Prayers for Forgiveness

Matthew 6:12 “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

The Lord Jesus teaches us that when we pray for forgiveness, we state that we already have forgiven others. Why should we expect someone to treat us fairly when we treat others unfairly? Why should we expect a judge to show us mercy when we don’t show mercy to others? Why should we ask the Lord to forgive us when we don’t forgive others? Are our sins somehow more worthy of forgiveness than theirs?

Not only does this prayer imply that we have already forgiven others when we ask for our own forgiveness, but it uses an interesting word choice of debt in the Greek. Jesus Himself used parables to describe people’s sins as debts that couldn’t be repaid. Why debts? A few ways to look at it is that people will always owe us something. They might have broken something, hurt something, taken something, and as such, they owe us a debt. We could be waiting a long time for someone to repay these debts as they may not know nor have an interest in apologizing or asking for our forgiveness. So we should proactively forgive them understanding that not only did they break something that was ours, steal from us, hurt us, injure our hearts, but we have done the same to other people. We might not know that we have hurt other people or perhaps we do, but we wouldn’t want them harboring unforgiveness against us. We would want them to let it go and be at peace.

Let us forgive others so that we can approach the Lord in prayer humbly and honestly seeking forgiveness. We can ask for forgiveness in sincerity when we are forgiving others in sincerity.