.

We've never fully let ourselves just be seated and rest.

And maybe that's because someone still owes you.

There's a relational debt between you and another that is unpaid.

Or maybe because you yourself aren't convinced that you've paid enough to be able to sit down yet.

You see, Jesus, in teaching his disciples how to pray, he talked about that chair.

So Matthew 6, let's work through it together.

Now we have to remember about the nature of this prayer.

The nature of this prayer is familial, and it's about what life in the kingdom of God looks like lived out.

That's what Jesus is trying to show his disciples through the entire Sermon on the Mount, not absent of this instruction to pray, all of this famous sermon from Christ is what does life in the kingdom actually look like for his people?

You see, it's focused on aligning our hearts to our family identity as it begins with our Father.

That our, right?

That's brothers and sisters who exist inside of the Father's family because of the finished work of Jesus, our elder brother.

And here the prayer in verse 12 seems to kind of take a turn.

Right?

We have this Father, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And so we've moved in this prayer, beginning with the exaltation of God, the glory of his name, declaring his majesty.

And then we're pleading with him, your kingdom come, your will be done, all with this pursuit and desire that heaven would be realized here on earth.

And then we go to this simple petition for our daily provision.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And now we're moving from provision to pardon.

Father, forgive us.

But it's a pardon that reconciles us at a family table.

You see, we have to notice a word here before we really understand the fullness of the prayer.

And it's a simple little word, as, two letters.

A S as.

And there's a lot of work and heavy lifting that this simple word is actually doing.

Because it's not asking God to forgive us as some future point when we finally move to forgive others in our life first.

No, the verb, if you notice it, is past tense.

It speaks to something completed as we have already forgiven.

And so the prayer in its very nature assumes something is already true about your relationship with others around you before it allows you to get to the amen of this prayer.

That you've already released whatever's been owed to you by the person who created a relational debt that has gone unpaid.

That notion of debt cancellation, it might not really land with us, especially in the way that it did with the hearers at Jesus' feet.

You see, we can't just gloss over this.

We have to try to understand the weightiness of it because debt wasn't an abstract concept to these hearers.

It was something that was life-crushing to them.

You see, a bad harvest crop or a Roman tax bill.

It could put a family so drowning in debt that the only way to actually pay it off was to enslave themselves to the one they owe, to be tortured or to be imprisoned so that they could be settled.

And so this is real, life-crushing debt that was present in a threat for the ordinary person listening to Jesus teach.

So when Jesus reaches for that word, debt, to describe our sin, he's not trying to soften it into something that doesn't recognize or address the evil nature of sin.

No, that's not what he's doing.

He's placing this inside a category that his hearers can comprehend, that his hearers have experienced and felt, that his hears might be being crushed underneath in this moment.

You see, it would cost them their life.

If we look at sin, not just in light of verse 12, but of 14 and 15 also, we're gonna notice something that Jesus doesn't even keep the same word as he tries to give commentary on what this section of the prayer means.

Now, if we look at verse 12, it says debts, right?

Like a ledger or an accountant's book.

Verses 14 and 15 say trespasses.

It means a fall or a wrong step off the path.

So there's the same reality, our sin, that Jesus is working to describe in two distinct ways.

Once is something owed, and once is something done.

And so we have to realize Jesus isn't being careless in his words.

Jesus is helping us see the same thing from two different perspectives so that you and I can't reduce it to something overly simplistic, but we actually hold it for the weightiness that it is.

The debt in verse 12, it's inherently relational and economic in nature.

Right?

Speaking of something that's owed, a balance that's due.

It demands something from us, it demands resolution.

There's a debt and it has to be paid.

And that payment's gonna come, that resolution will be accomplished either through our own working to pay it off, or in this pity and mercy and compassion, someone tearing up the note on our behalf.

But there has to be resolution to debt.

The transgression in verse 14 through 15, it's not primarily about what you now owe to another individual, it's about the fact that you've drifted away from someone.

There was a path you were walking along together, and one of you has misstepped, one of you has fallen off, one of you has veered.

That's created a distance relationally between you.

The resolution here is not cancellation of debt, it's restoration of relationship.

Being picked back up in this act of mercy, brought back home to sit in that empty chair at the table of God's family.

That's what he's speaking to.

And Jesus does something here in the passage in this prayer that he does nowhere else as he is instructing his disciples how to pray.

He takes his time to explain it.

Jesus, so gracious.

Every other line in this prayer, he just simply teaches it and he moves on.

But this one, no, he goes the extra length to explain it himself in 14 and 15.

Read it with me if you have it open.

For you, if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, your father will not forgive your trespasses.

So we get two verses of direct commentary, line for line, from Jesus himself.

He knows exactly how easy it is for you and I to read right past this part of the prayer.

And so read carelessly at face value.

What does verses 14 and 15 sound like?

They sound a lot like a transaction.

God, you will forgive me if I forgive others.

It sounds like a transaction.

Forgive them, God will forgive you.

Refuse to forgive, he will not forgive you.

And read that way, this part of the prayer gets removed from its familial context and it enters into a courtroom.

