Hi, and thanks so much for listening to the latest podcast from Him We Proclaim. We have a loving and forgiving God who is slow to anger. Doesn't that powerful fact make you just want to pray more? In the Lord's Prayer, we ask the Father to please forgive us our debts. You see, our sin stacks up pretty quick, and God's one way for us to be delivered from that debt is to seek His forgiveness.
In other words, we have a powerful debt that only a powerful, eternal God could offer us. Let's hear more about God's love for us now. Here's John with a message called Righteous Prayer focuses on the forgiveness of the Father. Matthew chapter 6, we're looking in verses 5 through 15. And in this text, we have what is called the Lord's Prayer, which is a part of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
So Jesus is teaching us how to pray. I hope that as we've been going through this series, you've been learning a little bit more about how to pray. I tell you, my prayer life over the past couple weeks has really changed. Yeah. Because Jesus is giving us divine wisdom and teaching us how to pray.
In Matthew chapter 6, in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus is commending to us righteous prayer, and what he's doing is exposing and condemning the hypocritical religious practices of the scribes and Pharisees. How they pray. How they engage in their religious practice. Reveals that they did not know God as their father. And so their entire religious.
Confession Which is their belief system, their creedal system, and their entire religious practice based upon that creedal system is based on a complete ignorance of God as Father. They did not know God as Father. And so Jesus says to pray rightly, righteous prayer, to pray rightly is to know God is Father. And so in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus focuses us on seven major themes, all of those themes focusing on God the Father. These seven themes in the Lord's Prayer.
Reveals to us the true character of God the Father. And they show how adopted sons begin to learn how to pray. to their Heavenly Father. As I said last week, and we'll say it again, we'll say it next week. We think we know how to pray.
We think we know how to worship God, but we don't. And so, Jesus is teaching us how to do this. And so, very quickly, Jesus teaches us in the Lord's Prayer that the first theme is that righteous prayer focuses on the knowledge of God His Father. It begins with this blessing, the highest privilege of the gospel, our Father in heaven. Righteous prayer focuses on the honor of the Father, our Father in heaven.
Hallowed be your name. Righteous prayer focuses on the kingdom of the Father, how he comes to rule us by his word and spirit now and in the future, consummated by his second coming. Our Father in heaven, your kingdom come. Righteous prayer then focuses on the will of the Father. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And then righteous prayer focuses, we saw last week, verse 11, on the provision of the Father, give us this day our daily bread. And so, as we look at the fourth, and fifth, and sixth petitions. They're all lanes. Grammatically, by one little conjunction. Did you ever, did you guys remember conjunctions in grammar school, right?
The conjunction and. And And this little conjunction puts all three petitions that we make to God for our needs. Beginning at verse verses 11 and 12 and 13. All these petitions are connected and interrelated together. How are they connected?
How are they interrelated? Because each one of these. Personal petitions represents human need. In the fourth petition, Jesus teaches us to ask the Father for our daily bread. That is, Father, provide for us all of our temporal physical needs.
Which we need to have our physical lives sustained throughout this life. And so we learned last week from this petition that our Father cares. For his people. He's good and generous and giving. Providentially gives to us what we need to sustain us physically in this life.
But ultimately, we saw that this emphasis upon our temporal physical needs actually points us to the gospel. It points us to our spiritual need, and we saw from John chapter 6 that Jesus' feeding of the 5,000 testifies to this fact. God the Father provided Jesus the bread of life, who comes down from heaven. And gives life to the world, John 6:33, and by giving life to the world, he meets our basic and most important spiritual need. And so Jesus teaches us that our Father in heaven, He not only provides for our present temporal physical needs, but He also provides for our spiritual eternal needs.
And so, while we need temporal physical blessings to live, they're not enough. We also need listen what we need to live. We need the forgiveness of sins. We need the forgiveness of our debt. Yeah.
