Forgiving Debts, Sins and Trespasses

If you are like me and attend churches of different denominations from time to time, you know to be alert to the recitation of our Lord’s Prayer. The only action line of promise on our part is to forgive the debts, sins or trespasses of others as we ask God to forgive ours. The Catholics, Episcopalians, and Lutherans forgive those who trespass against us, while the Methodists forgive those who sin against us and ask for a like forgiveness. Traditional Presbyterians and Congregationalists tend to favor the forgiveness of debts as they forgive their debtors.

The phraseology of each liturgical practice has support in Scripture. Matthew uses the forgiveness of debts and debtors (Mt. 6:12), a very Jewish notion consistent with the law laid down by Moses (Dt. 15: 1-11). Essential to the community of God’s people was the practice of extinguishing debts every seven years coupled with kindness to the poor. We ask God to forgive our debt to God (sin) which we can never repay, just like we forgive others in accordance with the law. Luke avoids the need for interpretation by replacing the word “debts” with “sins” (Lk. 11:4), but acknowledges that we will forgive only those “indebted” to us. My commentaries don’t make note of this lack of reciprocity. Yet Luke wrote Greek, and the Greek is clear. The words and meaning for sin and debt are quite different. Now it may be that because only God and God’s Son can forgive sin, it is inappropriate for humans to pledge to do so. Modern denominations that use the term sin, provide this reciprocity by a pledge to forgive those who sin against us, thus forgiving the person, not the sin itself. The Catholics, Lutherans and Episcopalians avoid all this messiness by ignoring the text of the Prayer in Matthew and Luke, and instead use the admonition added by the evangelist in Matthew following the Prayer to forgive the trespasses of others so that God will forgive yours (Mt. 6: 14-15).

The only trouble with this language is that a trespass is an unwarranted or unlawful intrusion on the person or property of another. I don’t know about you, but I need a lot more forgiveness from God than my minor sins of trespass. So I think, for me at least, asking God to forgive my sins as I forgive those who sin against me, covers all the bases. And this thought leads to a consideration of the verb “to forgive” as used in these passages of Scripture. How hard is it to forgive? Not as hard as one might think. More on this next week.