Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Matthew 6:12 | Date: May 3, 2026 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Take your Bibles, if you will, please, and turn to Matthew 6. Matthew 6, again, we’ve been working our way through what we call the Lord’s Prayer, although it is not a prayer that he himself prayed entirely, but it is a prayer that he gave us to pray, a model prayer that sets up the categories for us in our praying.

Matthew 6. After giving instruction about the abuse of this spiritual exercise of prayer by various sides, he tells us, verse 9, “Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

We have seen then that this is a model prayer that Jesus has given to us. It consists basically of two parts. That is the opening address, “Our Father,” and then we have six areas of petition that are given to us. They fall broadly into two categories. First of all, the first three petitions pertain to God. And that is, verse 9, “hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And then we have three petitions that pertain to us: “Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts, and lead us not into temptation.”

So we saw last time—it has been some time now—”give us this day our daily bread.” We learned that God is not unconcerned with our needs, and with that broad category, he is inviting us to come to him with our petitions for everything that is needed, from our daily bread, the food that we need to eat, our jobs, our job security, our house, our clothing, whatever it may be; he invites us to come with those needs to him. And we saw that this prayer request is a confession of our dependence upon God. And so in that sense, “give us today our daily bread” is very much an exercise of worship, that we express our dependence upon God in that request and ask him to provide for us what we need in our daily lives. And we look to him then as the giver of all things that are good, and we ask him to supply those needs.

We also pointed out in this broad category, the first three petitions are petitions that pertain to God. Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. With that first, we learned that when we pray—I always want to qualify because I don’t want you to be misunderstood—it doesn’t necessarily mean every time you bow to pray, every time you bow to pray at the mealtime or whatever. But broadly speaking, when we bow to pray, we ought to think first in terms of these petitions that pertain to God. Think of what matters to him, his purpose in the earth to make his name great and so on. So we pray thinking first of all for those concerns that pertain to God himself: His name, His kingdom, His will being done.

With that as our context, then we’re brought to these matters that pertain to us. And we saw first time, we pray for our daily needs. And now today we come to verse 12: “forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.” We live, Christians, we live by forgiveness. That is God’s merciful pardon of our sins. On our way in, there was confession of sin, there was repentance for our sin, asking God to save us, and now he’s telling us that here that is to be an ongoing exercise. Jesus gives us this as a provision for continued fellowship with God. We’ll see more of that as we go along. All right, let’s take this in three steps quickly.

What Is Confession?

Number one, what is confession? Confession of sin is not mentioned explicitly here. It’s clearly in view. “Forgive us our debts.” We’re acknowledging debts, sin as debt to God. So first of all, what is confession? This prayer provides the categories. It doesn’t elaborate on the specifics, but he’s telling us to pray for forgiveness for our debts. So what is confession?

Confession has been described, I think, helpfully as taking sides with God against ourselves. Now the word confession, I’m sure you’ve heard it, means—the etymology of it indicates—to say the same thing. So it’s to say the same thing as God says about our sin. I like this definition more though, this taking sides with God against ourselves. Calling up our sins, acknowledging them, acknowledging them as sin, owning up to the guilt of it, and then this entails that humbling exercise of going to God with our offenses, acknowledging them as sinful and wrong, and then asking for his forgiveness. It entails a view of our sins as an intolerable intrusion into the relationship with God. We’ll see more of that as we go along, but it ends up leaving us owing as it were, so debts, sin as a debt, and of course in confession, the model for that is Psalm 51, that I’m sure you’re all familiar with, where David gives us a model of what repentance looks like. Here’s a man of God, a man after God’s own heart, who had sinned grievously, and he came to God in confession of sin, not holding back at all, but acknowledging the guilt of it, acknowledging God’s justice in any decision that he would make concerning him, but asking for mercy.

Now the metaphor here is important: forgive us our debts. Sin is represented in the Bible in various kinds of ways. Sin is—I have a list of them here—sin is a trespass, a violation of a rule. It is a violation. It is a deviation from the standard that is given. It is a shortcoming or a failure to do what God has done. In that sense, some of the words in their etymology indicate a missing of the mark. That’s a failure. Sin is also a rebellion. Sin is also perversion. Sin is pollution. All of those things are true of every sin.

And in fact, our confession of sin ought to recognize our sins in those kinds of categories when we confess our sins to God. But aside from all of those, sin is also represented in Scripture as a debt, an action that leaves us owing, as it were, owing to God something. God deserves our complete devotion, our complete loyalty and love and obedience, and we fail to do that, we’ve stolen from Him, as it were, we’ve taken from Him something that rightfully belongs to Him, we’ve failed to honor Him as He ought to be honored, and now we are indebted because of our sins. We’ve come up owing. And this entails both sins of commission and sins of omission—sins that we commit, doing things that ought not to be done, but sins of omission, leaving undone things that ought to be done. And in every sense, then, our sins are rebellion, they’re trespass, they’re violation, but they also—and the metaphor here is that of a debt.

Ask for Forgiveness

Jesus says we’re not to come to him only acknowledging our debt, confession of sin. He tells us in this, our second step then, to ask for forgiveness. What is forgiveness of sin? Our sins are portrayed in the scriptures as an accumulating of debt, an incursion of debt with reference to God.

In fact, this is a prominent metaphor in the scriptures. And one of the most famous statements of it is just a really kind of a haunting statement in Romans chapter 2 and verse 5, where Paul the apostle speaks of those outside of Christ in their sins as storing up wrath against the day of wrath. So each sin, it’s like putting it in the bank, and putting another one in the bank, and another one in the bank, and another, and one day in the day of judgment, that will be withdrawn in judgment. Storing up wrath against the day of wrath.

