After only two posts in this series (part 1 and part 2), it has become obvious that many people are unfamiliar with these core concepts of Anabaptism that come directly and explicitly from the pages of scripture. One thing seems “obvious” to one man, while the exact opposite is “obvious” to another man.
Today, as we continue to discuss forgiveness, your mind is going to be blown as we discuss something quite important and extremely familiar to Christians: the Lord’s Prayer. And we’ll talk about something you probably never thought about, even though it is—pardon the term—obvious.
But first, let’s bring two previous statements back into focus:
See, sins are debts owed to another. The sin-debt can only be held by the victim of the sin. One cannot forgive—release a sin-debt uncollected—another unless one holds the debt of another. I cannot, for example, forgive you for speaking an unkind word against your sister, brother, mother, or father. Such a sin is not against me personally, and so there is nothing for me to forgive, nor do I have any right of justice against that person. The only way I can possibly forgive someone is if they have sinned against me and I, in theory, possess the right of retribution as found in the Law
Anyone, at any time, can choose not to enforce the sin-debt they hold against another, just as anyone who holds a financial debt or slavery debt against another can forgive it at any time of their choosing. No one can gainsay a man’s right to forgive, to dole out objectively unfair payments, just as the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard attests.
You have probably always been taught about sin in moral, ethical, behavioral, or spiritualized terms. Your church may well never have taught you about sin in financial terms, but that is exactly what Jesus did. Such is the power of propaganda and indoctrination, that the way Jesus chose to explain sin is a viscerally foreign concept to many Christians.
Now, let’s look at the Lord’s Prayer.
The term for “indebted” is opheiló which literally refers to financial or material debts. Jesus used the language of legally vacating financial debt in order to declare/ask that we be forgiven of our sins just as we forgive everyone else who may have sinned against us, those to which we hold the sin-debt.
Does that sound familiar? It should!
That’s right. In the Lord’s Prayer, you are literally asking God to forgive your sins only according to how you judge others according to their own indebtedness to you. You are basing your own forgiveness on whether or not you forgive others.
But Christians these days do not quote the Lord’s Prayer from Luke, they quote it from the longer version of the prayer found in Matthew.
9 So pray in this way: ‘Our Father, who is in heaven, may your name be treated as holy.
10 May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts [G3783], as we also have forgiven our debtors [G3781].
13 And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the Wicked One.
Did you catch that? In Luke Jesus used the word for sin, but in Matthew he used the term for debt, an obligation that is owed. In the Greco-Roman world, this was a financial or material debt which would result in servitude/slavery or imprisonment if unpaid.
When you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you are literally asking God to cancel your debts according to how you have canceled the debts of others. You are asking that you not be sold into slavery or imprisoned.
Now I want you to pay special attention. Because immediately after the Lord’s Prayer—the very next verses—Jesus explains what he means by the forgiveness of debts in the Lord’s Prayer:
14 For if you forgive people their transgressions [G3900], your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
15 But if you do not forgive people their transgressions, your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
There is no ambiguity!
Moreover, debts include all transgressions: financial, material, tresspassing, rebellion, misdeeds, and even lapsing (i.e. failing to repent).
As if that were not enough, two verses before giving the Lord’s Prayer, he gives this instruction:
Many Christians have recited and repeated the Lord’s Prayer thousands of times. And yet, they still argue that forgiveness is conditional on repentance, even though they are specifically and literally asking God not to forgive them if they do not forgive others. They have repeated the Lord’s Prayer in vain, over and over, without thinking about what they are actually asking for God to do to them. And this after Jesus specifically and explicitly told them not to repeat prayers in vain!
Do not pray the Lord’s Prayer while failing to forgive unconditionally
I talk a lot about inversion on this blog because most doctrinal confusion stems from the inversion of truth, not from personal interpretation. This is one example.
What Jesus is doing with this talk of forgiveness is referencing the ancient practice of Jubilee. I’ll let Nathan Hobby explain:
The jubilee year consisted of four practices:
- leaving the soil unplanted (fallow)
- cancelling debts
- letting slaves go
- each family gets back its original property.
