Eld Chew Chong Kiat

Christ taught us to pray only to God our Father in heaven, for ourselves and others, in faith and with the fear of God in our hearts. Our prayers must always be for the glory of God.  

Some of the things Christ taught us to pray for include:  

1. The return of Christ to judge this world of sin and every sinner and the destruction of the kingdom of darkness.  

2. God's will to be done on earth in the lives of God's obedient children, just as it is always done in heaven.  

3. God to provide for our daily needs so that our faith will not be hurt by having too much or too little, and we continue to trust Him.  

In the fifth petition, we pray that God will pardon all our sins for Christ's sake , just as by God's grace, we are able to forgive those who trespass against us.  

We may learn the following lessons:  

1. Free Pardon by God ("Forgive us our debts")

By debts, God means sins. Debts are what we owe and must be repaid. As sinners, we owe a debt to the law we transgressed against and to the justice of God. Our sins are numerous, and we can never repay them. The wages of sin is death, a debt we owe.  

We acknowledge in this petition that we have sinned. Recognising that only God, in Christ Jesus the only Mediator between God and men, can and is willing to forgive, we pray to God for His mercies and pardon. He has said, "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more" (Hebrews 8:12). The wage of sin is death, but Jesus paid the debt on our behalf and made a full restitution before God for our sins by His blood and substitutionary death. Jesus took our sins upon Himself and paid all of it in full when He died on the cross. When a sinner pleads sincerely for forgiveness in Jesus' name, he will obtain mercy from God.  

When believers sin, God has provided an avenue for forgiveness. 1 John 1:9 states, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." We must acknowledge our sins before God and not justify or diminish our guilt in any way. David's cry when his sin was pointed out to him was, "I have sinned against the LORD" (2 Samuel 12:13), and immediately, God declared through His prophet, "The LORD also has put away thy sin; thou shalt not die." Compare this with Saul's responses in 1 Samuel 15:24, 30 when Samuel confronted him for his sins: "I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice... I have sinned: yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel..." (emphasis added). He made excuses and justified his actions. His confession was convenient; he sought not forgiveness but an advantage.  

To confess is to say the same thing about the sin as God would, acknowledging its seriousness and how we have offended God, and to seek His pardon from the heart.  

2. Freely Pardon our Neighbours ("we forgive our debtors")

The phrase “we forgive our debtors” is mentioned not as a form of work to obtain forgiveness. Pardon is based on God's mercies and grace and not on our works. In this prayer, we promise that we will forgive our debtors when they transgress against us. We neither bear hatred towards them nor seek vengeance. We pray for those who have sinned against us that God will pardon them and bring them to repentance. In our hearts, we, too, forgive them and seek reconciliation. We pardon them not because they deserve to be, but because we have been pardoned. We forgive our debtors because God forgave our debts. The parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:21-35 teaches us the incomparable debt that we owe to God. How ungrateful we would be if we did not forgive others their minor trespasses against us when we are forgiven of such great debts. Let the love of God poured liberally into our hearts by God the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5) be employed to love our enemies and those who have sinned against us.  

3. Essential Evidence of Pardon from God ("as")

To pardon others is a command from God. To pardon is a mark of one whom God has pardoned. The inability to forgive someone indicates a heart that is not transformed by the Spirit of God. God is love, and those who love not are not born of God. But when we, by His grace, forgive our debtors from the heart, we have joy in our hearts and assurance that God has granted us forgiveness also. There is no place for bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking, and vengeance in the heart of a child of God. We are to put those off and be clothed with charity, forgiveness, and tenderness of heart for one another (Ephesians 4:31-32).  

Let us pray the fifth petition "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" with understanding. We may be assured that God will forgive our trespasses when we ask in Jesus' name, humbly acknowledging each iniquity when we know them. We must not hide any iniquity from Him who knows all things; we will not prosper. But when we confess and forsake them, we will surely obtain mercy (Proverbs 28:13). Let this grace of pardon flow to our neighbour through us when we pardon them for Jesus' sake. And when we thus do, we may have assurance that we have indeed been pardoned.  

Amen.