Latest / Reformed Thinking / Forgiven Debtors: Living as Forgiven Forgivers (Matthew 6:12)

Transcript

Forgiven Debtors: Living as Forgiven Forgivers (Matthew 6:12) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
• 0:01
  This is the deep dive where we take a stack of sources and try
• 0:05
  to get to the heart of an issue quickly and thoroughly.
• 0:09
  And today we are looking at just a few words, really, from the
• 0:12
  Lord's Prayer. Just 7 words.
• 0:14
  Actually it's Matthew 6.12. The verse that sits right in the
• 0:17
  middle of Jesus's instruction on how to pray the line is forgive
• 0:21
  us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.
• 0:24
  And right there, that's the stumbling block, isn't it?
• 0:26
  It's a point of confusion for so many people who are trying to
• 0:29
  really understand the doctrine of grace.
• 0:32
  It is because if we as believers are justified by grace alone in
• 0:37
  Christ, if that's a once for all legal act where our entire debt
• 0:41
  is paid past, present, future, why does Jesus Himself tell us
• 0:45
  to wake up every morning and ask God to forgive us all over
• 0:48
  again? It seems to create a kind of
• 0:50
  instability, a shakiness in our salvation that the rest of the
• 0:53
  gospel says isn't there. Exactly.
• 0:55
  But that tension you see, it isn't a flaw in the prayer.
• 0:58
  It's actually the whole point. It's designed by Christ to keep
• 1:02
  us humble, to keep us dependent. So our mission today is to get
• 1:06
  past that surface level reading. We need to unpack the doctrinal
• 1:10
  distinctions here. Right.
• 1:11
  We need to distinguish between our legal standing with God and
• 1:15
  our daily, moment by moment relational experience with Him.
• 1:18
  And in doing that, we can grasp this really searching, God
• 1:22
  centered picture of the Christian life that's packed
• 1:24
  into this one verse. So we'll look at the context,
• 1:27
  the specific language Jesus uses, and that non negotiable
• 1:31
  link he makes between getting mercy from God and giving it to
• 1:35
  other people. OK, so let's start with the
• 1:37
  context. To understand this verse, we
• 1:39
  have to ground it in its immediate setting, which is the
• 1:41
  Sermon on the Mount, and it comes right after Jesus warns
• 1:44
  about how not to pray. Yes, that placement is so
• 1:47
  telling. The Lord's Prayer is given first
• 1:50
  and foremost as a corrective. It's a pattern for sincere
• 1:54
  prayer that stands against two flawed extremes that were common
• 1:57
  in that culture. And the first extreme is pretty
• 1:59
  obvious. It's the hypocrisy of the
• 2:01
  Pharisees. Their prayers were performances.
• 2:04
  They were staged rituals on street corners, in synagogues,
• 2:07
  all designed to be seen and praised by others.
• 2:10
  They wanted human validation it. Was a religious advertising
• 2:13
  really. They were trying to build a
• 2:14
  reputation for being holy. The focus was always outward on
• 2:18
  the audience instead of upward toward their father.
• 2:21
  So the Lord's Prayer is the opposite of that.
• 2:23
  It models a quiet, sincere, secret conversation that is only
• 2:28
  about the object of worship. Right.
• 2:29
  And what was the second group? Jesus corrected.
• 2:32
  That was the Gentile approach, the tendency to just heap up
• 2:35
  empty phrases. Mechanical repetition.
• 2:37
  Yeah, as if the gods were, you know, hard of hearing and you
• 2:40
  needed a special magic formula or just sheer volume to get
• 2:44
  their attention. It was kind of mechanical
• 2:46
  religion. It believed that the force of
• 2:48
  the words themselves or the right sequence could almost
• 2:51
  compel God to act. There was no heart in it.
• 2:54
  So the Lord's Prayer is this radical middle path between
• 2:58
  performance and monotony. It's sincere, it's direct, and
• 3:01
  it models a life lived quorum dio before the face of God.
• 3:05
  You're addressing him as Father. It's an intimate pattern, not a
• 3:09
  script or a formula. It just resets the whole
• 3:12
  standard for prayer. It demands that the worshipper
• 3:14
  is actually in a relationship where they admit their
• 3:17
  dependence and they put God's glory first.