Jesus’ focus on sin, debt, repentance, forgiveness, and redemption is focused on the second and third aspects of the Jubilee. Recall again what I wrote previously:
Anyone, at any time, can choose not to enforce the sin-debt they hold against another, just as anyone who holds a financial debt or slavery debt against another can forgive it at any time of their choosing. No one can gainsay a man’s right to forgive, to dole out objectively unfair payments, just as the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard attests.
That is “canceling debts” and “letting slaves go.” It is Jubilee.
The Jubilee vacated debt regardless of whether or not there was a full repayment of the debt. Indeed, the whole point of the Jubilee was that it was unmerited and unconditional forgiveness. It explicitly wiped out generational debt that had no hope of ever being paid back. It didn’t matter if the person freed from debt deserved it or not.
And so, if this debt includes all sins and all wrongdoings, then it must be unconditional as well for non-financial debts. This is, indeed, precisely the case:
In contrast to the fallow fields, the second and third policies of the jubilee are central to the teaching and thought pattern of Jesus.
In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says, literally, ‘remit us our debts as we ourselves have remitted them to our debtors.’ Numerous translations ‘correct’ Jesus’ words by substituting ‘forgive’ and ‘offences’.
This is misleading. The Greek word, opheilema means precisely a monetary debt. So, in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus is not just vaguely telling us to pardon those who have bothered us. No – he is telling us purely and simply to erase the debts of those who owe us money – in other words, to practice the jubilee.
In Matthew, Jesus adds an extra clause at the end of the Lord’s Prayer to make sure people understand that the principle about erasing debts apply to wrongs as well. [Mt 6:14-15]
When you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you are asking for a Jubilee, a remittance or cancelation of your debt. You are asking that your debts—your sins—be vacated without respect to merit. Notably, you have done nothing to deserve forgiveness. Not even repentance can eliminate a sin-debt.
And, critically, you are attesting that you will do the same for others.
Continuing…
The Lord’s Prayer is a jubilee prayer. It means ‘The time has come for the faithful people to abolish all the debts which bind the poor ones of Israel, for your debts toward God are also wiped away (for that is the gospel, the good news).”
Traditional Christianity, especially the Magisterial versions, failed to understand Jesus when he taught about “binding and loosing” in the context of church discipline, forgiveness, repentance, and excommunication:
The Jewish Rabbis thought that to bind and loose was to decide doctrines and the fates of others: to decide sins to retain or sins to release. For Roman Catholics, the power to bind and loose is a core power reserved for Peter’s successor. They view binding and loosing the same way the Pharisees did: as negatives of each other (opposites) with the power and authority to decide. Thus, they believe they hold the power and authority to forgive or to withhold forgiveness. That viewpoint is, inadvertently, shared by Protestants who reject unconditional forgiveness.
But for Jesus, binding (of the wounds) and loosing (of the captives) is the Jubilee. Binding and loosing are both positives. To wit:
Because “to bind [up]” and “to loose” both refer to the Good News of remitted sins — to wit, the binding up the brokenhearted and the loosing of the captives — that “power of binding and of loosing” can by no means be understood to refer to the power to retain and remit sins. Such a rendering would conflate the Good News of wounds bound up with the bad news of sins retained.
To understand binding and loosing, you must understand Jesus’ mission of debt cancellation: the forgiveness of sin.
Continuing…
Under Herod’s policies, Galilean landowners were often enslaved by huge debts and taxes. They would borrow from bankers to pay up. This was only transferring the debt. The bankers would eventually seize the property and to recover their money, it was common practice for the bankers to sell the whole family into slavery and auction off the family’s possessions.
‘The unmerciful servant’ of the parable in Mt 18:23-25 is in this situation. He is in increasing debt, loses property and then loses his liberty. But then the jubilee year is proclaimed and the king forgives the servant his debt.
Notice how the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 (which includes the Lord’s Prayer and the teachings on forgiveness and judging) is intimately tied with Matthew 18 (regarding forgiveness and excommunication). This is why I have cited both passages together so heavily in this series.
