Forgiven and Forgiving

Nearly 20 years ago, on October the 1st, 2006, a man by the name of Charles Roberts went into a one-room schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, and he shot 10 schoolgirls there, killing five of them. It was an Amish school. It was a close-knit Amish community. And as the whole nation's attention was riveted on what was taking place there in Pennsylvania over the next days and weeks, the nation had an up-close vantage point to one of the key tenets in the whole Christian faith.

The CNN report two days later, October 3rd, 2006, captured some of what was seen. They write: A man burst into the Pennsylvania schoolhouse Monday and shot five young girls to death. The Amish community, who relates To deal with the tragedy, expressed a range of emotions, but anger was not one of them.

Rita Rose, a local midwife and friend who worked amid the Amish community, told NBC that the mother of one of the victims, a 13-year-old girl, has already forgiven the gunman. They all have. She holds no ill will toward the shooter. She's very forgiving. Christ forgave us, and we in turn forgive.

And they honestly have forgiven, she said. Even last night, there was no longer any anger toward the shooter. The night of the shooting, a mental health team arrived at a local firehouse where a gathering of 40 Amish neighbors came to find information and to find answers to questions about dealing with trauma.

The psychologist that arrived that night was surprised that they were not only talking about supporting the families of the victims, they were discussing ways they could help the family of the killer, a man who lived nearby, not Amish. He told NPRs, All Things Considered, quote, they were talking about how to support his family.

They were planning to send a contingent over, perhaps bringing over some food. They had already gotten to the place of forgiveness. As Christians, we are called to walk in forgiveness. That is, like our Lord Jesus Christ, we are to be people who know how to forgive and who extend forgiveness to those who sin.

Against us. Jesus teaches us this in his model prayer. And that prayer is recorded twice in the Gospels, once in the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus made it a part of his larger teaching about what it means to be a citizen in his kingdom. But he records it another place in Luke chapter 11 when the disciples came to him and they asked him, you know, Lord, teach us to pray.

And I want us to turn to Luke 11 this morning to follow Luke's account of this prayer and to focus in on what is in his account of this prayer, the fourth petition that has to do with forgiveness. So our text will be Luke 11, verses 1 through 4, specifically verse 4.

Luke 11, 1 through 4. And if you're familiar with the New Testament or the Bible at all, you know, the New Testament begins with Matthew, Mark, Luke, then John. So Luke is the third book in the New Testament. If you go to chapter 11, we're just going to read those first four verses of that chapter.

You follow along in your copy of God's Word as I read from the English Standard Version. Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. And he said to them, When you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive. Everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. Well, in that last verse, we learn something, not just about prayer and how we ought to pray, but we learn something about ourselves.

We learn that we need forgiveness. We also learn that we need to grant forgiveness. We need ongoing forgiveness, and we need those who regularly, in an ongoing way, extend forgiveness. Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. Those are the two primary lessons I want us to focus on this morning in that, what is Luke's fourth petition in this prayer.

The first thing we learn is that we need forgiveness. Now, that's pretty self-evident if you have been a Christian or are a Christian, if you've thought about the Christian faith very much, because Christianity has at its very heart this idea, this concept of sins being completely forgiven by God.

We come to Christ initially for forgiveness because we are made aware that we have indeed sinned against God. Ecclesiastes chapter 7, verse 29 summarizes our condition like this and why we need forgiveness. It says, God made man upright, but they have sought out many things. Schemes. And those schemes have all undermined the righteousness with which God originally created the human race.

When He made the first man, He made Him in His own image, and He made him sinless. Isaiah 59, verse 2 expresses it like this: Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear.

We were made upright. When sin came, there was a separation between us and God, and we no longer are in a right standing with Him because we've offended Him. We have sinned against Him, and we need forgiveness. Well, sin is any violation of God's law, and sin has created a breach in our relationship with God.