• 3:20
  And that's what's so striking about the structure of the
• 3:22
  prayer itself. It's a simple God centered
• 3:24
  model. And it shows that true Christian
• 3:27
  prayer isn't just a list of things we want.
• 3:29
  It's about aligning ourselves with what God wants first.
• 3:33
  The structure itself teaches theology, doesn't it?
• 3:35
  It absolutely does. The prayer begins vertically.
• 3:37
  It's focused completely on God's honor, His goals, His will,
• 3:42
  before it ever moves horizontally to our own needs
• 3:44
  here on earth. So those first 3 petitions are
• 3:47
  entirely God Word. We start with Hallard.
• 3:49
  Be your. Prioritizing his reputation, His
• 3:52
  Holiness everywhere. Then your Kingdom come, we're
• 3:55
  submitting to his rule, asking for his governance to advance in
• 3:58
  the world and in US. And finally, your will be done,
• 4:02
  which is about accepting His purposes, even the hard ones,
• 4:05
  and asking to be conformed to His plan.
• 4:07
  This sequence forces the disciple to seek his honor.
• 4:10
  Above all. We have to acknowledge His
• 4:12
  Lordship first. We put His agenda ahead of our
• 4:15
  bodily needs, our moral failures, our spiritual dangers.
• 4:19
  It's a check against selfishness in our piety.
• 4:22
  I mean, imagine if the prayer started with deliver us from
• 4:25
  evil. That would mean our safety is
• 4:27
  the highest good. Right.
• 4:29
  But by starting with God's hallowing his Kingdom, his will,
• 4:33
  Jesus teaches that our greatest need is actually for God's name
• 4:35
  to be upheld. And only inside that framework
• 4:38
  of submission can we then rightly ask for our own food and
• 4:41
  protection. And only after those three
• 4:44
  vertical petitions are set up do we pivot to the three man word
• 4:47
  requests. And this is where our verse
• 4:49
  Matthew 6.12 is located. It's placed very strategically
• 4:53
  among these last three requests, which all deal with human
• 4:56
  dependence and human frailty. The order here just defines the
• 4:59
  human condition with such clarity.
• 5:02
  It really does. You move from physical needs to
• 5:04
  spiritual failures to moral protection.
• 5:06
  The sequence is first. Give us this day Our Daily
• 5:10
  Bread. Which admits that we are
• 5:12
  material creatures. We are physical beings totally
• 5:14
  reliant on God's sustaining grace for, you know, even basic
• 5:17
  bodily functions. It's about our physical
• 5:20
  weakness. Then comes the verse we're
• 5:21
  looking at. Forgive us our debts.
• 5:24
  This is the reckoning. It's dealing with our internal
• 5:26
  moral failures, past and present.
• 5:29
  It identifies us as guilty creatures who have this
• 5:32
  objective spiritual liability for what we've already done.
• 5:35
  And it ends with Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
• 5:38
  from evil. This looks to the future.
• 5:41
  Yes, it addresses our status as moral creatures.
• 5:43
  We're admitting that we are morally frail, we're susceptible
• 5:46
  to sin, and we need God's active protection from future
• 5:49
  temptation. So the order is so intentional.
• 5:51
  Bread for the body, forgiveness for our relationship with God
• 5:54
  because of past sin, and deliverance for our minds and
• 5:57
  spirits in the face of future dangers.
• 6:00
  The placement of forgiveness, the need to deal with the guilt
• 6:03
  we've already incurred, right between food and protection.
• 6:06
  It signals that for a disciple of Jesus, dealing with your
• 6:09
  spiritual liability is an urgent, daily, central thing.
• 6:13
  It's not a site issue. Not at all.
• 6:16
  And This is why Jesus gives this one request special weight.
• 6:20
  As soon as the prayer is over in verses 14 and 15, He comes right
• 6:24
  back to it. He only comments on the part
• 6:26
  about forgiving others. Yes, he's signaling that we
• 6:29
  can't just glide past these words.
• 6:32
  He's highlighting its gravity, its relational significance.
• 6:35
  It suggests that your spiritual health is revealed most clearly
• 6:39
  in how you view sin and mercy. So the context forces us to see
• 6:42
  ourselves as constantly dependent for food, constantly
• 6:45
  guilty of failure, and constantly weak against
• 6:48
  temptation. That's the human condition.
• 6:50
  OK, so let's turn to the specific language Jesus uses
• 6:52
  here. He's very precise.
• 6:54
  He doesn't say forgive our imperfections or forgive our
• 6:57
  mistakes. He uses this hard, almost
• 6:59
  economic metaphor of feel amount of debts.
• 7:02
  And that financial imagery is chosen very deliberately to
• 7:05
  define sin as an objective liability.
• 7:08
  This is so critical. So what does that mean?
• 7:09
  Objective liability. It means sin isn't just a
• 7:12
  subjective feeling of shame or regret that we feel inside.
• 7:15
  It's an external, legal, objective reality.
• 7:18
  It's a specific amount owed that has gone unpaid.
• 7:21
  So what is the debt then? What do we actually owe?
• 7:24
  We owe God as our Creator what is legally and morally due to
• 7:27
  Him, and that is perfect, continuous, heartfelt love,
• 7:31
  perfect trust, perfect worship, unceasing obedience to His Law.
• 7:36
  Which we fail to do moment by moment.
• 7:38
  Every moment. And so the Sinner stands in
• 7:41
  arrears before God's holy law. We violated the terms of the
• 7:45
  Creator creature relationship, and in doing so we've incurred
• 7:48
  an infinite moral liability. So we're morally in the red, we
• 7:51
  broke the contract and there's a clear penalty attached.
• 7:54
  That's the whole point of language.
• 7:56
  It creates a status of real guilt before a real judge.
• 7:59
  It forces us to confront how serious our failures are in
• 8:03
  legal, cosmic terms. And this language seems designed
• 8:06
  to correct how we often talk about sin today, and much softer
• 8:09
  terms. Oh, it absolutely corrects 2
• 8:10
  specific distortions. First, it corrects what the
• 8:13
  source is called, sentimental views.
• 8:15
  We tend to reduce sin to brokenness or struggle or
• 8:18
  mishap. And if sin is just a struggle
• 8:20
  then the solution is just self help or therapy right?
• 8:23
  You just need a counselor or a coach, not a savior who has to
• 8:25
  pay a price, but the. Language of debt just refutes
• 8:28
  that. It does.
• 8:30
  SIN is not something that just happens to us like a broken bone
• 8:33
  that needs therapy. It's an active failure by us to
• 8:36
  meet a contract. It's a real liability, a serious
• 8:39
  obligation violated, and it requires either payment or a
• 8:42
  decisive cancellation. It changes sin from a passive
• 8:45
  state into an active objective failure against a holy God.
• 8:49
  That distinction is necessary to get the gospel.
• 8:51
  If the problem is just brokenness, the solution is
• 8:53
  restoration. If the problem is debt, the
• 8:56
  solution is payment. And what's the second
• 8:58
  distortion? It corrects.
• 8:59
  It corrects proud views, the illusion of self-sufficiency.
• 9:03
  It does this with one letter, the ES at the end of debts, the
• 9:07
  plural. Or debts.
• 9:08
  Yes, it prevents the person praying from thinking, well I'm
• 9:11
  mostly good, I just have a few minor issues.
• 9:15
  The daily requirement to pray. This forces the believer to
• 9:17
  confess a multitude of failures, A repeated pattern of sin that
• 9:21
  just piles up every day. So our record isn't mostly clean
• 9:24
  with a few smudges. Not at all.
• 9:26
  It's an accumulating liability. That's a humbling thought.
• 9:30
  We're constantly incurring more liability, even in our best
• 9:33
  moments, our thought life, our motivations, our failures to
• 9:37
  love perfectly. The moral balance sheet is never
• 9:40
  positive. The math is entirely against us.
• 9:42
  Completely. We can't negotiate a payment
• 9:45
  plan with heaven. We can't chip away at the debt
• 9:47
  by trying harder. We are totally dependent on the
• 9:51
  definitive act of grace. And that inability to pay is all
• 9:54
  wrapped up in the single verb Jesus chose for forgive.
• 9:58
  The Greek word is ace. Ace.
• 10:00
  It means cancel, release or dismiss the debt.
• 10:04
  It's a powerful word, often used in financial settings to mean
• 10:07
  formally wiping an entry off a Ledger.
• 10:09
  But it's a grammar that gives it this sense of an immediate,
• 10:12
  decisive transaction, Yes. Grammatically, it's an aorist
• 10:15
  imperative, and you don't need to get bogged down in the
• 10:18
  terminology. Just think of the imperative
• 10:20
  part as a strong, direct command or plea.