Continuing…
So far so good. But the story has a bitter end – one that reflects Jesus’ disappointment that most of the Israelites, even the humble had refused him the jubilee. The freed servant meets one of his fellow peasants who owes him money and he demands for him to pay up. He doesn’t extend the jubilee grace he was given to others. The servant is put before the king. The king orders that he be sold into slavery for there is no divine jubilee for those who refuse to apply it on Earth.
As in the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, many Christians do not want Jubilee. They consider it to be injustice. To wit:
The redemptive work of Christ is completely unmerited. You and I absolutely deserve no less than death and destruction for our crimes against God. There is nothing we could do—no amount of good works nor any amount of repentance from evil works—that could ever save us. God has chosen Christ to pay the penalty by transferring the sin-debt onto Christ’s account—by way of his death on the cross—and thereby cancelling our own. The debt has been paid. All you need to do, in order to receive your debt cancellation, is to give your allegiance to him.
It is not abetting, because Christ has already paid the penalty for each and every crime that has ever been or ever will be committed. Even the sin of lapsing—the failure to repent—has already been forgiven. We need only accept that payment for it to be tallied on our personal account.
But some do not consider this to be acceptable. It is just like I have said regarding suffering (in “On Suffering” and in comments here, here, and especially here and here):
The same is true of forgiveness, of God’s desire for Jubilee. Many a man is not interested in what Christ has to offer. They find Christ’s notions of redemption and debt-cancellation to be unjust. They want—no they demand—that the guilty be punished unless they affirmatively and explicitly demonstrate repentance sufficient to satisfy those who refuse to release the sin-debt.
Actually, in many cases, while they acknowledge that sins are forgiven in heaven, they nevertheless demand that people be punished in full on earth for their sins. They will not allow that releasing the sin-debt by the debt-holder means a release from the consequences of that debt (i.e. slavery or imprisonment; bondage). And so, they do not freely forgive.
They “release” the sin-debt from heaven—though that is God’s right alone—while attempting to retain the sin-debt and collect it on earth. But as Jesus declared, for those who refuse to apply the Jubilee on Earth, the Jubilee will not be applied to them in heaven either.
The underlying, generic simmering hatred of the Manosphere towards women is governed—and driven—by the spiritual refusal to forgive. Regardless of what the ‘sphere does at the periphery, it is fundamentally cursed at its core because it lacks Christ’s spirit of forgiveness:
I’m considering whether or not to continue this series. I have two possible topics (1) the relevance of repentance to forgiveness; and (2) the full context of Matthew 18. Both of these would expand on the concept of forgiveness and its applicability.
I do have a post on a different topic ready to go for Monday, but I could postpone it until I finish writing and publishing this series.
Would readers find this helpful?
Does that sound familiar? It should!
Matthew 7:1-2
Do not judge, so that you are not judged. For by the standard with which you judge others, you will be judged, and by the standard with which you measure, it will be measured to you.
That’s right. In the Lord’s Prayer, you are literally asking God to forgive your sins only according to how you judge others according to their own indebtedness to you. You are basing your own forgiveness on whether or not you forgive others.
But Christians these days do not quote the Lord’s Prayer from Luke, they quote it from the longer version of the prayer found in Matthew.
Matthew 6:9-13
9 So pray in this way: ‘Our Father, who is in heaven, may your name be treated as holy.
10 May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts [G3783], as we also have forgiven our debtors [G3781].
13 And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the Wicked One.
Did you catch that? In Luke Jesus used the word for sin, but in Matthew he used the term for debt, an obligation that is owed. In the Greco-Roman world, this was a financial or material debt which would result in servitude/slavery or imprisonment if unpaid.
When you pray the Lord’s Prayer, you are literally asking God to cancel your debts according to how you have canceled the debts of others. You are asking that you not be sold into slavery or imprisoned.
Now I want you to pay special attention. Because immediately after the Lord’s Prayer—the very next verses—Jesus explains what he means by the forgiveness of debts in the Lord’s Prayer:
Matthew 6:14-15
14 For if you forgive people their transgressions [G3900], your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
15 But if you do not forgive people their transgressions, your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
There is no ambiguity!