Functionally, it becomes one more law for you and I to satisfy, to be able to earn the forgiveness of God.

One more debt of our own that we have to pay off in the currency exchange of our own forgiveness.

And that's not what Jesus is describing for us.

He's not asking us to earn a verdict or to gain an acquittal in the courtroom of heaven.

That's not what this is about.

He's asking whether we actually have stepped into what a verdict in the courtroom was always meant to drive us toward.

A family.

The family of our Father.

You see, for many of us, we get stuck in this.

Because we realize that a courtroom, it needs something settled.

And it only needs one thing settled.

Is there still a debt remaining that needs to be paid?

And that question between you and God, here's what we have to understand, church, that question was answered at the cross once and for all through pleading by his very blood that was spilled to ransom us and purchase us and cancel the debt we owed against God.

Once and for all, finished.

And so nothing about today's relational deficit that you experience or the shortcomings that have plagued your life reopens that case.

But Jesus' payment of debt didn't stop at the verdict of forgiveness.

You see, we have a tendency to really only view God as judge.

Right?

It's an easy thing for us to think through.

God is judge, and if I satisfy what I owe, I'll be released from the torment and punishment of hell, and I'll be brought into heaven.

The challenge is many of us we we dismiss God relationally as father.

You see, God is fully both.

He is judge and father, but so many of us stay in the courtroom.

You see, we are in Christ.

If you are here this morning and you have put your faith and trust in Jesus, if you exist in Christ, our true and elder brother, we are sinning sons, not delinquent defendants.

And there's a huge difference between those two states.

Sinning sons come back to a father's table.

Delinquent defendants plead their case before a bench.

I really love how Jay Packer makes it so plain for us.

This pastor and theologian who went to be with the Lord just a short while ago, he says this though their daily failures do not overthrow their justification, things will not be right between them and their father till they have said sorry, and asked him to overlook the ways that they have let him down.

This prayer is not talking about your right standing before God.

It's not threatening or jeopardizing your justification that you have in Christ because of his finished work.

What this prayer is talking about is how close are you drawing to the intimacy of the Father's heart, and how close are you drawing to intimacy with your brother.

You see, the Lord's prayer, it's not a courtroom transcript, it's the prayer of a family at the table together.

That's what the very heart of your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, was asking for.

Because heaven is not just a destination we arrive at.

Think about the beauty of heaven.

It is perfect unity, perfect restoration and relationship, perfect, unending, unabounding love for one another, that nothing can sever that or create distance between it or disrupt what perfect harmony and peace that you live in, not just with God, but with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

When you say, let heaven be known and felt and realized on earth, you're asking for relationship that can't be broken because of our sinfulness, but that is so solidified in the economy of grace that nothing can break it.

You're praying for relationship.

Every time forgiveness actually happens between two brothers, that prayer on earth as it is in heaven is being answered in real time for us.

And every time it doesn't, you and I were holding ourselves, or sadly we're holding others around us in a courtroom when we should have been feasting with them at a table.

You see, for many of us, we we remain in the courtroom with unsettled debts.

If we're honest about our relationship with God and with one another, this tends to define it more often than not.

We read this line of the prayer kind of like a legal document.

The way that we would read a legal document is head down, eyes focused on the ink on the paper, checking whether our account is clear, while simultaneously keeping very close track of everyone else who still owes us.

You see, we missed that the moment was never only about the verdict.

It was meant to push us into the family.

And so somewhere off of this page of Matthew 6, there's a family gathered around a table that you and I have been invited to sit at.

But sadly, many of us, we just never lifted our eyes to actually see it.

You see, for some of us in this room, we hold our brothers in court to settle his debts.

We hold our brothers to settle his debts.

Here's what's sad about my heart as I was examining like where I'm at and trying to write this and preach this.

There's many of us, we keep the file open on the person who hurt us.

Right?

We like to gather the evidence to affirm the reasons that we feel the way that we do.

We replay the wrong over and over again as we lay our head down on that pillow at night.

We're anxiously waiting for a payment that will never fully arrive.

Now we often call that justice.

Or maybe if we want to use modern therapeutic language, we call it boundaries.

Or self-respect, or refusing to be a doormat that someone is just able to walk over.

And I want to be clear, sometimes in healthy ways, it is that, but I think more often it's us trying to use this smoke screen to cloud what's really happening in our heart.

Bitterness that we've decided that we're entitled to keep as we replay the ways that we were hurt and wounded.

A chair that we've agreed on in our heart is going to stay empty until the debt gets paid on our terms.

We tell ourselves, we'll forgive them.

Of course we'll forgive them.

When?

When they understand what they've done, when they take responsibility for their actions, when they show up in a certain way, then ultimately what we're saying is we'll forgive them once they earn it.

And so the account does what?

The account stays open, and our hearts stay closed, and we're not living like people in the kingdom of God.

That's the trap.

That's the trap that you and I so easily fall into.

We stand there with our arms crossed, waiting for repayment that was never ours to collect, unsettled in our debt, unsettled in our relationship with the Father, and unsettled in our relationship with one another.

