34 The Lord’s Prayer: Why Jesus Included Forgiveness (Matthew 6:12-15)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the 34th talk in our series on the Gospel of Matthew, and the fourth out of five talks on the Lord's Prayer. Today we're going to study Matthew chapter 6, verses 12 through 15. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast. Those lecture notes contain an outline of the main points and links to everything mentioned in the talk. You can go there directly by going to the website wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 3 4. While you're there, you can find all previous episodes in this series on the Gospel of Matthew on wednesdayintheword.com and you can find many other series there as well. Thank you so much for listening. We are almost done with our study on the Lord's Prayer from the Gospel of Matthew. We'll have one more next week. Just to review where we are, this prayer falls in the third major section of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus began this third section by saying in Matthew 6 1, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. He then gave three parallel examples, and each of these three is a traditional Jewish religious practice, giving to the poor, praying, and fasting. In each case Jesus describes how the hypocrites perform these practices, and in each case he repeats the statement, Truly I say to you, they have received their reward in full. The hypocrites are hoping that other people will see how religious and pious they are and respond positively and graciously to them. They are not looking for a reward from God, they're looking for the reward of the approval of their peers, and they have that reward in full. In the middle of this section, in his second example, Jesus breaks away to talk more about prayer, and that breakaway includes the Lord's Prayer. Jesus sets up the Lord's Prayer by warning about two very common perversions of prayer. One is using prayer as a tool to gain the worldly approval of others rather than seeking the approval of God. That's what the hypocrites are doing. The other is using prayer as a tool to manipulate God into giving you worldly gain in this life, which is what he says the Gentiles are doing. I have argued that it was common at the time for rabbis to teach their disciples a prayer that encapsulated their main teaching, and that's what we have here. Jesus criticizes the way the hypocrites and the Gentiles approach prayer, then he gives a counterexample, a prayer that models and embodies the right way of thinking about prayer and which then captures his main teaching. I've argued that this prayer is for one thing and one thing only, and that is for God to establish his kingdom. Thy kingdom come is the main point which is echoed in each line, and it is asking God to make us completely righteous once and for all and to establish his kingdom on earth. Each of the petitions in the prayer involves an act of God. The first three focus on God bringing his holiness to the entire world, and the second three focus on God bringing his holiness to his people, to us as individuals. And I have been giving you a wooden literal translation of the prayer to help you step back and think about the meaning and also to see the poetry of it. So my literal translation of the first half is our Father who is in heaven, let it be holy thy name, let it come thy kingdom, let it be done, thy will on earth as it is in heaven. And all of those are praying for one thing, for the kingdom of God to come, for God to bring the day when no one dismisses, rejects, or curses him anymore, and instead everyone recognizes that he is God and He is holy. For God to establish His promised kingdom through the Messiah ruling over all the earth, and to bring that day when all evil is vanquished and this world finally reflects God's commitment to holiness, righteousness, and justice. That's really the request of this prayer. Please bring that. May we see the day when your name is vindicated as holy, when your kingdom is established through the Messiah, and when your will is truly implemented over all the earth. The second three requests focus on God giving his holiness to his people. Give us this day our daily bread, and I argued that that is metaphorically the bread of life. Give us the bread that doesn't run out, the bread of tomorrow, the bread that sustains our souls and not just our physical bodies. Then forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Now last week we looked at the problem of the word translated daily and give us this day our daily bread. The problem is we don't really know what this word daily means and there's a lot of debate over it. I organize that debate into two main different strands of thought, one literal and one metaphorical. Either this request acknowledges that God is the sustainer of life and is asking for literal bread for the provisions of life. That's the literal understanding, or the understanding I opted for, which is more metaphorical, that this is a request for the bread of life, not literal wheat bread, but a request for God to give us the metaphorical bread that will sustain our souls and is what we really need. As I said in the last podcast, both the literal and the metaphorical interpretations have merit. Both make sense in the context, both teach a truth that is taught elsewhere in Scripture, and as I covered in detail in the last podcast, I don't think we have enough evidence at this point to entirely rule one out or the other in. Today I want to look at the next petition of the prayer, and let me read that for you starting in Matthew six nine. Pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. So we're really gonna focus on six twelve, forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. Next week we're gonna come back and talk about what it means for God not to lead us into temptation. So we're gonna look at the surrounding verses about forgiveness today. Luke's version has forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Luke uses the words sins and debtors. Matthew uses the word debt, but then he uses the word trespasses or transgressions in 614 and 15. The authors seem to be using these three words interchangeably sins, debts, and trespasses. Matthew's word typically refers to unfulfilled obligations toward God and our fellow human beings. So that is