Moreover, debts include all transgressions: financial, material, tresspassing, rebellion, misdeeds, and even lapsing (i.e. failing to repent).
As if that were not enough, two verses before giving the Lord’s Prayer, he gives this instruction:
Matthew 6:7
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
Many Christians have recited and repeated the Lord’s Prayer thousands of times. And yet, they still argue that forgiveness is conditional on repentance, even though they are specifically and literally asking God not to forgive them if they do not forgive others. They have repeated the Lord’s Prayer in vain, over and over, without thinking about what they are actually asking for God to do to them. And this after Jesus specifically and explicitly told them not to repeat prayers in vain!
Do not pray the Lord’s Prayer while failing to forgive unconditionally
I talk a lot about inversion on this blog because most doctrinal confusion stems from the inversion of truth, not from personal interpretation. This is one example.
i wonder (as Boxer once said)WHY ARE NONE OF THE LOUDMOUTH RP® leaders NOT YELLING ” LANGLY TROLLS, MKULTRA, OR SERVANTS OF SATAN” HAVE TWICKED US WHEN IT COMES TO THE Lord’s PRAYER?
BUT WE KNOW WHY AS THEY WHOLEHEARTILY ONLY AGREE WITH THEMSELVES BEING FORGIVEN FOR BEING ”BLUEPILLED”,”CUCKS & SIMPS” & NOT ”OTHER” ”BLUEPILLED”,”CUCKS & SIMPS”.
IOW?
THEY THINK THEY CAN KEEP WHO THEY WANT OUT OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
LIKE SOME FIRST-CENTURY JEWS THOUGHT TOO, BUT WERE TOLD INSTEAD:
Would readers find this helpful?
YES i think it would be helpful.
Maybe even for some who are atheists like Madalyn Murray O’Hair,her son Jon Garth Murray, and her granddaughter Robin Murray O’Hair- i remember Jack Van Impe saying on a 2002 episode of his show how Madalyn Murray O’Hair had written in her dairy :
“Somebody, somewhere, love me.”
As told here too:https://hutchcraft.com/a-word-with-you/your-most-important-relationship/the-deepest-cry-of-the-human-heart-8822
I’m Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about “The Deepest Cry of the Human Heart.”
I don’t know about you, but that cry for love in Mrs. O’Hair’s diary touches something inside me. In a way, her cry is the cry of every human heart, “Somebody, somewhere, love me.” And for many who do believe in God, there is still that awful vacuum. It’s possible to believe in God, to do God’s things, and still miss the deep experience of His love. And without that love, the emptiness and loneliness in our heart is never satisfied, no matter how many human loves we experience.
Well, you’re probably nowhere near an atheist. It could be that you’ve invested a lot in good things that could easily become other gods: your career, your children, your projects, maybe your friends, your charity work, even your spiritual pursuits. But the deep, aching sense of aloneness doesn’t go away. Every earth-love has ultimately either failed you or failed to satisfy you. So, after all these years, your heart is still whispering, maybe even shouting, “Somebody, somewhere, love me.”
Our word for today from the Word of God describes the only love that can ever truly satisfy this deepest cry of the human heart. It’s found in Romans 8:38-39. “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” There it is…unloseable love, unconditional love, unmeasurable love.
God wants you to experience that love more than you can imagine, so much that He sacrificed the One He loves the most for you. That’s His one and only Son, Jesus. The reason we’re missing that love is because we’ve pushed God out of our lives with our sin. We’ve lived “my way” instead of God’s way, over and over again. And that’s left us separated from God and from His love with a death penalty on our heads. But God just lavished His love on you by sending Jesus to actually die in your place.
But you’re still missing this love that your heart wants so much until you respond to it by placing all your trust in Jesus Christ to remove that sin-barrier and give you eternal life that only He can give. You’re that close to finally making ultimate love your own. Because He’s alive today. He walked out of His grave under His own power.