• 10:22
  It's not a timid suggestion, and the aorist aspect signals that
• 10:26
  the action is seen as a single, decisive, complete event.
• 10:29
  So we're not asking God to, you know, gradually think about
• 10:32
  forgiving us or to keep forgiving us bit by bit.
• 10:35
  No, it's a plea for a decisive act of remission.
• 10:38
  It's like standing before your creditor with a massive,
• 10:41
  unpayable bill and asking them not to extend the due date, but
• 10:44
  to hit the cancel all liability button right now.
• 10:48
  The grammar itself underscores that only the creditor God can
• 10:52
  clear the account. The one praying is in a position
• 10:55
  of total inability. All we can do is ask the Father
• 10:58
  to remit what we can never repay.
• 11:01
  It's the ultimate expression of dependence.
• 11:03
  You know you're bankrupt and you're wholly dependent on
• 11:06
  divine grace to wipe the Ledger clean immediately and
• 11:10
  completely. OK, so this brings us right back
• 11:12
  to the central paradox. We are bankrupt debtors who need
• 11:15
  this decisive total cancellation every day.
• 11:18
  But if Christ already provided that cancellation once for all,
• 11:22
  why do we have to keep asking? And the answer requires making
• 11:25
  some clear doctrinal distinctions between our status
• 11:28
  and our relationship. So let's start with
• 11:29
  justification. This is the bedrock of the
• 11:32
  Christian life. Right.
• 11:33
  And this doctrine answers a very specific legal question.
• 11:36
  Am I righteous in God's sight? And the answer of the gospel is
• 11:40
  a clear yes, you are declared righteous.
• 11:42
  Correct. The source is all stressed that
• 11:44
  justification is a once for all legal act.
• 11:47
  God the Judge declares the ungodly righteous based only on
• 11:51
  Christ's imputed righteousness and satisfaction, which we
• 11:54
  received by faith alone. The legal status is final, it's
• 11:57
  not provisional. It's permanent.
• 12:00
  It can't be revoked by our daily failures.
• 12:02
  The entire debt of sin, past, present and future, is accounted
• 12:06
  for and what Christ did. The verdict of no condemnation
• 12:10
  is settled forever. It's like a property deed.
• 12:13
  It's been signed, sealed, paid for by Christ, and your
• 12:16
  ownership is secure. That's a good way to put it.
• 12:18
  So a lever does not pray forgive us our debts in order to be re
• 12:22
  justified every morning. Because if we did, the cross
• 12:24
  would depend on our morning prayer, which is impossible.
• 12:27
  Our security is established. If justification was conditional
• 12:30
  on our daily confession, you could never have any assurance.
• 12:34
  You'd never know if you confessed enough or if you
• 12:36
  missed one. The prayer itself assumes our
• 12:38
  justification is already secure. So if the legal status is
• 12:41
  settled, where does this daily prayer get its footing?
• 12:45
  And that brings us to the next doctrine adoption.
• 12:48
  Right adoption answers a different, more personal
• 12:51
  question. Whose child am I?
• 12:54
  And this status gives us something critical, the
• 12:56
  confident access to address God not as a judge demanding
• 13:00
  payment, but as our Father. It's the first thing we say in
• 13:05
  the prayer. So justification is the
• 13:06
  acquittal in the courtroom, but adoption is being welcomed into
• 13:09
  the family permanently. Yes, think of it this way.
• 13:12
  Justification is the legal adoption papers that grant you
• 13:15
  the status. The daily prayer is the child
• 13:17
  maintaining the relationship and intimacy with the Father inside
• 13:20
  the home. Because the legal question of
• 13:22
  our standing is settled, we now have the freedom and the
• 13:24
  security to confess our daily failings openly to our Father
• 13:28
  The. Security of adoption gives us
• 13:30
  the confidence to be honest about our ongoing struggles.
• 13:32
  And this leads to what seems to be the most critical distinction
• 13:36
  for resolving this whole paradox.
• 13:37
  Which is the dual nature of God's reaction to sin in the
• 13:41
  life of Christian. So if a Christian sins, what
• 13:45
  happens? Well, many people who struggle
• 13:47
  with assurance, they fear they're going right back to
• 13:49
  court. They're afraid their sin makes
• 13:51
  God angry in a way that puts their final standing at risk.
• 13:54
  But the sources make it clear that for the believer, sin does
• 13:58
  not risk eternal legal condemnation.
• 14:01
  It doesn't risk judicial wrath. That threat was removed
• 14:05
  completely at the cross. Christ absorbed the penalty of
• 14:08
  the law. The debt is paid.
• 14:10
  The legal Ledger is closed permanently.
• 14:12
  Legal standing is secure. But the relationship is
• 14:15
  strained. Precisely.
• 14:17
  Sin absolutely does risk our relational communion with the
• 14:19
  Father. Sin grieves the Father's heart.
• 14:22
  It introduces a distance attention and that results in
• 14:25
  what the source is called fatherly displeasure.
• 14:28
  OK, let's use an analogy to make this concrete.
• 14:30
  Imagine a child who you know is careless and breaks a really
• 14:33
  cherished family heirloom in the living room.
• 14:36
  Right. That child knows they are still
• 14:38
  your child. Their adoption status is secure.
• 14:42
  They don't fear being disowned or legally cut off from the
• 14:45
  family. But they will probably hide.
• 14:46
  They'll feel shame. They'll fear the tension and the
• 14:49
  silence their action created in the home.
• 14:51
  They fear the disappointment of the parent, not the condemnation
• 14:55
  of a judge. And that is the function of
• 14:57
  daily confession. It's what bridges that
• 14:59
  relational distance. When we pray, forgive us our
• 15:02
  debts. We aren't seeking reacquittals.
• 15:04
  We're seeking the restoration of that warm, open, relational
• 15:07
  peace. We're trying to recover the
• 15:10
  peace and joy that our sin disturbed.
• 15:12
  We're seeking the fresh application of cleansing to our
• 15:15
  conscience so we can run back into the Father's embrace
• 15:18
  without any hesitation or shame. It's actually a misunderstanding
• 15:21
  to avoid confession because you're afraid of being
• 15:23
  unjustified. Yes, only a humble child of God
• 15:26
  who knows their status is secure is truly free to seek mercy on a
• 15:31
  regular basis. So confession is an aspect of
• 15:33
  sanctification, that process of becoming more like Christ.
• 15:37
  It's not a condition for justification.
• 15:40
  It's the daily washing of hands to maintain purity in the home,
• 15:43
  not re signing the adoption papers every morning.
• 15:45
  OK, now we have to move to the most challenging and probably
• 15:48
  the most misinterpreted phrase in the prayer that inseparable
• 15:52
  link Jesus makes forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven
• 15:57
  our debtors. This language sounds so
• 16:00
  conditional, and if you get this wrong, you can undermine the
• 16:03
  entire gospel. This is where we have to be
• 16:05
  really precise. Jesus coming back to this point
• 16:09
  right after the prayer shows how serious it is.
• 16:11
  We have to clarify what that as means.
• 16:14
  The sources are all in agreement here.
• 16:15
  Our forgiveness of other people is not a meritorious 'cause it
• 16:19
  does not earn God's pardon. We can't purchase grace with our
• 16:21
  good deeds. No.
• 16:23
  To even suggest that our human action merits divine forgiveness
• 16:27
  would contradict the doctrine of grace alone.
• 16:29
  The link is therefore evidential, not meritorious.
• 16:32
  So we don't forgive other people so that God will forgive us and
• 16:35
  justify us. That's just a transactional
• 16:37
  workspaced religion. Right.
• 16:38
  The order is crucial. Divine forgiveness is the cause.
• 16:41
  Human forgiveness is the necessary effect.
• 16:44
  We extend mercy because God has already extended it to us in
• 16:47
  Christ. So our act of pardoning others
• 16:50
  works as the necessary evidence that we have truly received
• 16:54
  God's pardon. It's the inescapable fruit of
• 16:57
  true faith. It's the difference between
• 17:00
  generating power and reflecting it.
• 17:03
  Our forgiveness is like a mirror reflecting the light of God's
• 17:06
  forgiveness, not a battery generating its own light.
• 17:10
  And that reflection of light is the work of sanctification.
• 17:12
  So the ongoing work of the Spirit sanctification, it must
• 17:15
  produce a forgiving spirit. Why is that connection so tight?