things that we ought to have done, but we did not. Luke's word typically refers to things that we did that we should not have done. So failing to fulfill what God requires is a debt. Failure to do the right thing or doing the wrong thing is a trespass or a sin. The difference in translation between Matthew and Luke probably results from an Aramaic word that means both. Like English, Greek expresses those ideas with separate words. But Aramaic has one word that expresses both ideas. And that's probably the word Jesus used, which then posed a difficulty for the translators. Now, if we think about it, a debt is something that is owed. It can refer to a financial obligation, but it is often something moral. So I can owe someone money, I can owe someone respect, and I can owe someone an apology. And in all those cases, you could say I have a debt to that person. In English, the word ought is derived from the word owe. I ought to pay you the money I owe. I ought to help you with your chores. I ought to do the right thing. In that last example, it refers to right and wrong without referring to a specific person who is owed something. So I ought to eat better, I ought to stop worrying, I ought to do the right thing. Well, the Greek word group that we've translated debt here has those same nuances. Sometimes it means to owe money, sometimes it talks about how we ought to do what is right. And I think in this context, the sense is forgive those things which we ought to have done but didn't, and forgive us those things which we did but we should not have done, just as we do the same for others. And we could sum all that up as sin. The concept of sin should be very familiar to Christians, but increasingly today, well at least in America, it's a concept increasingly downplayed or banished from Sunday mornings. In response to this idea of sin disappearing from churches today, the late R. C. Spurl wrote a book called Saved From What? Because people didn't realize what they were being saved from. I find the lack of talk about sin on Sunday mornings very perplexing. I suspect the concept of sin comes up in probably every single one of my over 500 podcasts. I would be surprised if it isn't mentioned at least once somewhere along the line in each and every podcast. Because sin is explicit in so many passages of Scripture and it is implied in virtually all the rest. The forgiveness of sin is one of the most central themes in the biblical worldview. It starts from the very beginning of Genesis and runs all the way through the end of Revelation. The entire Bible involves this basic idea. God is our creator and the only source of life and blessing. There's no place else to go that we can find what we truly need. We have all done evil and turned away from God. The only way we will ever find eternal life and blessing is if God chooses to forgive us. That's the story of the Bible. The Bible starts with creation. God creates the world, he creates human beings. Almost immediately the story turns to how human beings rebel against God. We come under His judgment and His wrath. We're expelled from the garden, and we now die and suffer and strive and live in futility and corruption in this life. As a result of our sin, our daily existence is now governed and marked by sin, suffering, and death. And that's part of the judgment of God. We are living under the judgment of God from the day we are born. Unless He is merciful, none of us will find life and blessing. And we could look at hundreds of passages to make this point. Let me just give you a few. God uses Moses to lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt. And what do they do? They turn around and start worshiping a golden calf. And after that event of worshiping the golden calf, Moses returns to the mountain to talk to God, and we find this, this is in Exodus thirty four, verses five through seven, and this is God speaking of himself to Moses. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. Now this is all part of the covenant that God enters into with Israel in response to this terrible idolatry of the golden calf. And even as they face his wrath, God reminds them that he is a God who forgives sins. He says forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. He is also a God who punishes iniquity, and we start to see that it makes a difference whether you're the sort of sinner who is willing to confess and acknowledge that you have done wrong, or you're the sort of sinner who refuses to confess and considers his wrongs justified. We could look at the entire sacrificial system that's centered on the idea of our need for forgiveness. The day of atonement is focused on the forgiveness of sins. On that day the high priest makes an offering for the sins of the people. We could go on and on. This idea of forgiveness of sins is very important to King David. It plays a large role in his story and the Psalms he writes. Let me give you one example. This is Psalm thirty two, starting in verse one. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Sale. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. David is saying, Blessed are you if God forgives your sin, and that forgiveness results from confessing your sins before him. We can go on and look at many, many more Old Testament passages. When we get to the New Testament, and Jesus starts talking about the forgiveness of sins, he is speaking of an idea rich with Old Testament background. It's not a new idea. We cannot find life unless God forgives us our sins, and he won't forgive us unless we come to him and confess that we are sinners who need his mercy. That's a clear picture that emerges from the Old Testament, and Jesus isn't saying anything different. So when Jesus includes in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors, this is not a request like help me find a job or tell me which college to go to. This is a confession. We are confessing that we have done evil and turned away from God. If God is not merciful, we will perish. We are asking for his mercy. The sincere call from the heart for God's mercy is one of the fundamental marks of a believer. It is not at all surprising that Jesus would include it in his model prayer. What is perhaps surprising is the second part. Jesus is so emphatic about this connection between being forgiven and forgiving that after the prayer is over, he continues talking about the issue. Interestingly, these words about forgiveness are the only part of the prayer that he comments on afterward. It would have been nice if he'd explained what he meant by daily bread, but he doesn't. He lets the rest of the prayer stand on its own, and the only thing he expands on is this connection between being forgiven and forgiving others. Look at Matthew six, fourteen and fifteen again. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. You'll remember, if you've been listening to this series, that this is not the first time in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus has talked about this connection between forgiving and being forgiven. In the Beatitudes we talked about how forgiveness is an integral part of saving faith. And if you want to review that, just listen to my podcast on Matthew 5 7. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. This concept comes up in the rest of Jesus' teaching, and it shows up in some significant places in his teaching. For example, this is Mark 11 25, and whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. Jesus gives what I think is his most complete teaching on this connection between being a forgiving person and being forgiven yourself in the parable of the unforgiving servant, which is in Matthew 18. In this parable, a servant owes his master a great debt. The debt is so large he has no hope of paying it back. And at first the master is willing to forgive the servant his debt. But then when the master learns that the servant is unwilling to forgive someone else a much, much smaller debt, the master changes his mind and refuses to forgive the servant. Jesus ends the parable this way, this is Matthew eighteen, thirty two through thirty five. Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me, and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in his anger the master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Well that's very sobering language. Just as the master in the story lacked mercy, so God will be unmerciful to us if we do not forgive our brothers and sisters from our hearts. The New Testament continues this same theme. We see it in Paul's letters, this is Ephesians four thirty two. Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. And Colossians three twelve, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And James says in two hundred thirteen, for judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Well that's pretty stark and sobering language. Now we've talked about this concept before in the Beatitudes, but finding this idea in the prayer raises at least three questions that I want to try to answer. First, why are these ideas connected? How can our salvation be dependent on whether or not we forgive others? Is this some kind of exception to the saved by faith alone rule? So faith plus the This one work of forgiveness. Second, why would Jesus include this idea in the Lord's Prayer? What does that tell us about how we should pray? And then third, what does this look like in real life? What does it mean in practical terms to forgive those who sin against us? Well, to answer those questions, I want to take a little closer look at the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew eighteen. Now I do have a podcast on this parable, which I'll link to in the lecture notes. The podcast covers the parable in much more detail, and you can find that on wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew three four. I'm going to read Matthew eighteen verses twenty one through thirty five. Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him, as many as seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy seven times. Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children, and all that he had and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will pay you. He refused, and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me, and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. The servant had what ought to have been a life changing experience. He owed an impossible debt to his master. He owed so much that it was mathematically impossible for him to ever repay it. The servant asks the master to have patience with him until he can repay, but the servant is really saying that only out of desperation because he has no realistic hope of ever paying off this debt. The result of this debt is that the servant stood to lose everything, including his wife, his children, and all his property, and there is nothing he can do about it. He owes the money, he can't pay it back. Yet the master did much more than the servant asked. The master didn't give him extra time to pay the money back, the master forgave the entire debt, and that's a miracle. This life destroying, crushing burden has been lifted from the servant because of the compassionate mercy of the master. And the master lost a huge amount of money in the deal, but he did it out of compassion for his servant. If anyone in the world should understand how precious mercy is, it is this servant. Yet what does he do? He turns around and refuses to forgive a relatively small debt that his friend owes him. The master is outraged that the servant does not seem to understand or value the gift that the master gave him, so the master revokes his mercy and demands payment of the debt. The servant is involved in these two situations that are mirror images of each other. The servant owes money to the master and a friend owes money to the servant. Yet the servant doesn't seem willing to acknowledge the similarity between those two situations. When he looks at his friend, he does not see someone in the same situation as himself. That pleading look in his friend's eyes should have reminded him of his own pleading before the master, but it doesn't. And how can that be? How can he have forgotten the incredible gift that his master gave him? And that's basically what the master asks in 1833. Shouldn't you have done for him what I did for you? You owed a terrible debt and I forgave you. This friend owed you a minuscule amount which he could easily have repaid with a little patience. Because of my mercy, your life was restored to you. Why didn't that mean anything to you? Why would you turn around and demand payment from your friend? If you think it's beneath you to forgive people who owe you money, well okay, the