And this is what Jesus then teaches us in the fifth petition. Out of his goodness, out of his generosity, this giving Father who has adopted us as His children, His sons, and His providential care, He has provided His Son for us to give us the forgiveness of our debt. You see, without the forgiveness of our debt, none of us could ever enter the kingdom of God, which is what the Sermon on the Mount is all about. And so this brings us to the fifth petition. Look at chapter 6, verse 12.
The fifth petition is the sixth theme. There are six petitions in the Lord's Prayer, but it begins with an address, so there are seven themes.
So here's the sixth theme from the fifth petition. Hope you're not confused. What is it? Here it is. Righteous prayer focuses on the forgiveness of the Father.
Not great. Listen to what he says in verse 12. He says, when you pray, pray saying, Our Father in heaven, forgive us. Our debts. Plural.
Ha ha ha. Forgive us of our debts. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.
So, in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus is teaching us about the Father, right?
So, what kind of father do we have? Listen carefully as we summarize the Lord's Prayer. We have a gracious father, He adopts us as His children, our Father in heaven. We have a glorious Father, hallowed be your name. Your name is glorious, and make it glorious throughout the whole world through your Son and the plan of the gospel.
We have a glorious Father. We have a sovereign Father. Your kingdom come. He is a king. He reigns in Christ.
He's a great sovereign king. We have a sovereign father. We have a commanding father. All kings command in their kingdom: your will be done. Right.
We have a giving Father. Give us this day our daily bread. He gives it, he gives it all. And now Jesus says, we have a forgiving Father. It's amazing, isn't it?
These are the gospel-rich truths that endear your heart to pray. And if I come to a commanding sovereign king. Who is all glorious and a bit scary? Yes, he is, apart from Christ. If he's not forgiving, I'm not praying.
I'm freeing. I'm running, I'm hiding. The only reason we can enter the kingdom of God is because we have a Father in heaven who forgives our debts. I want you just to listen to the Bible, how it describes our Father. In Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 through 7, the Lord proclaims his name.
Listen, hallowed be your name. The Lord proclaims his name to Moses. What is God's name? It's the person that he reveals himself to be. How does God reveal himself to be?
Listen to what he said to Moses. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful. Check like that. And gracious, keep it coming, try. Slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.
Steadfast love all throughout the Old Testament is simply this: He makes a promise, and He always keeps it for you. regardless of your behavior. That's steadfast love. The Lord, the Lord, a God, merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, even though you're unfaithful, He's faithful. Keeping steadfast love for thousands.
Forgiving iniquity. That's where the Lord's prayer comes from. Forgiving iniquity, forgiving transgression, forgiving sin. That's our Father. And that's who the Lord proclaimed himself to, to Moses.
Israel, as you know, often disobeyed God's law, the Mosaic covenant, and they proved to be an unfaithful firstborn son because God calls them the first his Israel, my firstborn son. They were God's son, and they were completely disobedient sons. And so in Nehemiah chapter 9, the Levites Lead the people of Israel in a time of corporate confession of their sins. And as they confess their sins, they affirm that God is, quote, ready to forgive. Do you hear that?
He is ready to forgive. Hello. That's why you confess your sin. He's ready to forgive. He's gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.
Psalm 86, verse 5, David confesses, For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving. Abounding and steadfast love to all who call upon you. Forgive us our debts. That's calling upon him, and he'll do it because he's good and forgiving, abounding and steadfast love. Psalm 103, verses 2 through 3, David affirms, Bless the Lord.
Why do we bless him in church? Why do we come together to worship? Bless the Lord, O my soul, in my personal life. Why? And forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity.
That sins of, we're going to see sins of omission and sins of commission. He forgives it all. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Jeremiah thirty-three, verse eight: the Lord promises through the prophet Jeremiah. To the people of Israel who are in great judgment and distress, I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and all their rebellion against me.
I will forgive it all. This is the kind of Father we have in heaven. In Ephesians chapter 1, verse 7, Paul spontaneously bursts forth in just a powerful exaltation of praise and worship to God, blessing to God. It's a barakah of the Jewish Old Testament, just a spontaneous explosion of thanksgiving and praise to God. As he rehearses All the spiritual blessings that God the Father has blessed us with in Jesus Christ.
And one of these blessings includes the forgiveness of all our trespasses. And Paul says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. What is one of those blessings? He says, In Him, in the Beloved, that is Jesus the Son of God. He is the Beloved of His Father.
In the Beloved, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He has lavished upon us. Paul cannot find the words in the Greek language to adequately describe the inexhaustible nature of the Father's giving gift of his Son for the forgiveness of our sin. He is exhausting words. He's piling up words to express his spontaneous praise to the Father for giving us the inexpressible gift of his Son for the forgiveness of our trespasses. He says, listen.
This forgiveness which came through the redemption through Jesus' blood is according to the riches of his grace. Not just his grace, the riches of his grace, and that grace he has lavished. He is like a waterfall that just keeps coming, lavishing that upon us, forgiveness of our sin. Amen. Spontaneous praise.
Just get up and shout, right? Yeah. Paul cannot find words to describe this, and Jesus. In this fifth petition, he briefly embraces, Calvin says, all that makes for a heavenly life. Why?
Why is that a heavenly? Because without the forgiveness of sins, we can't enter the kingdom of God. J.I. Packer says, The Christian lives through. Forgiveness.
That's our need. We live through forgiveness. To say it another way, this petition, forgive us our debt, is a plea for grace. This petition reminds us of the depth of our sin and our need for daily confession and forgiveness from the Father. Why?
Because we sin daily, both in omission and commission. There are two parts to this petition. There's a vertical forgiveness and a horizontal forgiveness. Today, we're going to look at the first part, vertical forgiveness, and just camp here.
So, what does it mean to ask our Father in heaven when Jesus says, when you pray, pray, saying, Our Father in heaven, forgive us our debts? What does that mean? What are we asking for? Why do we pray this?
Well, listen. The scriptures describe sin as sin, or sin's plural, which means to miss the mark. It describes sin as a trespass or trespasses, which is simply a violation of a moral standard. The Bible describes sin as lawlessness, 1 John. Iniquity But look what Jesus does here in Matthew 6, verse 12.
Jesus speaks of our sin as unpaid debts. Typically when we think of debt, we think of debt in financial terms. Our culture knows a thing or two about financial debt, right Bob? Bob is our local debt-free manager in this church. If you're in debt, go to Bob.
Uh oh. He'll get you out. Here's our culture. As of November 2014, the average U.S. household credit card stands at $15,593 of debt.
The average card. The average student loan debt is $32,511. And as of November 2014, American consumers together collectively owe $11.62 trillion in debt. I used to own a small mortgage company when I didn't have my voice and I was just trying to get daily bread for my family. And I learned quickly about debt.
Um Relationships quickly deteriorate with customers who fall behind on mortgage payments or accumulate debt to you. Financial indebtedness destroys relationships. But the kind of debt that Jesus is talking about. It's not financial debt. It is moral indebtedness.
Which far surpasses Any amount of financial debt we could ever accumulate, it's far beyond $11.62 trillion of financial debt. Far beyond it. Jesus teaches us to ask the Father, forgive us for our debts. He's saying, Father, forgive us for our moral debts. Forgive us for the moral obligation which we owe in respect to your law and have broken it.
You remember back in the Garden of Eden in the pattern of the kingdom that we looked at when we said, your kingdom come? God created man to be law keepers. There's nothing wrong with keeping the law, there's nothing wrong with the law. It's my heart that's wrong. Law keeping is a good thing, God requires it.
But in his rebellion, man failed to keep God's law, Genesis 3.
So consequently, not only Adam, but all men, since Adam was appointed by God to represent the entire human race, all of us became debtors to God at that point. Because of our representative union with Adam, when he sinned, we sinned. Paul says this in Romans 5. He says, Because one man's trespass, that's Adam, death reigned through that one man. One trespass led to condemnation for all men by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners.
So as a result of the fall, we incurred an insurmountable debt to God. And Jesus' thought is that we owe God total, tireless, perfect obedience, zealous love for God, zealous love for our neighbor, all day, every day, every second of our entire existence. That is what He requires in His law. And our sin is basically a failure to pay that debt. This is called sins of omission.
I don't know if you think about that, but this is why in the Anglican Prayer Book, which is why we prayed that corporate prayer of confession this morning, the Anglican Prayer Book rightly confesses sins of omission before sins of commission. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, sins of omission. And we have done those things which we ought not to have done, commission. Listen what Jay Packer says about that. He says, when Christians examine themselves It is for omissions that they should look first.
How often do we even forget about that and just confess what we've done wrong? But when we examine ourselves, it is for omissions that they should look first, and they will always find that their saddest sins take the form of good left undone. Debt is the proper correlation to the law. As lawbreakers, we are debtors to the law. God's law contains both precepts and penalties.
The precepts are to be fully obeyed, and the penalties are enforced for the least violation of those precepts. Galatians chapter 3 verse 10 Paul teaches this when he quotes the law of the Mosaic covenant Deuteronomy 27 26 listen to what Paul says from quoting this Deuteronomy All who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them. And our problem is that we have failed to keep the precepts of God's law. We have not done them. And we have not satisfied the just penalty or curse of God's law for the least violation.
So, what is our debt? Here is our debt. Our debt consists of the obedience that we owe to the law's precepts, which we have not done. And our debt consists of the penalty which we are obligated to pay for violating those precepts, and we've never paid it. And so when we sin, we neither give nor perform to God what we owe to Him.
And so, as long as we don't yield this debt to him, what we owe to him, we remain debtors to God. We are bound to make satisfaction by punishment, as God's law says, Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. We are bound to that. And since we can never deliver ourselves from this economy of debt, we live under this economy of debt, under the curse of God's law. We have failed to do what the law commands.
Love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. And the Ten Commandments, just flesh that out. We have utterly failed to do that. And we have, listen, not only sins of omission, what we failed to do, but we have done exactly what the law forbids. And because of the sins of commission, we now have failed to pay the penalty that the law demands for the least violation.
That's our debt. Forgive us our debt, and that's what we're praying. That's a lot of debt. And so when we sin, we put ourselves into debt to God, we incur this obligation, we come to owe God the Father something, our moral indebtedness completely destroys our relationship with the Father.
So, Jesus, when he teaches us to pray, Our Father in heaven, forgive us of our debts, we're asking the Father, we're saying, Father, forgive our moral indebtedness to your law. Both its precepts and its penalties. Forgive both our sins of omission and our sins of commission. Take away what we owe. Take this debt away.
We cannot Pay this debt. And the one who asks the Father for the forgiveness of debts, sins of omission and commission, recognizes that there's no other method by which this debt can be paid but than the one which he has given, which is in his Son. Jesus Christ. Because you see, Jesus is teaching us the gospel of the kingdom in Matthew. In the gospel of the kingdom, this good news of God's reign and rule come through Jesus is that God the Father is generous and giving and merciful, and he's forgiving.
It's forgiving.
So we must understand that God the Father in forgiving, listen very, very, very carefully, because this is a huge problem in our culture. We must understand that God the Father cannot simply forgive our debts. at the expense of his justice. You can't do that. Most people in our culture love to talk about God is love, God is love, God is love.
Yes, He is, and thank the Lord He is. And so they think because God is just loving. He'll forgive, which in their mind is He'll just simply overlook their sins. He'll turn a blind eye or he'll grant a pass. I just talked to a man this week who committed adultery, and he says, Until you helped me through Jerry Bridge's book, The Gospel for Real Life, come to understand the gospel, I used to think when I was committing those sins and wasn't getting caught.
That God was simply being gracious, quote, and turning a blind eye to me. And he said, when you had me read that God can't simply forgive my sin and violate his justice, he said, it just floored me. People think this. God cannot exalt one of his attributes, love, at the expense of his other attribute, justice. Yes, God is love, but the Bible is very clear God is also just.
