And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6:12-15
“The mercy of God is beyond description. While He is offering us a model prayer He is teaching us a way of life whereby we can be pleasing in His sight.
But that is not all. In the same prayer He gives us a method for attracting an indulgent and merciful judgment on our lives. He gives us the possibility of ourselves mitigating the sentence hanging over us and of compelling Him to pardon us. What else could He do in the face of our generosity when we ask Him to forgive us as we have forgiven our neighbor?
If we are faithful in this prayer, each of us will ask forgiveness for our own failings after we have forgiven the sins of those who have sinned against us. I mean those who have sinned against us, not only those who have sinned against our Master.
There is, in fact, in some of us a very bad habit. We treat our sins against God, however appalling, with gentle indulgence: but when by contrast it is a matter of sins against ourselves, albeit every tiny ones, we exact reparation with ruthless severity.
Anyone who has not forgiven from the bottom of the heart the brother or sister who has done him [or her] wrong will not only obtain from this prayer his [or her] own condemnation, rather than mercy. It will be his [or her] own action that draws much more severe judgment on himself [or herself], seeing that in effect by these words we are asking God to behave as we have behaved ourselves.”
John Cassian in Conferences 9, 22 (SC54, 59f) in Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World, ed. by Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1994) 351.
The deeper I mine the Lord’s Prayer, the more I discover. It’s a gold mine.
God wants you and I to live generously toward others the way we want Him to act toward us. He’s watching everything. He desires that we abandon our sinful proclivity to treat the shortfalls of others with “ruthless severity” while viewing our own sins with “gentle indulgence.”
So, notice the connection between generosity, forgiveness, and mercy. God is inviting us to show the posture of our hearts toward Him by living mercifully toward others. When we live this way, as Cassian would likely say, God can’t help but extend His abundant kindness toward us.
Notice that generosity toward others (coupled with forgiveness and mercy) comes into view as the avenue for showing God what we believe and how we pray He acts toward us.
As the prayer ends in today’s Scripture above, Jesus is making it clear that our actions seal our forgiveness, not because we earn it, but because they reveal the posture of our hearts. May this be our prayer then today.
Father in Heaven, because of your grace and kindness extended toward us, help us to forgive our debtors (people who owe us things) and help us to forgive those who have sinned against us (including those who have wronged or hurt us in any way, great or small) in a generous and merciful manner. Treat us the same way we treat them. Do this by the power of your Spirit at work in us. Hear our prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen.