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Forgive us our Trespasses
People always say time heals all wounds. I think what a load of garbage. Time heals nothing.
Matthew 6:12
People always say time heals all wounds. I think what a load of garbage. Time heals nothing. Just think about your house, for instance. Right? There’s a mess on the floor. What is time going to do for that? If there’s a hole in the floor or something’s falling apart, time doesn’t do anything. Time just makes the problem get worse and worse.
Time doesn’t heal any wounds. What happens with time is we just learn to live with it. We learn to walk around the mess and we get so used to it being there that it just becomes part of our everyday life. It’s important for us to talk about time and wounds and forgiveness, especially as we think about the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, when Jesus teaches us,
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. (Matthew 6:12)
How many sins do we commit in a single day? Well, if you think really hard, you might think of a handful of sins of commission, things that we do with our actions. But then Jesus takes a step further. He’ll say things like, Whoever looks at a woman lustfully has already sinned against her, committed adultery against her in his heart. (Matthew 5:28) So it’s not just the things we do, it’s even the things, the thoughts that go through our mind that we don’t act upon are also sin. Well, we can easily gather 100 in a single day.
Then there’s sins of omission. The things that we don’t do that we should do. Oh, those pile up fast, don’t they? Not just all my projects around home that I leave undone, but all the things in my life that I’ve left unsaid and undone and how quickly that pile adds up. But let’s say hypothetically, maybe if I weren’t able to do any sins of commission or sins of omission. There’s still just one sin that I’m guilty of. That’s Adam’s sin. Because I’ve inherited a sinful nature from my parents going all the way back to Adam. I could look at the whole house of the human race, the whole house of my heart and say it’s rotten to the core. That one sin condemns me.
And why it’s important for us to just go through that exercise of thinking, How many sins have I committed? Why that’s so important isn’t so that we can number our sins. But it’s important so that we can see how great of a savior we really have. Paul tells us where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. (Romans 5:20) If you can even begin to imagine the countless sins a single person can accrue in a lifetime. Jesus paid for the sins of the whole world. In the six hours he suffered on the cross, he paid for every single one of those countless sins gone, forgiven, through his death and resurrection.
Jesus tears down the whole house of humanity and builds up a new house through his perfect life, innocent death and resurrection. By faith he makes us a part of that household. Why that’s important is because the second part of that petition,
as we forgive those who trespass against us. (Matthew 6:12)
God doesn’t forgive us because we forgive other people, He says forgive us as we forgive those who trespass. So, in other words, as members of Jesus household, forgiveness is just something we do. But what makes that so hard is because we were really hurt. Someone really committed a sin of commission or omission against me. And that leaves a wound. And it’s hard for me to forgive that. It’s hard for me to just let go. Is God asking me to pretend like it never happened? At a certain point we have to ask ourselves. What am I holding out for? By holding on to that sin am I trying to punish and hurt that person that sinned against me? In the end, the only one I end up hurting is myself. If the one sin against me wasn’t bad enough by holding on to that sin, I can endanger my own faith.
When it becomes a question of punishment and hurt for hurt. We have to remind ourselves that God has punished that sin. Jesus became our scapegoat. He became the sin of the world. So when I’m hurt, I’m looking to see God’s justice carried out. We’re to go to Jesus. We’re to look at Jesus and his back that was flogged over and over again and ask the question: has he suffered enough? We can look at Jesus and see his hands get nailed to the cross. And with each pound of that hammer, we can ask ourselves: has Jesus suffered enough? Standing there at the cross, Jesus cries out. “It is finished.” (John 12:30) Has he suffered enough? God the Father says yes. All sins are forgiven. Jesus Christ says yes, all sins are forgiven. I can say yes, that sin is forgiven.