But then there's some of us in this room.

You see, we actually work to settle debts that Christ already settled.

We work to settle debts Christ already settled.

This one appears as something really noble because it at first glance looks like someone who takes sin very seriously.

But there's a problem lying underneath.

You see, we know we're forgiven.

We understand the legal document, we've read the ink on the page.

But if we're honest, we relate to God like a judge.

Like a judge who has reluctantly dismissed our case rather than a father who ran out a dirt road to bring us in.

And so what do we do?

We keep our head down.

We keep working, we keep trying to prove, we try to earn our seat at that table, and we keep this tally, this record, this score of whether we've done enough today to deserve the very peace and relationship that we're supposedly already standing inside of.

And if that's as close as you and I ever get to God, a judge whose bench we stand in front of, distant and dutiful, rather than warm and familial, we should not be surprised when the same coldness shows up in our relationship with others.

When we only know God as judge, we're only going to relate to one another in these distant and dutiful ways.

You see, we forgive our brother the way a judge issues a ruling, the way he declares that you've been acquitted.

Not the way that a family welcomes someone home.

Yeah, the case gets closed, sure, but the house's door never got opened.

And so you stay functionally distant, even though you've convinced yourself there's nothing creating it.

You see, we keep our brother in a courtroom because we've never actually left our own.

But the good news for us, church, is that Jesus has settled our debts to bring us into our Father's family.

You see, Jesus once told this story about a servant.

This servant owed 10,000 talents of debt.

And in this parable, Jesus teaches about how this debt was just ripped up and canceled.

That amount, 10,000 talents, that's more than you or I could ever pay in our lifetime.

It was an impossible debt to satisfy.

And here's what Jesus was showing his disciples and us today.

We're that servant.

We're that servant.

When it comes to the debt that we owe a holy God, it is an amount so great that we could never pay it in this lifetime or in one to come.

So the servant is us.

What we owed God would cost us everything, and even that would have not satisfied.

But Jesus paid it.

Jesus paid that debt, not with some half-hearted apology or some valiant, good-hearted attempt.

No.

Jesus pleading by his own blood as the once and for all payment of what we owed the Father.

You see, that's the beauty of the gospel.

It's the innocent one settling an account that was never his.

It was ours.

Unlike every one of us who have stayed inside the courtroom working on our own cases or trying to rationalize and understand the cases that we hold against others, our elder brother Jesus had no case of his own to settle.

Perfect obedience to the Father.

No debt that was owed.

And what did he do?

He went after ours.

That's what we see at the cross.

Debt canceled, paid in full.

That is the courtroom of heaven.

But it didn't stay at the cross.

Jesus, our elder brother, rose again, leading a company of brothers and sisters behind him.

Where?

Out of the courtroom, into the kingdom, that we might be in the family of God.

See, we need a whole gospel.

We need a whole gospel that just doesn't stay at the cross, but enters us into the kingdom.

You see, this is true familial love.

It's a love that Jesus has for us that's driven by pity and compassion.

And we've allowed that word, especially pity, to lose its weight and substance.

We've cheapened it.

But the gospels use this word for Jesus' movement toward others.

That word, it actually means moved in the gut.

What I think is beautiful about it is it describes something felt before a decision is ever made.

So when it talks about Jesus' pity or God's pity on us, it's a wrenching of the gut, a stirring of the bowels that is felt within him to move on our behalf.

It's the same word that Jesus used for the crowds that he refused to let go home hungry.

And look what movement came from that feeding of the 5,000.

It's the same word that Jesus uses to tell a story about a father who lost a son.

A son who said, I would rather you dead and I have all your stuff than to stay in this house a minute longer.

So the father gave him his inheritance and he ran and squandered it.

And he comes back down this dirt road convinced he can persuade his father to allow him to be a servant in his house, to pay off a debt that he owes.

You know where that gut-wrenching feeling came from?

Not the son who was walking down the dirt road, but the father who got up out of his chair and ran to fall on his neck.

This is not distant, dutiful mercy.

This is a father who couldn't stay seated, who loves you, who would give anything to have you.

And so to the one who's still clenching your brother's account, his debt, in this white-knuckled grip, hear this.

Christ released a debt infinitely larger than the one that you're holding on to.

And to the one of us who's still trying to settle our own account, Christ has already said, it is finished.

It's finished.

And you going back to plead before that bench, it's not humility, it's not taking your sins seriously.

That is outright unbelief.

And it needs to be repented of.

So hear this prayer from a different lens.

Our Father, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Overlook what I owe you.

Bring me close to you.

And please overlook what I've already let go of.

Of what I believe my brother owes me.

You see, that's this prayer.

It's not about right standing, right standing before God, right standing at that bench of a judge that was settled and taken care of by Jesus in full.

This prayer is about right relationship.

Are you trying to sit at that table quiet and distant?

Are you refusing to sit down at all?

The Father loves you.

And heaven itself is brought down so that we can dwell with inside the family he has purchased for us through his son.

Let's pray.