debt stands, pay me everything. Now when we read this parable, at first we're outraged by the servant. How can he be so cruel and callous? But a week later, it doesn't seem so unreasonable. The sad fact is all of us are tempted to live by the same double standard. We are all in favor of mercy when we are the ones who need it. But when we're the ones who need to give mercy, then we often change our tune. We want our friends to show us mercy when we have done them wrong, but when our friends do us wrong, our first reaction is we want an apology and we want justice. Because in both cases, what we're really interested in is how does this benefit me? When I owe you, I want you to be merciful. When you owe me, I want you to pay me everything back. Because in both cases I want the outcome that is to my benefit. In one sense then the servant's actions are very understandable, but in another sense we recognize how terribly he's acted. And what clues us into that is the exaggerated scale of the debt he owes versus the tiny amount that is owed to him. If the servant were at all honest, he would see the problem too. His debt was huge, vast and immense. He stood to lose everything, and there was nothing he could do about it. Yet he was saved by the generous and merciful compassion of his master. He should be staggered by the value and the beauty of mercy as he personally has experienced it in the way his master dealt with him. When his friend approaches him with this minuscule debt, at this point in the servant's life mercy should be more precious to him than gold and silver. The thing that should be on his mind and in his thoughts and on his heart is the value and beauty of mercy as he has just experienced it. Now that puts us in a position to answer my three questions. First, how could our salvation be dependent on whether or not we forgive others? Well, as we talked about with the Beatitudes, part of saving faith is recognizing that I am a sinner. Part of saving faith is recognizing that God owes me nothing, I have done nothing that requires Him to forgive me, and I will only be forgiven because of the blood of Christ and God's mercy and grace. Our sin is equivalent to the servant's debt. We are guilty before a holy God and there is nothing we can do about it by ourselves. We stand to lose everything unless God is merciful to us. That is a true fact of the universe, whether you believe it or not. We have earned God's wrath and there is nothing we can do to escape it. Yet we have been forgiven because of the blood of Jesus Christ and the generous and merciful compassion of God. We should be staggered by the power and the value and the beauty of mercy as proclaimed to us on the cross. How much bigger can it get? We deserve destruction and condemnation and we are being granted eternal life instead. God is overlooking what I deserve and giving me the very best possible thing in the entire universe. And that's what the gospel is all about. To believers, this idea of sin is not theoretical and it's not hypothetical. We know it's true. We live it every day. To believers, the concept of mercy is not theoretical either. We are staking our eternal souls on it. God in His mercy and grace has given us the eyes to see and embrace this truth. The longer we live, the more we understand how much we need God's mercy and how sweet the promise of eternal life is. We ought to be impressed by the power and the value and the beauty of mercy because we have been forgiven an incredibly immense debt. When it comes to living my life, mercy ought to increasingly become more important to me than gold and silver and holding a grudge. We grow in our understanding of the value of mercy and compassion and we grow in our willingness to show it to others. Yes, the process is messy. We've all been put in situations where it's difficult for us to forgive. Forgiveness does not mean that we sweep evil under the rug. Evil is still evil, wrong is still wrong, but we are learning the overwhelming value of mercy. We will not consistently, perfectly, or courageously always show mercy in every situation. We're going to fail and stumble along the way. But as we grow in faith, we grow in how much we value mercy and how willing we are to be merciful. Now, as I said, the process can be messy, but over time and through the work of the Holy Spirit, God's compassion inspires us to be compassionate ourselves. The connection between forgiving and being forgiven then is that once we realize how sinful we are and how exceedingly valuable God's mercy and compassion are, that teaches me the value of mercy so that I can be compassionate and merciful to others. Once I realize just how deeply I am indebted to God's grace and how dependent I am on His mercy, I realize I have no right to condemn someone else for what they've done to me. After all, what sin could anyone else commit that I haven't done or wouldn't do myself given half the chance? In other words, I can't really be a person who is poor in spirit and mourning over my sins if I look at other sinners and think that somehow I'm better than they are. I deserve something they don't. Well, how can I think that I deserve mercy in a way that they do not? If I refuse to forgive, it suggests that I have not yet understood my own sinfulness, and that's an integral part of saving faith. Second, then, why would Jesus include this idea in the Lord's Prayer? What does this tell us about how we should pray? I think the easiest way to answer that question is to imagine that Jesus had not included the second half of this verse. Imagine that the prayer went, give us our daily bread, forgive us our debts, and lead us not into temptation. Or imagine the parable of the unforgiving servant where it ended early and did not include the second part. Suppose the parable ends with the master forgiving the servant and that's the end of the story. Well, what have we learned about the servant in that story if it ended early? We haven't really learned anything. We might assume he was grateful, we might assume he understood the reality of his situation, but we wouldn't really know for sure. It's only when the servant encounters the situation of forgiving someone else that we learn something about his character. When he's put in the situation of being the one who must grant forgiveness, we learn that the servant does not really understand the