• 17:19
  Because the entire goal of sanctification is to conform the
• 17:23
  believer to the character of Christ.
• 17:24
  And how did Christ act toward his enemies?
• 17:26
  He prayed for them from the cross.
• 17:28
  The same grace that justifies A Sinner also softens his heart
• 17:32
  toward those who have sinned against him.
• 17:34
  This creation of a forgiving disposition is what guards
• 17:37
  against the error of cheap grace.
• 17:39
  And Cheap Grace would be claiming the root system of
• 17:42
  justification, but refusing to produce any fruit, specifically
• 17:45
  the fruit of mercy. Exactly.
• 17:48
  If the life giving SAP is really flowing from the root of
• 17:50
  justification up into the branches, then the tree will
• 17:54
  produce the fruit of forgiveness.
• 17:56
  A life that is habitually marked by holding grudges or refusing
• 18:00
  to reconcile it just contradicts the very life of grace.
• 18:04
  It suggests either that the connection is blocked somewhere,
• 18:08
  or that the root system was never actually established in
• 18:10
  the first place. It's an internal transformation
• 18:13
  that has to show up externally. We're no longer defined by the
• 18:16
  world standard of getting even, but by God's standard of mercy.
• 18:19
  And This is why the ASK clause is described as a real
• 18:22
  relational condition and a litmus test of the heart.
• 18:25
  When you pray this, you are forcing a deep spiritual self
• 18:29
  examination. You're essentially asking God to
• 18:32
  deal with us as we have been dealing with others.
• 18:34
  Which is a terrifying request if your heart is full of
• 18:37
  bitterness. It's an invitation for God to
• 18:39
  expose any lurking hypocrisy. It exposes that fundamental
• 18:43
  disconnect and a person who claims their massive debt, their
• 18:46
  failure to give God perfect love and obedience, was cancelled,
• 18:50
  but at the same time they're demanding bitter payment for a
• 18:52
  tiny minor debt from a neighbor. And Jesus gives the perfect,
• 18:57
  most dramatic illustration of this in the parable of the
• 18:59
  unforgiving servant in Matthew 18.
• 19:01
  This is the AS clause in Slesh and Blood.
• 19:03
  Right. The servant owed the king 10,000
• 19:06
  talents, a debt so huge it was statistically unpayable.
• 19:09
  It represents our infinite moral liability to God.
• 19:13
  And the king, who was acting as God the Father, cancels the
• 19:16
  entire debt freely, completely. The servant is a forgiven
• 19:20
  debtor. But then he walks right out and
• 19:22
  finds a fellow servant who owes him 100 denarii.
• 19:24
  I mean a tiny fraction of what he was just pardoned for.
• 19:27
  And what does the unforgiving servant do?
• 19:29
  He seized him and began to choke him.
• 19:32
  He demands full, immediate payment.
• 19:35
  The contrast is just devastating.
• 19:38
  To extend mercy to another person after receiving infinite
• 19:41
  mercy from God shows that the King's cancellation never
• 19:44
  genuinely changed his heart. It's proof he didn't grasp the
• 19:47
  magnitude of the grace he received.
• 19:49
  If he had, he would have been overwhelmed with relief, not
• 19:52
  filled with a sense of superiority.
• 19:55
  And that's the function of the ask clause.
• 19:56
  And make sure we don't just glide past these words.
• 19:58
  An unforgiving spirit puts the believers experience of God's
• 20:01
  fatherly love at risk. It disturbs Communion even
• 20:05
  though it doesn't revoke their legal justification.
• 20:07
  The peace we're seeking in our own confession is tied to the
• 20:10
  peace we extend to others. So if we pull all this together,
• 20:14
  Matthew 6.12 really is a microcosm of the entire
• 20:17
  Christian life. It's not just a petition, but a
• 20:20
  balanced theological tool. Let's look at the corrective
• 20:23
  ability of this one verse. Yes, the sources show it stands
• 20:27
  against theological error on several fronts.
• 20:30
  It holds the gospel in a perfect kind of tension.
• 20:33
  First, it rejects legalism. It affirms that our forgiveness
• 20:36
  of others doesn't purchase God's grace.
• 20:38
  We aren't working for our pardon.
• 20:40
  We're demonstrating the result of it.
