Prayer & Confession
Proverbs 18:19
An offended friend is harder to win back than a fortified city. Arguments separate friends like a gate locked with bars.
Offense = choosing unforgiveness
No wonder Jesus taught us to:
Matthew 6:9-15 (NLT)
Pray like this:
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
10 May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today the food we need,
12 and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
13 And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.
Today I want to focus on verse 12:
Matthew 6:12 (NLT)
12 and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
In fact, I want to get even more specific and focus on the first half of verse 12.
Matthew 6:12
12 and forgive us our sins,
But before I zoom in, I want to point out that, yes there is a relationship between confession (forgive us of our sins) seen in the first half of verse 12 and forgiveness of others (as we have forgiven those who sin against us) seen in the second half. But that relationship is not transactional.
God does not forgive us because we have forgiven others. It is not a one to one, tit for tat situation. Rather, confession and forgiveness and confession are flip sides of the same coin in that they are both the fruit of submission to his lordship.
Flip side of the same coin is a particularly apt idiom as you may remember the famous story from the Gospel of Mark in which the religio-political leaders of Jesus day tried to trap trick him into saying Jews shouldn’t have to pay taxes to the Roman Government. They didn’t like Jesus’ influence over what they thought should be their constituency, so tried to put him between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, if he said, yeah pay taxes then the Jews would be mad at him and possibly abandon his ministry. On the other hand, if he said, yeah, don’t pay taxes, the Romans would see him as a rebel and take him out. It was a good strategy as no citizen likes paying taxes and no government likes a citizen who won’t pay taxes. The one thing you’re guaranteed to go to jail for is tax evasion… it worked on Al Capone and Martha Stewart. Heck, they even almost got Willie Nelson.
But Jesus outsmarts them:
Mark 12: 14-17
“Teacher,” they said, “we know how honest you are. You are impartial and don’t play favorites. You teach the way of God truthfully. Now tell us—is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? 15Should we pay them, or shouldn’t we?”
Jesus saw through their hypocrisy and said, “Why are you trying to trap me? Show me a Roman coin, and I’ll tell you.” 16When they handed it to him, he asked, “Whose picture and title are stamped on it?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
17“Well, then,” Jesus said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.”
His reply completely amazed them.
Jesus understood something about governance that the leaders of his time did not. He understood the connection between originator and owner, between creator and lord.
The denarii provided a metaphorical mirror to reflect a core truth about God’s kingdom. It was cast by Caesar’s command and in Caesar’s image and thus, ultimately belonged to Caesar. Caesar, for better or worse, was lord of the denarii. So, if he asks for it, you must give it to him. But here’s the fun part: it was not lost on Jesus that we humans are made by God’s command and in his image and thus ultimately belong to him.
Genesis 1:26-27
26Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us… 27So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Just as those under Roman rule were obligated to give to Caeser that which belonged to him, as evidenced by his image, so we are obligated to give to God what belongs to him as evidenced by his image. Caesar was lord of the denarii. But God is lord of humanity.
Jesus builds on that logic, the logic of Lordship, in the top half of the prayer he teaches his disciples. In verse 9 we read “Our Father in heaven,” signaling both his positional authority over us (as our primogenitor) and his literal and symbolic geographic advantage. He is both physically and figuratively above us – able to clearly see all of our actions and act definitively in our affairs.
Likewise, in verse 9, his name is something set apart (aka holy). In the ancient near-eastern mindset, a person’s name was always synonymous with their character. So, Jesus tells his audience that we should recognize that though we are made in his image, we should not be presumptuous, but rather reverent when it comes to our dealings with God. It’s true we are his children, made in his image, but that does not give license for an overly casual attitude toward him. He is still God the source.
In verse 10, Jesus elaborates on the character captured in that name: He is a king who is (like his fatherhood) powerful, positioned above all others – his authority is superior over the kingdoms of the earth. But he is also a good king whose will is to be desired over the will of earthly kings. Implicit in this is his capacity to resource his subjects. Thus, in verse 11, we come to him with our requests for sustenance, on the one hand – the ability to maintain our lives. And, in verse 12, forgiveness on the other – the ability to justify that maintenance.
In other words, the order of this very dense prayer is not coincidental. Jesus establishes God’s claim over us and then his power to support that claim. He builds confidence in God’s capacity and then instructs us to appeal to that capacity as the rightful, and only legitimate source to fulfill our own needs. All fathers and all kings, all households, and all dominions flow from him. So, he is directly or indirectly the source of everything we need and want to enjoy these lives of ours.
When we confess our sins to God, we acknowledge that it is him, his laws, his character, that we have violated. In other words, we admit that he is the rightful lord over our lives. The act of confession presumes he has authority in the situation – he’s the one against whom the crime has been committed, to whom the debt is owed, over whose decrees we have trespassed – pick your metaphor, they all point to God as the one to whom we are responsible for our actions.
Confession realigns us under that lordship. It breaks the dam that we’ve put up – flooding what should be the fruitful regions of our lives – and reestablishes the flow of his Kingdom authority through us. It feels liberating because it is liberating. His lordship is the environment in which we are most free to be ourselves.
“Modern people like to see freedom as the complete absence of any constraints. But think of a fish. Because a fish absorbs oxygen from water, not air, it is free only if it is restricted to water. If a fish is ‘freed’ from the river and put on the grass to explore, its freedom to move and soon even to live is destroyed. The fish is not more free, but less free, if it cannot honor the reality of its nature… The same is true in many areas of life: Freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, those that fit with the realities of our own nature and those of the world.”
Therefore, God's commandments are liberating because they direct us to be what we were
designed to be. (Is 48:17-18)
-Tim Keller, Every Good Endeavor, pp 38-39.
Forgiveness is a function of God’s character and the natural result of submission to his lordship. So, what happens when we refuse to forgive? We put our self in his position – attempting to take lordship over someone else’s life.
Matthew 6:14-15
14 If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. 15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Revelation 12:10-11
“It has come at last – salvation and power and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down to earth – the one who accuses them before our God day and night.
11And they have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by their testimony. And they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.