The Daily Word

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In the ‘so-called’ Lord’s Prayer, I say that because there are many recorded prayers of our Lord, and here we have a perfect blueprint for our own personal prayers. We can repeat and mean the Lord’s Prayer because it has so many truths in it. Requests in it start with ‘give us this day our daily bread’, an essential requirement for our bodily needs, but it is followed by a much more important request, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us”.

As Christians first of all, we should never carry a grudge against our fellow believers, however much we feel we have been wronged. The sentence we see above does not mean that God forgives one sin that we commit as we forgive one sin against us. We should never look on it as a tit for tat action, but Jesus is saying here, in the same way that we have been forgiven, we should forgive.

When we accepted Jesus as our Saviour, God forgave ALL our sin, past, present and future because Jesus paid for it on the cross. So if we have been totally forgiven, then we have likewise to totally forgive those who offend us. That is humanly hard to do, but it is a requirement, and the next Beatitude backs that up. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

The Jewish Law spoke of ‘ an eye for an eye’, and social justice in the days when Jesus spoke these words was anything BUT merciful. Roman justice was swift and brutal. The Pharisees had such a detailed interpretation of the Commandments God gave that there was little chance that a person would not offend in any day. So Jesus was bucking all accepted social behaviour by talking about ‘mercy’. But that again is a requirement for us. We have been shown so much mercy that we should look on other’s offences and seek always to show mercy and forgiveness. Especially if there has been some form/sign of repentance. Remember the ultimate sign of being a Disciple of Jesus, “Herein shall all men know you are my Disciples, if you love one another”. Jesus loves us despite our lack of love towards Him and His mercy is eternal. Love may not conquer everything, but it should enable us to be merciful and forgiving.

Article written by Brian Preston, Elder @SFGH Church 

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