It has put enmity between us and God, as Paul puts it in Romans 8, 7, and 8. What this means is that as sinners, we are naturally, by nature, we're enemies of God. We're born with this need of forgiveness because we are born in sin. King David, the greatest king in Israel's history, came to realize this about himself when God exposed his sin to his Consciousness to his soul, his heart, and he began to see something of the depth of what he had done.

In his Psalm of Repentance, Psalm 51, he prays, Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. But that was true not just of David. It's true of every one of us. It's true of you. It's true of me. David goes on and says in Psalm 58, the wicked are estranged from the womb.

They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. If you have children, have you ever noticed that you didn't have to teach them how to sin? You know, when children act up sometimes around our church, I'll look at the mom and dad say, who taught them to do that?

You know, you don't have to teach them to do that because they are born sinners. We don't become sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinful. In chapter 5, in chapter 1, 2, and 3 of Romans, Paul explains this concept theologically. Those first three chapters of Romans are very significant for this because in the first chapter, in verses 16 and 17, he announces the theme of the whole letter, which is the gospel of God's grace.

He said, I'm not ashamed of this gospel because this gospel saves everyone who believes it. In this gospel is found the righteousness of God. It's received by faith. It's from faith to faith. But then, having announced the theme, he immediately starts talking about sin. And he goes on for three chapters to describe sin.

He finally ends with this categorical declaration that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And then in chapter 5, he ties in how we who are sinners today relate to the first sinner, Adam. He puts it like this in verse 12 and verse 18.

He says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, that's Adam, and death through sin, because that's the consequences of sin, so death spread to all men, that's me and you and everybody you know, because all sinned. Sinned. You and I sinned in Adam at the very beginning because God constituted us as a human race of image-bearers.

And Adam was our representative. He was our federal head before God. And when he sinned, we sinned. Paul reiterates this at the end of that section of Romans 5 when he says, One trespass, Adam's, led to condemnation for all men. We teach our kids, in Adam's fall, we sinned all.

And we are sinners by nature as well as By choice. And because we are sinners, we need forgiveness. And because we need forgiveness, we come to Christ to receive forgiveness. And that's why God sent him into the world. That's what Jesus' mission was. He came focused upon that cataclysmic event on the cross where he would die to pay for the sins of his people.

Paul puts it like this in Ephesians 1:7. In him, speaking of Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. Thus, throughout scripture, both Old and New Testament, where God is speaking to people and setting before them the way of peace, the way of forgiveness, there are these wonderful calls, these invitations that are always attached.

For example, in Isaiah 1:18, he says to his wicked people of Judah, Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. That's a picture of forgiveness. And though they be red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

That's a picture of what happens whenever you trust Christ. Your sins are covered by his death on the cross. Payment is made in full. And you are no longer. Longer liable for your sin because you are forgiven. In Acts 3:19, when Peter is on Solomon's portico, he preaches and he says, Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, blotted out, erased, removed.

That's forgiveness. And that's one of the two primary gifts in the new covenant. This new covenant that was anticipated, that was prophesied in the Old Testament, that Jesus came to seal and secure by his own blood. When the prophet Jeremiah was prophesying, telling of his coming in Jeremiah 31, verses 33 and 34, God says through the prophet, I will put my law within them in this new covenant.

I will write it on their hearts. He does something inside of a person, new birth, new nature. That's one of the great blessings and benefits of the new covenant. The second is, I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. That's incredible. Can you imagine having your debt canceled?

Having every last one of your sins forgiven by God? All the things that haunt you and your memory late at night when you can't sleep and you're rehearsing your life and you have a Regrets, God says, I'll remember them no more. They won't be charged against you ever again.

When you come to Christ through faith, God gives you a new heart and he gives you a new record. Your hearts change inwardly, your record is wiped clean forever in heaven. That's forgiveness. When Jesus died on the cross, he secured the forgiveness of sins for his people. And when you trust Jesus, you receive that which he accomplished by his life and his death and his resurrection.

