The petition immediately preceding this one is the prayer for daily bread. We are absolutely dependent upon God for our very existence; so our Lord teaches us to ask God for the food—the material bread that is to sustain our physical life from day to day. But “man shall not live by bread alone.” There is another hunger than hunger of the body—there is a hunger of the soul; and what the soul hungers for is pardon, forgiveness, and the peace forgiveness always brings. So when we have prayed for bread we have not come to an end. We have another prayer to offer. We have a larger request to make. We have a greater boon to ask—“Give us this day our daily bread, AND forgive us our sins.”
The question has often been asked, “Is life worth living?” By some the question is answered without reservation in the affirmative, by others in the negative. For myself, I am not prepared to answer either “Yes” or “No.” My reply would be, “It all depends.” Life, it seems to me, is not worth having if it be not lived in the sunshine of God’s smile. Life is not worth having if God’s face is turned away from us. Life is not worth having if our sins interpose themselves like a black frowning cloud between us and the Eternal Light. To make life worth living, life must be made happy and blessed and peaceful, and before life can be made happy that barrier of sin must be removed, and we must walk in the light of God’s countenance. The prayer for bread is a prayer for life—for mere existence. But mere existence may be a doubtful boon. To some the prolongation of life simply means the prolongation of misery. Why should men pray for the continuance of a life which is radically wretched? There are multitudes in our world more inclined to pray for swift death than for long life. They say, with Charles Kingsley, “The sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep.” No, it is not mere life, it is not life at any price, but it is the blessed, the peaceful life we want. So we go on to pray for a gift greater far than the gift of bread; we go on to pray for that which alone can make life tolerable, welcome, really worth living; we go on to pray for mercy, pardon, reconciliation, peace. “Father, forgive us our sins.”
“Sin” is an ugly word, a word that stands for the ugliest, most terrible fact in the universe of God. The world was fair and bright till sin entered it; all its wretchedness is the result of sin. Man was pure and happy till sin entered; his foulness and broken-heartedness are the result of sin. The Bible looks at this terrible fact of sin, and fails to find a single word large enough to describe it in all its many aspects of horror. It employs various words for this one terrible thing according as it views it from different standpoints. Looking at it from the standpoint of the true end of human life, sin is a “missing of the mark.” The chief end of man is to glorify God. The sinner fails in that. He misses the mark. Sin from this point of view means failure, defeat, disaster. The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of Law, the Divine Law written in the nature and on the conscience of man, and brands sin as lawlessness. Every single sin is a trespass, a transgression, and overstepping of the bounds. The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of prudence, and stigmatises sin as folly—the most stupendous and senseless of all follies. The sinner is a man who, for a few moments of delirious excitement, barters away his immortal soul. The Bible looks at sin from the standpoint of God, and sin then becomes disobedience, or, as in the text quoted from Matthew, it becomes “debt.”
Perhaps we are too apt to think of sin only in its effect upon ourselves. We think of the blight it brings upon human character and the ruin it makes in human lives. It is terrible to us because it always brings a curse with it. We fear and dread sin, not always because of its own intrinsic horror, but because of the penalties it inevitably entails; so that all too often our very fear of sin has its roots in selfishness, and springs out of self-love. I want to say to you that we shall never see sin in its naked horror, we shall never see it in its awful hatefulness, until we look at it from another standpoint. We sin not against ourselves alone, but against God. David, in the great crime of his life, had sinned against Uriah, whose blood he had caused to be shed, and against Bathsheba, the partner of his sin, and against his own soul; but when under the faithful speech of Nathan he was brought to see that awful sin of his in its true light, he lost sight of himself, and Bathsheba and Uriah; he could only think of the God he had flouted and outraged and grieved, and this was the agonised cry that broke from his lips, “Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight.” Then comes in the enormity of sin. It is sin against God! Let me illustrate what I mean from our ordinary human life. Say that a son who has been loved at home and has been the pride of his mother’s heart, falls into disgrace and is brought up in the police courts charged with some shameful deed. If such a son has any sensibility at all, his sin will appear hateful to him, not so much because it has brought disgrace and loss of liberty to himself, but because away at his home a mother’s heart is well nigh broken with shame and grief. That will be the keenest stab of pain such a lad will suffer. It is the picture of his heart-broken mother that will make him loathe and despise and hate his sin. It is then we shall see the hatefulness of sin, when we occupy David’s standpoint, and say, “Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned.” Even though sin entailed no loss to the sinner, involved no penalty, brought with it no curse, it would remain still utterly loathsome and hateful if we only realised that every sin of ours caused grief and pain to the heart of the eternal God, our loving Father in heaven.