Well, forgiveness then is a canceling, a pardoning of that sin or release from that debt that we’ve incurred with God. Now again, the removal of sin in the Bible is—I would love to take at some point, I think I will take the time to chase these down a little bit further, but just give you a taste of it here.

The Bible speaks of the forgiveness of sins with a varied kind of imagery. It is spoken of, forgiveness is spoken of in spatial terms, spatial imagery. So we’ll have statements like their sins are removed as far as the East is from the West. Or again, our sins are cast into the depths of the sea. Or in Isaiah, there’s one of God putting our sins behind his back. It’s a spatial kind of a concept, removing sins away in that sense. Sometimes, and very closely related to that, forgiveness is spoken of as hiding our sins. So again, we have language like our sins being covered, our sins being blotted out, or famously in Psalm 51 verse 9, David asks God to hide his face from our sins.

So we have sinned, and what he asks is, God just turn away like you’ve never seen it before. Forgiveness is spoken of in those terms. Forgiveness is also spoken of in terms of divine forgetfulness, where God promises to remember your sins no more. Fascinating language, the God of omniscience, who knows everything and all, but yet it’s spoken of as though he’s forgotten it, forgiven. Another way the Bible speaks of forgiveness is that of purification. Sin dirties us, as it were, and so you find the language of being washed, cleansed, purified. Forgiveness is also spoken of in terms of freedom and liberation.

We’re released from the consequences of sin. We’ve sinned against God. What we deserve is his judgment, but he releases us from it. We’re let go. We’re free from the consequences of our sin. And also, forgiveness is spoken of in accounting terms. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. Our sins have been committed, but God doesn’t count it. He doesn’t count it against us.

Well, all of that to say that in this request, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” we come to God not pretending that we have not sinned. We come with a full and a frank acknowledgement of our sin, confess it frankly, but ask that God somehow not hold us accountable to it. Let it go. Hide it away. Hide your face from it. Throw it away. Delete it. As though you’ve never seen it. Forget it. As though it never happened.

On What Ground Can We Ask God to Forgive Us?

Well then that raises the next question and that is, on what ground can we ask God to forgive us? And of course there we find that forgiveness is very much a Christian word. It calls to mind the gospel of Jesus Christ where he has come, taken the place of sinners, and in taking their place has paid the debt of the sin. The debt that we owed, he made his and paid it in our place. And so—and this is important to recognize—the forgiveness of sins that we request is not asking God just to overlook it merely. Forgiveness of sins that we are asking for is a forgiveness that is grounded in justice. Christ has stood in my place and we go to God and say, “For Christ’s sake, because of him, forgive my sins.” And so the forgiveness of sins in the Bible is never a frank, simple dismissing of them. Sins are forgiven on the ground of a payment of the penalty for sin by a substitute in our place. We’re forgiven by substitutional payment of our sins.

So on the way in, we confess to God, “I’m a sinner. I have no plea at all. I’ve got nothing to ground my request in except that Jesus has stood in the place of sinners.” And since he has stood in the place of sinners, we ask, “Save me for Christ’s sake.” In Jesus Christ, we are released from the consequences of our sin. We’re forgiven the debt because he’s paid the debt in our place. And that’s the fundamental blessing of justification. We’re guilty before God, the judge. Our debt is canceled because Christ has paid it and has been wiped. Our slate has been wiped clean because Christ has paid the penalty for us.

So this is a gospel grounded petition. But notice here, this prayer does not have God in view as the judge. God here is in view as our Father. That’s the way we started the prayer back in verse 9: “Our Father in heaven.” So this is a family prayer. He’s not saying that we should petition him as we did the first time for that initial forgiveness by which we’re made right with God. But this is a confession and a request for forgiveness because our sin has violated the relationship. There’s been an intrusion into the relationship and we ask God to forgive us, still for Christ’s sake, but forgive us of our sins by which we’ve violated this relationship with him. If you can imagine in a family setting, there’s been an offense. There’s got to be a reckoning, some kind of repentance that is involved and an asking for forgiveness. That’s the scene here. We go to God as our Father, and we ask for forgiveness.

There’s an interesting passage in this regard in John chapter 13, where you remember Jesus is washing the disciples’ feet, and Peter objects and says, “You can’t wash my feet. That’s just not right for you to wash my feet.” Jesus says, “Well, if I don’t wash you, you’ve got nothing to do with me.” And Peter, very typical of Peter, “Okay, then don’t just wash my feet, wash me all over.” And Jesus responds and says, “No, you’ve been washed.” This is a daily cleansing that we’re speaking of, something to maintain that fellowship with God. So this is going to God with an honest and yet a gospel-informed acknowledgement of our sin and asking God to forgive us for Jesus’ sake. A classic verse in this regard is in 1 John 1 and verse 9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The wording there is important. God is faithful, faithful to his promise to do what he said he would do, forgive us; but he’s just in doing it. Faithful and just and righteous to forgive us our sins. God’s forgiveness is grounded in a satisfaction of his righteous demands through Jesus Christ.

And just like that first day, we go back every time we have sinned and on that same ground, we ask for forgiveness. So how do we pray this prayer? One, we go to God, frankly acknowledging our sins as sin, not holding back, renouncing the sin. Last week, we looked at the doctrine of repentance that’s entailed here, not just in the first day of our Christian life, but all the way through. We go to God, acknowledging our sin as sin, frankly throwing it up before Him and owning our guilt for it, taking sides with God against ourselves, and then two, asking God to forgive us, to wipe away the debt that we’ve incurred and asking Him to forgive us for Christ’s sake. And so there ought not to be in our prayers of repentance simply a wallowing in our sin, but there ought to be also a recognition that we can pray as Christians that provision for sin has been made in Jesus Christ. And so, yes, we come and we acknowledge our sins. Then we turn to Jesus and say, “On the ground of what he has done, Father, forgive me.”