Your record's wiped clean in heaven. No sin that you have ever committed will ever be charged against you again in God's record book. That's why Paul says, there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Now or ever, if you're in Christ, you're forgiven. You're free.

When you initially trust Jesus, and God gives you a new record and a new heart, sin is not immediately, permanently eradicated from your life. The new nature that we have as believers in Jesus is a nature that nevertheless has sin remaining in it until we are finally and fully glorified when the Lord Jesus himself returns.

And everything is made new. And so this new nature that loves God, that trusts Christ, that wants to honor God, that wants to live differently, is a nature that has to continue to fight against sin that remains. It doesn't rain in our lives, but it remains. And because we continue to sin, we need ongoing forgiveness.

We need to seek ongoing forgiveness throughout our lives. 1 John 1:9 teaches us this. If we confess our sins, that is, if you go on, you continually confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This was David's testimony as well.

In Psalm 32, that wonderful psalm about forgiveness, he describes what happened in his own life as a child of God. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all the day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me, my strength dried up as in the heat of summer.

In other words, I just didn't confess my sin to you. I didn't look to you for ongoing forgiveness. And then he says, I acknowledge my sin to you. I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Well, how does this work? How does ongoing forgiveness that we need work with the death of Christ that has once and for all time secured our forgiveness? Forgiveness. How can it be that Christ objectively paid for our sins on the cross and that God definitively forgives our sins when we trust Christ and yet we have an ongoing need of forgiveness?

In other words, why do we need to continue to pray? Forgive us our sins. Well, our sins were certainly and finally paid for on the cross once and for all time. But we need a constant application of that objective accomplishment on the cross throughout all of our lives.

We need the application of forgiveness as long as we live. Forgiveness is personally experienced and applied as we continually seek it and confess our sins and look to Christ and remember that it is in him that God accepts us. Jesus gives a great illustration of this in John chapter 13 when he's in the upper room with his disciples before he is arrested and will be crucified in just a few hours.

And on that occasion, John 13 tells us what happened. Jesus, we read, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going back to God, he rose from supper, that last supper, and laid aside his outer garments and taking a towel, tied it around his waist.

Then he poured water into a basin and he began to wash the disciples. Feet and wiped them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon, who said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet? Jesus answered him, What I am doing, you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.

Peter said, You will never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I do not wash you, you have no share with me. Simon Peter said to him, Lord, then not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. And Jesus said to him, The one who is bathed does not need to wash except his feet, but is completely clean.

And you are clean, but not every one of you. He's speaking of Judas. What Jesus is teaching us here is that, yes, you come to me, you're washed, you're clean, you're forgiven. But you must go on seeking to be cleansed and forgiven based upon what Christ has done.

You don't need to be justified all over again. Your sins are completely paid for, but the application of that justification, that sense of forgiveness, that relief that comes from knowing that God does not condemn you, is an ongoing, ongoing need and an ongoing provision that we have in the Christian life.

In that sense, when we come to Christ initially, we're washed completely. But daily forgiveness, daily foot washing in that sense. Is an ongoing need throughout all of our lives. And we experience this as we don't cover up, don't forget about, don't pretend, but actually confess our sins regularly to the Lord and pray, forgive us our sins.

Brothers and sisters, we should never be afraid to confess sin. We should never be afraid to honestly assess what we have done or what's inside of us. Sometimes it's frightening to think about. But we should be willing to look honestly because we know that whatever we find, whatever we see, whatever clarity comes to us in whatever moment that might be, Jesus has already known about it and already died for it.

And we're free, and we can confess it and experience and have applied to us again that grace of forgiveness. Martin Luther understood this very well when he came to understand the gospel. And so actually, the very first of his famous 95 theses that he nailed to the church door at Wittenberg says this.

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, Repent, he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. We need ongoing forgiveness, so we live in ongoing repentance. We are open before God, and we confess our sins as he makes them known to us, and as we become aware of what we've done or not done that we should have.

