3 Give us each day our daily bread. 4 Forgive us our sins, for we also
forgive everyone who sins against us. ~ Luke 11:3-4
Today's text takes place in the final months of the life of the Lord
Jesus. This is the second time He taught His disciples to pray. The first
time is recorded in Matthew 6, many months before during His Galilean
ministry.
Today we come to Luke 11:3-4. In v.3 we read, "Give us each day our daily bread." This request is the first part of the prayer that directs itself to
our needs. This pattern for prayer is divided into two halves. The first
half (v.1-2) concerns God and His glory, the second half concerns man and
our needs. God is given the supreme place and only when He is first does
everything else fit into its appropriate place.
God is our provider and this patten of prayer is not an effort to
manipulate God. He doesn't provide for us because we've appeased Him in
the first two requests. We can not manipulate God into providing our
needs. This portion of the prayer is the acknowledgement that we are
dependent upon God to provide our needs. He has promised to meet our
needs, He desires for us the relationship of dependence as a father is
toward his son.
In v.4 we read, "Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against
us." The Lord Jesus directs us to ask for forgiveness. God is not a
reluctant forgiver. The forgiveness of sin is the greatest need of every
soul, since unforgiven sins expose the soul to divine judgment and
guarantee eternal punishment. Mankind needs forgiveness more than we need
anything else. Christianity is not about fixing our lives, it's not about
us getting better in some way. No, it's about forgiveness and the
subsequent personal relationship with God that results.
This request assumes that we need forgiveness. Our rebellion has separated
us from God. I once heard a young man say, "Why does God hold me
accountable for what Adam did?" He failed to understand that if he had
been in Adam's spot he would have done the same. Forgiveness of sin is
what we need most for it is our sin that separates us from God.
God does not simply forgive our sin by looking the other way. No sin ever
committed will go unpunished. God must punish sin or else sin wins out. In
Romans 4:5 we read, "God justifies the ungodly." He did this by sending His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to be our
substitute. He bore our punishment while hanging on the cross. Forgiveness
is man's greatest need because unforgiven sin has the most massive
implications, certainly in time but vastly more importantly in
eternity.
Confessing our sin is essential, and this is our biggest barrier.
The barrier is to recognize one's sinful condition, to redefine
one's self in terms of utter wretchedness. We spend our whole lives trying
to build a good self-image. We spend our whole lives trying to convince
ourselves and everybody around us that we are basically good people. And
all of a sudden to reverse that entire diagnosis and explain to ourselves
and to everybody around us and particularly to God Himself that we now
have come to a new understanding in which we now see ourselves as
wretched, sinful, utterly incapable of any good that honors God, that is a
huge transition.
And, finally in v.4 we read, "for we also forgive everyone who sins against us." This is not a condition for God's forgiveness, it is an effect of
being forgiven. To forgive someone is to turn the key, open the cell and
let the prisoner out. To forgive someone is to write across a debt
"nothing owed, paid in full." To forgive someone is to pound the gavel in
the court and declare "not guilty."
An unforgiving Christian is a contradiction. We forgive because we have been forgiven. The Apostle Paul said it
well in Ephesians 4:32 which reads, "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just
as in Christ God forgave you."