gift he's been given. We see that he has not learned or understood the value of mercy at all. He's still thinking in terms of what's going to benefit me. Likewise, we could imagine people praying forgive us our sins who haven't yet really learned the depth of their own sins. They could pray this prayer without understanding what it means or what they're really asking for. The most self righteous Pharisee of the day could agree and say, yeah, we should all pray for the forgiveness of sins, not that I have any worth mentioning as a good Pharisee, but you know, it's still a good thing to pray about. And after all those tax gatherers and prostitutes, they need to learn a thing or two about sin. How would we know what the Pharisee meant by praying for the forgiveness of sins? Like the servant in the parable, we don't really have a clue what's on his heart until he faces a situation where he's asked to show mercy. By including this language, forgive us our sins as we forgive others, I think Jesus is confronting us with the issue of what we really mean by such a prayer. He's telling us, reminding us, you know that sense of betrayal and hurt you feel when someone sins against you? You know how you quite rightfully feel the full force of their evil and it hits you in the gut like this was wrong, this was bad. You should have that same reaction when you're the one committing the evil or doing wrong. In fact, that person's sins against you are minuscule when compared with your sins against God. When you pray for forgiveness, I want you to look into the eyes of those who have sinned against you, and I want you to think, yes, my sins are just like that. I need mercy just as they need mercy. I know how beautiful the mercy of God is, and I know that other person needs mercy as well. I am in no position to demand justice from them. So if we pray for forgiveness and we think about how it includes forgiving others, it forces us to confront the reality of our own situation, of our own sinfulness and our own need for forgiveness and how much God has forgiven. So it forces us to truly grasp the depth of our own sin and the value of the mercy that God has shown us. Third, what does this look like in real life? What does it mean in practical terms to forgive those who sin against us? Well, we're asking God to forgive us as we forgive others. So let's think about what it means for God to forgive us. It means that in spite of our sins, we retain his goodwill. It means that in spite of our sins, he acts to bring about good things for us. That's basically what it looks like when we forgive others. It looks like loving our neighbors as ourselves. Now we have already answered this question many times as we've studied this sermon. Like the rest of this sermon, or much of the rest of it, I think this too finds its roots in Leviticus 19. Love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus has drawn on this principle throughout the sermon. Loving our neighbor is acting to bring about good things for our neighbor. This has both internal and external aspects. Likewise, forgiving those who sin against us has both internal and external aspects. We forgive them internally by not hating them, not rejecting them, and not condemning them. We pray for them and we seek in our hearts what is good for them. Externally, we forgive them by acting toward them in a way that seeks their good in spite of how they've treated us. As we've talked about several times over these podcasts, it's not always easy to decide how to respond in a specific situation where someone is treating you badly. It can be very difficult to sort out how to forgive a specific person in a specific situation. But you might loan it to a friend who's unemployed. It can be really complicated to figure out what love looks like in any given situation. While it's easy to make mistakes in practice, the principle is clear. We are not to hate someone just because they hate us or mistreat us. We are to pray for them and act for their good. Let me try to summarize this then to close us out. Believers must come to terms with the fundamental truth. We are sinners. When I look at someone who has sinned against me, am I willing to see someone just like me? Am I willing to acknowledge that I have sinned just as much as the person who wronged me? Am I willing to admit that I myself am a sinner? I myself need God to be merciful to me just as this person needs me to be merciful to them. One day we will stand before our Creator, and we will deserve condemnation and eternal death because of our sin. What we need most is for God to forgive us and rescue us from our sin. That's what the kingdom of God is all about. The kingdom of God begins when God sends His Messiah to establish His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. This prayer is a request for God to make us holy and to free us from all sin. The first three requests have to do with God establishing His holiness over all the world and over all creation. The last three are a request for God to make me the believer holy. The Beatitudes taught us the four convictions of saving faith, knowing that I am sinful, longing to be made holy, knowing I am unworthy of God's blessing and He owes me nothing, and trusting that God will forgive me and save me because of the blood of Jesus Christ. As these convictions grow in believers, then believers will come to feel compassion for other sinners and show them the same mercy that they have received. And this is a request for that very thing to happen. Father, forgive me, for I am a sinner, and make me the kind of person who can forgive others. Thank you for listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. This is the podcast that explains not only what a passage of scripture means, but also seeks to show you how to figure it out. You can hear all previous episodes in this series on my website, WednesdayInTheWord.com. There is no charge, no spam, no requests for donations, and no advertisements. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a positive rating and a written review wherever you listen. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and my favorite musician, Reggie Coates of heartfeltmusic.org. You can listen to more music from Reggie at heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Morana, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.