We go to him knowing that in Christ there's no condemnation, there's forgiveness. We can pray, forgive us our sins, and we can do it with complete confidence. Our Lord God will apply the death of Christ to us continually. And our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is right now interceding for us in heaven continually.

I love the way Charles Wesley has captured this vision of Christ interceding for his people in that wonderful hymn, Arise, My Soul, Arise. He has that stanza in it that says, Five bleeding wounds he bears, received on Calvary. They pour effectual prayers. They strongly speak for me. Forgive him.

Oh, forgive, they cry. Don't let that ransom sinner die. And there's no way that anyone who has been ransomed by the blood of Jesus Christ could ever be cast away from God. So, brothers and sisters, make confession of sin and asking for ongoing forgiveness, a part of your regular prayers to the Lord.

He instructs you to do this. And because of Christ, you can do this, and you can do it with full confidence, knowing that he hears you, and he forgives you for Christ's sake. But I'm sure that in a congregation like this, there are some who are here this morning, and you've never Yet, dealt with your sin before God.

And in behalf of this church, I can say without any hesitation that we're delighted that you came. We're glad you're here. But we want you to stop and consider what God has caused us to stop and consider so that you might experience what we've experienced. You might receive what we received.

Do you realize that you have sinned against God, that you're created in the image of the God before whom one day you'll stand to give an account? Have you ever thought about that? What are you going to do on that day with all of your crimes that you've committed against Him, all of your violations of His commandments?

Well, you'll have to give an account for yourself by yourself if you do not have an advocate, if you do not have someone willing to plead your case, and there is someone willing to plead your case. There is one. God sent His only begotten Son into the world for people like you and me, so that sinners, so that criminals against Him might be forgiven justly and know that in Christ, because of Christ, God no longer treats us as enemies, but welcomes us as children into His family.

If you've never looked to Christ, confessing your sin, asking Him to forgive you, bowing yourself humbly before Him, calling Him Lord, God brought you here today so that you might hear from His voice. Word, this incredible good news, this incredible, amazing, wonderful gift of forgiveness that's available for you.

And I invite you, I call you for Christ's sake to come and trust Him where you are as you are. You don't have to jump through hoops, you don't have to go through rituals. You have to confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, and you'll be saved.

So trust Him right now, where you are, just from your heart. Call upon Christ. Say, Lord Jesus, forgive me, save me. He delights in saving sinners. Jesus teaches us that we need forgiveness. We need ongoing forgiveness. But the second part of this petition in the Lord's Prayer goes on to teach us that having been forgiven, we must forgive.

Forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone who's indebted to us. And that's an interesting phrase there about debt. Because sin incurs debt, it fails to pay what is owed. We owe God complete obedience. We don't do that. So we owe a debt to God of perfect obedience that we cannot provide.

There's a relationship between God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others. You can hear it in the way that petition. Is worded when Jesus tells us, say this when you pray. There's a relationship. And that relationship can be easily misunderstood. And so we need to be clear on what we're not being taught to do and say and think.

What's not being said is that we somehow merit God's forgiveness by forgiving other people. That when we forgive other people, that means God will forgive us because we've done what we're supposed to do and God will do what He's supposed to do. That's 180 degrees opposite of what the gospel message is in the Bible.

We are saved by God's grace, not by doing anything, not by stopping anything that we are doing. We're saved because God, in great love and mercy and grace, sets before us His Son, the Lord Jesus, and calls us to turn from the way we've been living and to trust Christ.

It is all of grace. This petition is also not saying that God's forgiveness is to be patterned after our forgiveness. We're not praying, God, look at how I forgave this guy. You forgive me the way I forgave him. Again, that's 180 degrees opposite. Our forgiveness is to be patterned after his forgiveness.

That's Ephesians 4.32. Paul says, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Just as God has forgiven you, that's the pattern you are to forgive others. Well, what is being said? What's being said in this second part of this petition is that forgiving others and being forgiven by God are vitally linked.