If you want to begin this personal love relationship with Jesus, the most important thing is that you tell Him that right now in words maybe something like this. “Jesus, I was made by You and for You. I’ve lived for me. I know that’s sin. I know I deserve the penalty for it. You didn’t deserve the penalty, but You took it. You loved me so much You died for me in my place. And today I’m loving You back. I’m giving myself to You.”
i know the ”tough guys” RP (& otherwise) out there love to yell things like what Derek wrote yesterday:
https://derekramsey.com/2025/04/09/on-forgiveness/#comment-22942
Imagine going to heaven for all eternity with members of that policial party!
…or…
Imagine going to heaven for all eternity with my ex-wife!
…or…
Imagine going to heaven with women, whom God made inferior to men!
I think that certain commenters would have difficulty imagining spending eternity with you and I or vicious/vindictive ex-wives, though heaven will be populated with many murderers, adulterers, rapists, liars, and theives. This is probably why we are all labeled as servants of Satan. It makes it easier to deny us forgiveness and salvation.
i used to think(after i lost my first girlfriend to her family moving away) i had to be the toughest ”tough guy” there was , just to survive this present world then i started thinking God had empathy for birds of the air and lilies of the field(so he should care about i too) as told here:
27 And who of you by worrying and being anxious can add one unit of measure (cubit) to his stature or to the [a]span of his life?
28 And why should you be anxious about clothes? Consider the lilies of the field and [b]learn thoroughly how they grow; they neither toil nor spin.
29 Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his [c]magnificence (excellence, dignity, and grace) was not arrayed like one of these.
30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and green and tomorrow is tossed into the furnace, will He not much more surely clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 Therefore do not worry and be anxious, saying, What are we going to have to eat? or, What are we going to have to drink? or, What are we going to have to wear?
32 For the Gentiles (heathen) wish for and crave and diligently seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows well that you need them all.
33 But seek ([d]aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness ([e]His way of doing and being right), and then all these things [f]taken together will be given you besides.
34 So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own. Sufficient for each day is its own trouble.
Footnotes
Matthew 6:27 Alexander Souter, Pocket Lexicon: the word translated “cubit” is used as a measurement of time, as well as a measurement of length.
i know deep down old GBFM friend Boxer also wanted:
“Somebody, somewhere, love me.”
But he still had too much against his mom who left him, his dad & brother & sister as i remember him telling it?
This is also why i say YES to:
Would readers find this helpful?
Alright, will do. I had originally intended the first post to be a solitary one-off post. It has (so far) grown into 5 total planned parts! Funny how that works.
That’s what it looks like. The people who have harmed them have not shown sufficient remorse and made sufficient restitution, and so do not deserve to be saved by God.
There will be husbands—with adulterous wives—who do not make it to heaven, while the wife and the man she cheated on her husband with make it in. Forgiveness is not premised on how much better or worse each person is from the next.
The only person you have any say over whether or not they go to heaven… is yourself.
Also relevant :
https://guideposts.org/positive-living/the-healing-power-of-forgiveness/
The Healing Power of Forgiveness
Pablo Diaz
3 min read
Pablo Diaz reminds us of the healing power of forgiveness and encourages us to have the power to always forgive.
The Healing Power of Forgiveness
Pablo Diaz
3 min read
Pablo Diaz reminds us of the healing power of forgiveness and encourages us to have the power to always forgive.
The healing power of forgiveness.
Forgiving oneself is hard to do, let alone forgiving others. But in order to move on, forgiveness is key. Dr. Karl Menninger, a well-known psychiatrist, once said that if he “could convince the patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75 percent of them could walk out the next day.” This proves that achieving forgiveness can set people free from their troubles and hardship.
The book, Reflections on Forgiveness and Spiritual Growth, contains a chapter about the findings from a national survey on Americans’ thoughts about forgiveness:
More than 83% reported that they would need God’s help in order to forgive someone.
Only 15% indicated they could forgive someone on their own.
People who tend to be forgiving report more satisfaction in life.