Justice must always be satisfied. Always. Listen to what Jerry Bridges says. He says, God does not exalt his mercy at the expense of his justice. In order to maintain his justice, all sin.
without exception must be punished. Contrary to popular opinion with God, there is no such thing as mere forgiveness. There is only justice.
So here's the dilemma. How can God the Father answer this petition, forgive us our debts, without violating his justice? In addition, the debt that we owe to God for our sin must be paid. And we can't pay it. We can't pay this debt.
So what is the solution to this fundamental dilemma? How does God forgive our sin when we ask Him to in prayer? How can we have confidence to pray this prayer and that it will be answered? Here's the answer. This dilemma is answered that God the Father in His grace made a promise, a covenant, in which He will provide for the forgiveness of our sins to the serpent crusher Jesus Christ.
What we could not do for ourselves, God the Father in love for us, did in giving His Son. The Father, the Bible says, sent his only unique Son, the eternal Son, to come do for us what we can never do for ourselves. What is this? He came to fully keep the precepts of God's law in his life and to fully justify and satisfy the just penalty of the law and his death on the cross and pay on our behalf the debt that we owe that we could never pay. Where do we see this?
We see this in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is teaching us in the Sermon on the Mount that he provides the righteousness that is required to enter the kingdom of heaven. In Matthew 5, verse 20, he says, I am the righteousness that is required to surpass the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees if you want to get in. He says, this righteousness consists of both me keeping the precepts of God's law and fulfilling the penalties of God's law. Look back over in Matthew chapter 3 very quickly.
And look what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 3. Matthew tells us that Jesus, in Matthew chapter 3, beginning verse 13, Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. This is This is incredible because John was not giving, John the Baptist wasn't giving Christian baptism. This was a baptism of repentance according to what the law required for perfect repentance from sin. And Jesus came to undergo a baptism of repentance for sin.
We got a little problem here. Yeah. He didn't have any sin. He didn't need this baptism. And John knew that, so John would have prevented him.
He says, verse 14. John would have prevented him. Thank goodness God didn't let John prevent him. Just like Peter, you're not going to go to the cross.
Well, God forbid Jesus, you go to the cross. Get behind me, Satan. I've got to go to the cross, or else you have no hope for the forgiveness of your sin. John, I have to undergo this baptism because you have no hope to enter the kingdom of God unless I do this baptism for you. John would have prevented him saying, I need to be baptized by you.
I'm the sinner. And do you come to me, a sinner, to baptize you for repentance from your sin? Because you have no sin. I should be baptized by you. But Jesus, verse 15, answered him, Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.
You know what Jesus does here? Jesus has a vicarious repentance for you and me. He's substituting his repentance for our bad repentance. He brought this repentance to its completion on the cross, where he was stricken and smitten of God for our sakes. By his perfect repentance, Jesus paid our debt to the law.
He underwent a baptism of repentance so that you and I could undergo a baptism of grace. The only reason you're Pitiful daily repentance, and my pitiful daily repentance is ever accepted by the Father and He forgives, is because Jesus right here did it perfectly for me. And then look at Matthew chapter 5. What else about his life? Matthew 5:17.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law of the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished, all of it. That's him. Through his life, Jesus perfectly obeyed the precepts of God's law in our place.
God the Father, in forgiving us of our sins, credits to our account the perfect law-keeping of the law which Jesus accomplished, all of it, all of that perfected accomplishment that Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, he came to do. Is given to me, and that perfected righteousness covers me in the sight of the Father. And he looks at me and listen to what the Heidelberg Catechism says. How are we righteous before God? When Jesus covers me with this perfect law keeping, God the Father imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ.
As if I had never had nor committed any sin, and as if I had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me. That is stunning. The animal skins which God provided as a suitable covering for Adam and Eve, you know what that does? It points forward to Christ's perfect obedient life here. Which provides for me in the presence of a holy and just God a suitable covering.
