• Benny Nalkara, CMI

The fifth petition in the Lord’s prayer – “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Mt 6:12), is the only petition in the prayer that we make with a condition. But more than a condition, it’s an assurance that we have already made ourselves eligible for God’s forgiveness by forgiving others. Only this fifth petition contains a pre-requisite like “ as also we have forgiven…”  by which Jesus expects us to testify before God what we are doing.

The plea for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer rests on three presuppositions. The first presupposition is that we all have our debts as rightly pointed out by St Paul: “all have sinned and deprived of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). From this conviction of sinfulness that we need to pray for the forgiveness. The second presupposition is that we ask our gracious God to forgive our sins and debts and thus acknowledge and reaffirm that he is a merciful and forgiving God. By begging for God’s mercy for the times that we have fallen short of loving God and loving our neighbour, we acknowledge that the Father’s mercy and forgiveness are able to penetrate our hearts to the extent that we are able to forgive our enemies. In fact Jesus’s appeal to us is that we need to be “merciful as the heavenly father is merciful” and this becomes a basic requirement for the membership in the Kingdom. The third presupposition is that a solidarity is implied in seeking, accepting and expressing forgiveness. Human forgiveness and divine forgiveness are inextricably inter-combined. Our forgiveness of our fellowmen and God’s forgiveness of us cannot be separated; they are interlinked and interdependent.

In the petition, three words are of prime importance. They are: sins/debts, forgiving and debtors or those who sin against us. Before a person can pray this petition he or she must have a sense of sin. The New Testament uses five different words for sin. (i) The commonest word is hamartia means a missing of the target. Sin is the failure to be what we might have been and could have been. (ii) The second word for sin is parabasis, which literally means a stepping across. Sin is the stepping across the line, which is drawn between right and wrong. (iii) The third word for sin is paraptoma, which means a slipping across. It is the kind of slip which has made us lose our self-control. (iv) The fourth word for sin is anomia which means lawlessness. (v) The fifth word for sin is the word opheilema, which is the word used in the body of the Lord’s Prayer; and opheilema means a debt. The word “debts” does not necessarily mean financial obligations, as shown by the use of the verbal form of the same word. It means a failure to pay that which is due, a failure in duty. Some translations and liturgical texts use the word, “trespass” instead of “debt.” Anyway, in the Lucan version, the word used is “sin.”

“Forgiving” in the petition is presented both a divine and human act. We assert in the prayer that human act of forgiveness is a prerequisite for the divine act of forgiving the sins or debts. The words for “forgiving” in all modern languages like German, Italian and French,  carry also a shade of “giving.” There is an act of giving in forgiving- giving the self, giving away the stubborn nature, giving pardon, giving the feeling of success to someone etc. This act of giving in forgiving is a Christ-like attitude as he is depicted as “the one who is born to give and forgive.” Those who see the highpoint of his parables, teachings and actions understand that loving mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation are the quintessence of his teaching. In the Sermon on the Mount, he presented “unconditional forgiving love” as the hallmark of Christian discipleship as against the Jewish practices of just revenge and retaliation.

The beneficiaries of the act of human forgiveness is presented in then payer as “those who sin against us” or as the “debtors” or “trespassers.” “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” The literal meaning is: “Forgive us our sins in proportion as we forgive those who have sinned against us.” Jesus says in the plainest possible language that if we forgive others, God will forgive us. The point is not so much that forgiving is a prior condition of being forgiven, but that forgiving cannot be a one-way process. There are also scholarly assumptions that this petition for the forgiveness is the forgiveness from the final judgement.

We become the children of God, only when we can emulate Jesus Christ, who became the face of the merciful Father through forgiving the trespasses of even those who persecuted and put him into death. We all need to forgive and be forgiven, over and over again, if our life together is to be life-giving, and if we are to be the agents of healing and reconciliation in the world that Christ calls us to be. Arriving at forgiveness is a desirable and necessary goal, not only because we are commanded to forgive one another “seventy times seven,” but also because forgiveness will rid our hearts of the toxic presence of resentment, anger, and bitterness. Moreover, forgiving love is the identity marker of the children of God.