Prayer For Forgiveness

Minister:
Date: AM
Text: Matthew 6, 18; Lord's Day 51
Psalters: 391, 143, 362, 83
  1. The trespass and debt.
    1. To know forgiveness we must truly understand the reality and depth of sin (appreciate health after being sick).
      1. Sin is any transgression of God’s law (I John 3:4), i.e., any deviation from right, anything not to the glory of God.
      2. Sin, because it is against God, incurs "debt" (guilt), which makes the sinner justly worthy of punishment.
    2. To ask to be forgiven is to confess, to admit that we did wrong and owe the greatest debt.
  2. We seek forgiveness from the One against whom all sin is committed.
    1. To forgive consists of two things:
      1. To wipe out the debt or to be loosed from it, so it is as if they had never been committed (Psalm 51:1).
      2. And it includes the positive blessing of righteousness.
    2. The only way God can forgive is if the debt is really paid (He cannot just forget sin).
      1. Forgiveness is only by atonement.
      2. Only the Son of God could bear God's eternal and infinite wrath (II Cor. 5: 19), and earn perfect righteousness for elect.
      3. The gospel is the good news and glad tidings that our sins are paid for in full.
    3. This petition is also asking for the assurance of forgiveness.
  3. The experience.
    1. While salvation rests solely on divine grace (and not human accomplishments) those who receive it are active: believe!
      1. Included in faith is the ability and the will to forgive.
      2. Unless we forgive men, we will not be shown we are forgiven (Matt. 6:14,15).
    2. Our forgiving is the on-going striving, for God's sake, not to hold it against them with the goal of forgetting it.
      1. It is to cast from our minds all anger and desires for revenge and the promise not to think about the sin.
      2. Transactional forgiveness (telling them) takes place when they confess.
    3. Our desire to forgive is evidence of our having been forgiven, of the real change God has made in us.
      1. To want to forgive is unnatural - we have to know divine forgiveness to do it.
      2. God forgives for His own sake (Isaiah 43:25) and we forgive for God's (Christ's) sake.
    4. Jesus shows the need for every child of the heavenly Father to be striving to forgive.