To say no debt. No more debt, all is paid. Isaiah chapter sixty one verse ten Isaiah says, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. What makes our church worship? Here it is.
Listen. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exult in my God. Why? Because he has clothed me with the garments of salvation.
He has covered me with the robe of righteousness. That is Matthew 5:17 through 18. That is your robe of righteousness. The purpose. perfect life covering you before God.
Where Adam failed. Where Israel failed, where you and I have utterly failed, Jesus, the perfect Son and Servant, has given perfect repentance for us, has given perfect obedience to the law for us on our behalf before the Father, and all of that is given to us in salvation. He lived the kind of life that you and I should have lived, but have failed to live. And not only his life are we saved, but listen, in addition to his life, Jesus also fully suffered the law's penalties in our place. By his death on the cross, he perfectly satisfied.
God's law. Because God's justice requires the punishment of the least violation. You see, without Jesus' death on the cross, the forgiveness of sins is impossible. The author of Hebrews in chapter 9, verse 22 says, Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins, because God's penalty in his law has to be paid. Paul says in Galatians 3, verse 13, How was this penalty paid?
How did the shedding of blood bring about forgiveness of sins? Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. In Matthew chapter 26, verse 28, Jesus says, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. And so again, just as Adam was our representative in the garden, so Jesus is our representative in his life and in his death on the cross. By his death on the cross, he has perfectly and completely satisfied the penalties and justice of God.
He paid the debt, the penalty that we owe to God. As Isaiah 53, verses 5 and 6 say, he was pierced for our transgressions. That's substitution for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He paid it. He paid it. He assumed our moral obligation to pay the penalty that we owe to God for having broken God's law. And so, both in his life and in his death.
He paid our debt in full. And you know what that means? No debt remains. No debt remains. A creditor is said to forgive a debtor.
When he does not demand from him that which he owes him. I'm sure when I had that mortgage company, some of my debtors would have liked that.
So this Creditor blots out the debtor 's account from his books. without exacting any punishment as though it had been fully paid. Jesus says that's exactly what he does. He tells the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18, verses 21-35. He says, this is what my kingdom is like.
He tells the story of a servant who owed the king 10,000 talents. The debt of 10,000 talents would be the equivalent in our day of about $6 billion. That's an insurmountable debt. And in view of this crippling dead, Jesus says, the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me, and I will repay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.
That's the kingdom of God. In the same way, God the Father, for the sake of Christ's life and death on our behalf, releases us from all debt. Listen to the Apostle Paul in Colossians 2, verses 13 through 14. You Who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. God the Father made alive together with Christ.
Having forgiven us, all our trespasses. How did he do this? How did God the Father do this? How did he forgive? All your debt.
He has canceled the record of debt that stood against us with his legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it. To the cross. This is remarkable. Because of Christ, our lives through union with Him have a stamp across our paper of debt, and it says, When he stamps it, it says, paid in full forever.
And so, what does it mean to be forgiven? God the Father does not lay our debts to our account nor punish us for them, because He has laid them to His Son and punished His Son for us. Jesus is our mediator. In Hebrews chapter 8, verse 12, the author is writing on the superiority of the new covenant over the old covenant, the Mosaic covenant. And he quotes Jeremiah 31:34, where God promises.
Listen to what the promise is of the gospel. For I will forgive. I will forgive, I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. Do you know what it means for God the Father not to remember our sins? He remembers every He's omniscient.
He doesn't forget one sin of omission or commission I've ever committed. He never forgets them.
So when he says, I will not remember them, do you know what that means? It means that he promises, because of his son's life and death, whom we're now united to, never again, past, present, and future sins of omission and co-omission, to ever hold them to my account so that I have a debt to pay ever again. He won't hold them against us because he held them against Christ, and Christ said, Cha-ching, paid in full. Jesus Christ alone offers a sufficient sacrifice for sin, which brings To an end any notion of debt in our relationship to God. Do you know what the church is?