They're inseparably connected. Jesus assumes his disciples will live in forgiveness toward other people. And having been shown forgiveness by God, that they will continue to stand in ongoing need of forgiveness from him. And having received that forgiveness, they will become forgiving people. He understands what happens to a person when you're made right with God, when you're forgiven.

You're changed, so that you become more and more over the course of your life like Christ, and you learn to forgive. John Stott has rightly said about this: that this certainly does not mean that our forgiveness of others earns the right to be forgiven. It's rather that God forgives only the penitent, only those who are repenting, and that one of the chief evidences of true penitence is a forgiving spirit.

Forgive us our sins as we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. An unforgiving person cannot pray this prayer. For an unforgiving person to pray this prayer is to pray constantly. Condemnation on himself. To know Jesus savingly is to not only be forgiven of sin, but it's to be set free so that you're able from your heart to forgive others' people who've sinned against you.

See, grace received always results in becoming gracious. Receiving forgiveness results in a forgiving spirit. We gain more insight from this to see the way that Jesus elaborated this point when he taught it in Matthew's gospel, Matthew chapter 6, verses 14 and 15. He elaborates by saying, For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

Well, yeah, because that's what Christians do. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Why? Because if you're not living in forgiveness, then you've not been forgiven. This is not prescriptive, telling us how to get forgiveness. It is descriptive, telling us how we can know that we have forgiveness from God.

This attitude and spirit of forgiveness is put on display in the life of the Old Testament Saint Joseph. His brothers lied about him, lied to their dad, sold him into slavery, wrecked his life. And at the end, when they came and stood before him, and he's now a great leader in Egypt.

And they needed provisions that he could supply. He didn't hold their sin against him, against them, even though they'd sinned in horrible ways. You meant it for evil. God meant it for good. There's a forgiving spirit in Joseph. We see this in Stephen, the deacon, after he preached and was being stoned.

The scripture says he lifted his eyes to heaven and he said, Lord, do not charge them with this sin. He's living in forgiveness. We see it in Jesus Christ, our Lord, and his dying breaths on the cross. Father, forgive them because they don't know what they are doing.

Our forgiveness doesn't earn God's forgiveness, but there is a connection. And if a person is unwilling to forgive others, then he or she has no reason to hope that they have received forgiveness from God. The most helpful teaching we have on this is in a parable that Jesus tells in Matthew chapter 18.

Peter comes to him, he's already beginning to understand some of this forgiveness and how it works. And so he's asking him, Lord, if my brother sins against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven? Thinking he's being pretty generous. And Jesus says, no, 77s are 77 times.

And then he tells this parable to explain it. I want to read it to you. It's in Matthew 18, starting in verse 21. Jesus says, Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is. May be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents.

And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and his children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him his debt.

But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. And seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me, and I will repay you.

He refused, and he went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then the master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay the whole debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

That's a sobering statement that Jesus makes at the end of that parable. And when you unpack the parable a little bit, you see the point Jesus is making about comparing the sins that we've committed against God with the sins that other people have committed against us. 10,000 talents.

A talent was about a year's salary, a year's salary. So let's say $50,000 to $100,000. 10,000 years' salaries. You do the math, and you see that you're talking about 10 to 20 billions of dollars. Impossible to pay. No way it can be even fully calculated. And he was forgiven.

What does he do? He turns around and withholds forgiveness from somebody who owes him maybe two or three months' wages. And Jesus says, if that's the way you live, you're not going to receive forgiveness from God because that's not the way God's people live. That's not the way people who have truly been forgiven live.

Having been forgiven, we forgive. The king in this parable was merciful. And the servant had been freed from his enormous, unpayable debt. But in his ingratitude, he goes and acts very unlike his king. And he treats his servant maliciously. And as a result, the king turns him over to be punished until he is paid.

And what does he owe now? He owes far more than the 10,000 talents. He owes the honor and the respect of his king that he had robbed him of by the way he treated other people. He didn't represent his king who forgave him by withholding forgiveness from his servant.