Now that is the point of view from which sin is regarded in this prayer. It is against God! Matthew uses the word “debt.” As Dr. Morison says, “When we sin there is something in our act for which we become liable to God. Formerly He had a claim upon us; now He has a claim against us.” The sins of our past history are included in this word “debt.” They have not done with us, though we try to persuade ourselves that we have done with them! Ah! what a relief it would be if we could only be sure that sin when once committed was over and done with for ever! But it is not so! These sins of ours enrol themselves in a great book of accounts; not one is omitted; not one is overlooked; not one is forgotten. Do we try to persuade ourselves that somehow or other the sins of the past have been lost sight of? Do we try to flatter ourselves that they have been buried in the dust of the years? That is a vain hope. There are no mistakes, no omissions in the eternal account books. The ink of those books never fades. There every sin is enrolled. There you see them—a long, black, damning list. That is your DEBT. Sins of commission—the evil words we have spoken, the evil deeds we have done, they are all there. Sins of omission are there as well. In fact, I fancy that it is to sins of this class that the word “debt” specially points. “Debt” is something we OWE. In relation to God it is something we owed to Him and failed to pay. So it stands here for the many things we ought to have done, which we have left undone.
There are some of us who perhaps flatter ourselves that we have never committed any flagrant sin. We are not blasphemers; we are not drunkards; we are not profligates; we have never committed theft or adultery or murder; we have never been guilty of any crime that has brought us to public shame; and on the strength of that we are half inclined to think that the name “sinner” is not applicable to us. But notice how this word “debt” lays hold of even the most respectable of us. There are certain things we owe to God. We owe Him reverence. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him obedience. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him service. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him our heart’s best love. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him the first place in our thoughts and affections. Have we given it to Him? We owe Him complete self-surrender. Have we given it to Him? Ask yourselves these questions. Probe your hearts with them. Face them frankly and honestly. Have you given God perfect obedience, the best love of your hearts, the first place in your lives? Oh, how such questions humble us! How they cover us with shame and confusion! Looking back over my own life, I can see how my years have been marred and disfigured by my failure to give to God what He has a right to expect. I can see that I have not reverenced Him as I ought; that I have not obeyed Him as I ought; that I have not placed Him first, as I ought. When I begin to ask myself if I have done what God expects from me, my pride all disappears, my heart is pierced as with sharp swords, my self-satisfaction is torn to shreds, and I am humbled to the dust; for as I look back every day tells its tale of things left undone which I ought to have done, and these sins of omission rise up before me—a mountain load of debt which I owe to God.
Debt! what a terrible word that is to every true and honest man! There are multitudes who would prefer to bear privation and poverty rather than run into debt. The workhouse is bad enough, but better the workhouse than “debt.” But will you suffer me to say that “debtors” we all of us are? “We have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” We have come short—we have given God less than His due; He has a claim against us; we are “in debt” to Him. And the debt is one that cannot be expressed in the figures and coinage of earth. It is a debt that money can never pay. I have heard sometimes of men who, when they have found themselves in financial difficulties, have called their creditors together, and have said to them, “If you will but give me time, I will pay you all in full”; and from time to time we read in our newspapers of honourable men discharging with interest debts they had incurred years before. Can we do something like that with this debt we owe to God? Can we work it off in the days and years that are to come? I cannot hold out to you any hope of doing that. Work as hard as you like to please God to-day, when the day is done, what will you have to say? Just this, “We have been unprofitable servants—we have only done what we ought.” Only what we ought—there is no margin, nothing over, which you can apply to the reduction of the old debt. The arrears of obligation are untouched. May I venture to say that, before night comes, by some sin or other, you will have added to the debt? It would be as easy to bale the ocean dry as to hope by your own efforts to pay this debt. It would be as easy—nay, it would be infinitely easier—to count the sands of the seashore than to remove this mountain load of obligation. Try your best, and you will fail as Paul failed, as Luther failed. Spite of your best efforts the debt—that crushing debt—goes on increasing. Well, what can you do? You can do nothing! Sin past and present, sin of commission and omission, sin—that long, black, damning record that stands against your name in the eternal account book—what can you do with it? How can you remove it? How can you blot it out? How can you bury it out of sight and mind? How can you erase out of the book that fatal story? You say you must have something done, or that debt will strangle you. What can you do to be delivered from this body of death? My brother, you can do nothing; you cannot pay the debt, you cannot blot out the sin, you cannot erase the record from the book. Do your best, and at the end you will be “in debt.” But you say, “Can nothing be done? Am I, then, doomed to ruin and to death? Is there no way of paying this debt?” Here is the gospel in a nutshell. Here is the good news, old as the centuries, but new in your ears and mine to-day. Something can be done! You can do nothing, I can do nothing, but God, the God against whom we have sinned, He can do everything. He can remove that mountain load of debt. He can blot out that fatal record in the book. He can erase every entry. He can bury our sins out of sight for ever. We can never pay that overwhelming debt; but He, He can give us our account back with “Settled” written at the bottom of it. Oh yes, here is the Gospel: Sin in man, but forgiveness in God; debt in man, but mercy in God. “Where sin doth abound there grace doth much more abound.”
Listen, as to what God will do with your sins and mine! He will cancel the debt! He will blot out the handwriting that was against us and put it out of the way, nailing it to the Cross of Christ! He will erase that fatal record in the book! He will remember our sins against us no more. As far as the east is from the west, so far will He remove our transgressions from us. Listen to His invitation and His gracious promise, “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool.” This is the Gospel—this is the good news. There is something greater, stronger even than the sin of man, and that is the grace of God. I can see a limit to human sin. I can see no limit to the Divine mercy.
Plenteous grace with Thee is found,
Grace to pardon all my sin.