• 20:42
  And second, by insisting that forgiveness has to produce
• 20:45
  fruit, it rejects antinomianism, or cheap grace.
• 20:49
  That's the idea that you can rest in government forgiveness
• 20:52
  while staying unchanged, harboring bitterness.
• 20:55
  Jesus says no grace produces A forgiving heart. 3rd, it
• 20:59
  corrects the drift toward a therapeutic gospel by using the
• 21:03
  language of real guilt and objective liability debts.
• 21:07
  It stops us from seeing sin is just psychological pain, right?
• 21:10
  It forces us to deal with the God word nature of our offense
• 21:13
  first before we worry about its effect on our self esteem.
• 21:16
  And finally, by using the plural debts, it corrects the pride of
• 21:19
  the self, that illusion of self-sufficiency.
• 21:22
  We have to admit the continuous pile up of our failures.
• 21:25
  We can't maintain a mostly clean record on our own.
• 21:29
  And this petition being right in the center of the model prayer,
• 21:32
  ensures the confession isn't just a sporadic reaction to a
• 21:35
  crisis. It establishes a lifestyle of
• 21:38
  repentance. This daily practice is so vital
• 21:40
  for sanctification. It is.
• 21:42
  It keeps the believer from proud presumption, the arrogance of
• 21:45
  thinking you're morally OK on your own, while at the same time
• 21:49
  it drives you again and again to Christ for cleansing and for
• 21:52
  reassurance. The whole prayer is about
• 21:54
  continuous reliance on Him for everything we need God for the
• 21:58
  food on our table and for the cleansing of our conscience.
• 22:01
  It makes sure the believer lives in continual dependence on
• 22:04
  divine remission. It's a gospel driven self
• 22:07
  examination that leads you back to Christ's finished work which
• 22:11
  creates spiritual health. Not that morbid introspection
• 22:14
  that just goes in circles around your own failures.
• 22:16
  The Spirit uses this daily habit to humble us, to make our
• 22:20
  conscience more sensitive to offenses both big and small.
• 22:23
  So if we synthesize all these points, the legal security, the
• 22:26
  relational tension, the language of liability, the necessity of
• 22:29
  mercy, what is the core identity that Matthew 6.12 gives to the
• 22:33
  Christian? It seems to be the identity of a
• 22:34
  forgiven yet still sinning. That's it.
• 22:37
  We are fully acquitted legally through justification, but we
• 22:41
  are constantly incurring new moral liability, new debts that
• 22:46
  require relational cleansing through fatherly forgiveness.
• 22:50
  We are, at our core, forgiven debtors.
• 22:53
  Which means the Christian life is defined by a paradox.
• 22:57
  Secure in our status yet constantly confessing our sin,
• 23:01
  we live between the finished work of the cross and the
• 23:03
  ongoing work of the Spirit in our hearts.
• 23:05
  To live out this verse is to keep returning to the source of
• 23:08
  cancellation, the cross where that massive debt was paid, and
• 23:12
  then enabled by that payment to fully reflect that same mercy
• 23:15
  toward every single person in our lives who has sinned
• 23:18
  against. Us, the constant awareness that
• 23:20
  we've been forgiven everything, has to define how we treat those
• 23:23
  who owe us something small. And we don't need to fear
• 23:25
  confession because we're coming home into our Father's embrace.
• 23:28
  We're not going back to the courtroom of judgement.
• 23:31
  It is such a searching passage. It forces us to ask not only if
• 23:34
  we've been forgiven, but what that forgiveness has done to our
• 23:36
  hearts. So for you listening, here's the
• 23:38
  final thought. Considering the seriousness of
• 23:40
  sin as debts and thinking about the astronomical size of the
• 23:44
  debt, Christ cancels for you all the perfect obedience and love
• 23:48
  you failed to give God. What 1 practical change should
• 23:52
  you make this week to more fully reflect the character of a
• 23:55
  forgiven debtor toward a specific person in your life?
• 23:58
  Look for that one small lingering debt you're holding
• 24:00
  over someone else. And ask yourself if the joy of
• 24:03
  your own canceled debt outweighs your desire for repayment.
• 24:06
  That reflection is the necessary proof of grace and action.
• 24:10
  A challenging question, but a necessary one.
• 24:12
  Thank you for joining us for this deep dive into reformed
• 24:15
  thinking.