While it may be difficult to find forgiveness, holding on to anger and resentment can be detrimental to our spiritual and physical well-being.
i’m sure i first heard of Dr. Karl Menninger, a well-known psychiatrist and his “could convince the patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75 percent of them could walk out the next day.” from pastor Charles/Chuck Crismier around 2008/9 when i was last really listening to him & his radio show, mainly about the mostly unknown outside of churches) CHRISTian divorce epidemic and where he would also say that ”2nd marriages were adultery” & ”even in domestic violence-forgive & reconcile”, ”E. If there is adultery after consummation of the marriage, Matt. 6:14-15, I Cor. 7:10-11,
forgiveness is mandatory. If the guilty party is un- Col. 3:12-13
repentant or repeats, forgiveness is still required regardless of whether there is full reconciliation of
relationship. This is the higher N.T. standard”
&
”G. God hates divorce! God’s hatred of divorce is not Mal. 2:15-16
primarily due to the unfathomable pain it causes to
the parties and their family, but to the damage it does
to HIS Kingdom on earth. It perverts the godly seed.
H. God will not consider or bless a person, people, con- Mal. 2:13-17
gregation, ministry or nation that hardens the heart in
divorce, unless there is true repentance.
I. Is there any exception to God’s clear prohibition of Matt. 5:32, Matt. 19:9
divorce? Yes… but only if “pornea” or fornication is
discovered at the time of the consummation of the
marriage that had previously been undisclosed. This
“exception” is only mentioned in the book of Matthew,
which scholars believe was written to a Jewish audience.
This was the Jewish marriage practice and is affirmed
by God in the relationship between Christ and the
church. At this time, professing Christians and Israel
are “married” in the sense of exchanging vows, but the
marriage has not been consummated. Paul declares, he
seeks to “present you a chaste virgin to Christ” (II Cor. 11:2).
But if we are not chaste (walking in holiness and purity) at
Christ’s coming, He can “put us away” for pornea or
Spiritual fornication. There is no blanket exception
permitting divorce for adultery. This is the only
interpretation that brings consistency to the entire Scripture.
IV. IF DIVORCED
A. Remain unmarried, or I Cor. 7:10-11
B. Be reconciled to your spouse I Cor. 7:11
V. IF DIVORCED or DESERTED by UNBELIEVING SPOUSE
A. You may permit but not encourage leaving. I Cor. 7:15-16
B. You are not required to pursue so as to keep things I Cor. 7:15
constantly stirred up, but are called to peace.
C. You are NOT free to remarry, because God made you I Cor. 7:10-11
“one flesh.” (See “IF DIVORCED”)
VI. REMARRIAGE
A. Remarriage is not an option for a true follower of Rom. 7:1-3, I Cor. 7:10-11; 7:39
Christ, unless your spouse dies. This is because you
are joined as “one flesh” by and before God, regardless
of feelings, and that “one flesh” status continues
“until death do us part.”
B. Remarriage while your spouse is still living constitutes Rom. 7:1-3, Mk. 10:11-12
“adultery.”
C. God wants you holy and chaste before Him more than Lev. 20:7, Col. 1:22, I Pet. 1:13-16,
He wants you happy. The first call of a Christian II Cor. 11:2, Matt. 6:33
believer is to “seek first the Kingdom of God and his
righteousness.” Pursuit of holiness must always
preempt pursuit of happiness.”
{ANY OF THAT SOUND SIMILAR TO WHAT Derek has said}
ALL of that is found at his site on this pdf https://saveus.org/wp-content/uploads/marriage_divorce_remarriage_3-16.pdf
To say pastor Charles/Chuck Crismier stood out on Christian radio is/was a giant GREAT BOOKS FOR MEN word puzzle/riddle -like understatement!
”E. If there is adultery after consummation of the marriage, Matt. 6:14-15, I Cor. 7:10-11,
forgiveness is mandatory. If the guilty party is un- Col. 3:12-13
repentant or repeats, forgiveness is still required regardless of whether there is full reconciliation of
relationship. This is the higher N.T. standard”
Do you see now why pastor Charles/Chuck Crismier is so little known among ” toughguys” now?