Brothers and sisters, it's true, we can never merit God's forgiveness. His forgiveness is not contingent on our forgiveness, it's not based upon whether or not we forgive other people. But there is an unbreakable connection between our forgiveness of others and God's forgiveness of us. And those who have truly been forgiven by God truly forgive others.

That doesn't mean our forgiveness will always be automatic. It doesn't mean it'll always be easy. And it might mean that you have to work through things and fight to come to that place of forgiveness. And nor does it mean when you forgive someone who has sinned against you grievously that that automatically means things go back to the way they were or that you have to submit yourself to that same kind of abuse, that you're automatically reconciled.

No, they need to repent. There can be no reconciliation without repentance as well as forgiveness. But what is required of us is to live in forgiveness, not to allow enmity to lurk. Live in our hearts toward people who sinned against us. A.W. Pink has a great admonition on this point.

He writes, We need to pray much for God to remove all bitterness and malice from our hearts against those who have wronged us. But to forgive our debtors does not exclude our rebuking them. And where public interests are involved, having them prosecuted. If you want to develop a forgiving spirit, then meditate.

Meditate on what God has done to forgive you. Meditate on the cross. Think about the cross. Think about what took place when Jesus, the eternal Son of God, who became a man, was pouring out his life's blood in order to redeem rebels like you and me. Think about the message that that cross broadcasts.

This dawned on me several years ago in a fresh way when I was thinking about the cross and what the cross says about me. I trust Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I declare him to be my king. My life is his. He has saved me. When I say that, you know what I'm declaring?

I'm declaring to the whole world. Tom Askell is such a wretch, a scoundrel, a sinner. He's so wicked. Took the death of God's Son to save him. That's true for every Christian. The cross declares our sins against God are so great that nothing less than the death of his only begotten Son could redeem us from our crimes.

What can somebody do to me that compares? What can be said about me that comes close to the truth? The truth is so much worse. How in the world, having been forgiven such grave crimes against my Creator, my Father, how can I harbor resentment and be unwilling to forgive those who sin against me?

One reason we are told to pray the Lord's Prayer and this petition is because doing so will regularly confront us with the depth of God's forgiveness of our sins and our ongoing need of forgiveness day by day. We need to be forgiven. We need to grant forgiveness. And I wonder if this sounds foreign to some of you.

If it just sounds like science fiction or something, way out there beyond reality. I mean, how can parents whose teenage girls were murdered? Murdered by a maniac. Forgive. Is that even real? Is that even right? Should that be the way we respond to those who murder our family?

Well, if you take an honest look at your own sin and think seriously about what you've done to God, ask God to show you how serious your sin is against Him, you'll see that even the most wicked, heinous things that can be done to us don't begin to compare.

And while there ought to be consequences for crimes and sins, I'm not denying that, in terms of us and how we respond to those who sin against us, we've got to look to Christ. We've got to remember Christ, what God has done for us in Christ. He laid down his life for us, his enemies, in order to reconcile us to God and made a full atonement of our sins.

And if you've not experienced forgiveness, today's the day that God invites you to trust Christ and be forgiven. And brothers and sisters, every one of us walked through the doors today, every one of us has been sinned against. If we wanted to talk about ways that we've been victimized, everybody has a story.

Every one of us. What are you doing with that? How are you living with that mistreatment, that injustice that's been perpetrated against you? You've been forgiven much. Forgive. So that you can pray. Forgive us our sins because we have forgiven those who are indebted to us. That's what the power and the grace of God in his gospel of Jesus Christ provides for us.

Oh, may we learn to live in it, to walk in it. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus. We thank you for the forgiveness of sins that we have in him. We thank you for the way that you gave up your own son.

You didn't spare him, but you delivered him up for us all, and how the confidence that we can have is secure, knowing that in him you will give us everything that we need, that we too might be forgiving people. Help us to live like that. We pray. In Jesus' name, amen.