The church is not a debt economy, the church is an economy of grace. Through our union with Christ, we move from a debt economy to a grace economy. In a debt economy, One is constantly reminded that your debt Is owed. But in a grace economy, you are constantly reminded that your debt is forever paid in full. And that's called Welcome to the Church.
And if you don't hear that message proclaimed to you all the time, find a church where you do. Because you And I both don't believe this. We walk around like we are debtors. Tragically, believers so often think and speak as if they're still debtors to God. They live with a debtor mentality, and it's to misunderstand the gospel through the mid-19th century.
Debtors' prisons were a common way to deal with unpaid debt in Western Europe. And a debtor's prison is a prison for people who are unable to pay debt, and that's true. Tragically, how many people view their relationship with God, and they walk around like they are living in a debtor's prison, owing something to God. And Jesus teaches us here in the Sermon on the Mount: those who are in union with Christ, there is no longer any dead relationship to God. None.
None. There's a popular line in the popular hymn, Come Thou Fount, and it goes like this. O to grace, how great a debtor Daily, I'm constrained to be. You know what the problem is with that line? We're not debtors to grace.
We are debtors to the law. Grace has paid all that the law demands. In full, because grace isn't a substance, is a person. Jesus Christ in his life and death has done it. Debt is the wrong correlate to grace.
We can never be debtors to grace. Who has given a gift to him to receive a gift in return, Paul writes? For from him and through him and to him are all things, to him be the glory forever. We were once debtors to the law, but in Christ we are justified. And so there is no debt relationship.
whatsoever in our relationship with God. None. So listen to question 126 of the Hardware Catechism. What does it mean when We ask God the Father to forgive us our debts. We're asking for the sake of Christ's blood.
For the sake of his life and his death. Do not impute to us miserable sinners. Our many transgressions. nor the evil which still clings to us. You see, this gospel truth about the forgiveness of sins is the basis upon which we ask for the forgiveness of our sins.
It's the confidence. The gospel is what produces in me both a desire and confidence to ask my Father, forgive me for my debt that I owe to you. Jerry Bridges, he writes, he says, God has promised never to remember our sins, never to bring them to his mind again. What an overwhelming thought, what joy this should bring to our hearts. Think of some of your more recent sins.
Think on them. Perhaps this morning. Think on it right now. Think on it. Let it stare you dead in the face.
Think of that recent sin of which you are now ashamed. It may have been an unkind word. A resentful attitude or a lustful thought, whatever it might be, God says he has put it out of his mind, he will remember it no more. Debt paid. God the Father, for Christ's sake, forgives all our debt.
We ought to be eternally thankful for this. What a gift. What an inexpressible gift that the Father has given to us His Son, who willingly and voluntarily out of love paid our debt to the Father. And what better way To express our thanksgiving and gratitude, than to come to the Lord's table this morning and to receive. The assurance and guarantee that all past, present, and future sins of omission and co-mission are forever forgiven.
At this visible gospel, this visible gospel of the Lord's Supper is called the Holy Eucharist, the set apart to give thanks to God. Eucharist just means Eucharistao, the Greek, which what Jesus did when he gave thanks and broke the bread. We come to this table to give thanks. Because this is called a debt Free zone of grace. John Fawnville sends his thanks for listening today.
And before you hit the next episode, can I tell you about an encouraging book you might want to get soon? It's called Hope and Holiness: How the Gospel Enables and Empowers Sexual Purity. You're not alone if you've tried to conquer sexual temptations and tried all the methods available, only to find yourself feeling defeated again. This book may be just what you're looking for. In His Shepherding Heart, John shows that the gospel, not practical steps or more self-discipline, is God's provision for the power to live a life of sexual purity.
and it's available to every Christian. What I like is the book is available in three convenient ways, paperback, audiobook, or Kindle. Please look for the links that I put in the description and get a copy today. Does anyone come to mind who may like this episode? Please share with them and listen again to the Him We Proclaim podcast.
