How Can It All Be True?

         Unbelief comes so easily to us.  The unbeliever, of course, lives in denial and has absolutely no problem with unbelief - at least religious unbelief.  The unbelieving man or woman can be liberal about some things, and conservative about others.  They can be warm and compassionate on one issue and heartless, cold, cruel and unthinking on another and never have a reason to recognize that they are inconsistent.

Christians cannot have it both ways.  We must have a center in our lives, and that center is Christ.  Sin in our flesh will often push us toward inconsistencies, but we strive deliberately toward being God’s holy people all of the time.  We have the commission of Christ to be His disciples, to walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel, to love one another, and show forth His glory by living lives which are, by the mercies of God, living and holy sacrifices to Him, which is (or so the Apostle Paul wrote) our spiritual service of worship.

This is where unbelief become a problem for the Christian.  We don’t usually have problems with the big things: Jesus is the Son of God, the Trinity, Creationism, big doctrines like those we just accept on the authority of the Word of God.  We generally accept them easily because they don’t challenge us in our daily lives.  The divinity of Jesus Christ doesn’t directly impact the way we do our taxes, or how we approach evangelism, or even which denomination we belong to - within reason, of course.

The trouble comes when living out our lives requires living out the faith that we confess.  We confess that God answers prayers, but when trouble comes, we are often slow to pray, and impatient with God to answer in a way we recognize as an answer.  We talk about God guiding our lives and blessing us, but when we are not delighted with how life is going, we often imagine that something is wrong, rather than trust God and confess that He is God and we are not.  We live a theology of glory even while we confess a theology of the cross.

God does not work according to our sense of how things ought to be.  He tells us in Isaiah, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”  The course of the world around us is not going to accommodate us, and the work and the plans of God are not going to accommodate our desires either.  We may find financial distress more frequently than we would like to.  Illness may dog our steps now and then.  People may not like us or recognize our true worth.  In short, life may not seem ‘fair’ to us.

The reality is that life is almost never fair to anyone.  It is not fair that someone should win a lottery and wind up wealthy.  It is not fair that you should work for years to establish your nest egg only to have a market “adjustment” steal it away.  It is not fair that you work hard and the opportunities fall toward someone else.  It is not fair, it is reality.

It is also not fair that you should be healthy and another suffer heart disease or emphysema.  It is not fair that your car starts on a cold morning and someone else’s does not.  It is not fair that fame, popularity, unbridled success, or whatever, should fall upon one person while another, who works just as diligently, and seems no less worthy, misses out.  It isn’t fair, it is simply what is.   These facts make me see the wisdom of God revealing the truth that “Godliness with contentment is great gain.”

Would we really want what we deserve?  We deserve no good thing, according to our faith - at least the one we confess publicly.  We don’t measure our ‘deserving-ness’ on the scale of sin and absolute justice.  We measure it on the scale of the goodness God has shown us in the past, and take it for granted that He must be just so good to us – and in the same way - today and tomorrow.  If we can arise in the morning, breathe in and out, and begin our day with our morning food and customary baths, showers, or washing and brushings, we should be shouting for joy and raising prayers of thanksgiving for God’s undeserved and immeasurable goodness and kindness to us.

That we don’t is due to the patient teaching of false doctrine to us by the world around us.  It tells us that today is the minimum life ought to be, and we should only expect things to get better from here.  Our lack of praise and thanksgiving is a manifestation of unbelief in us.  We don’t actually believe that we deserve anything less.  But few of the world’s inhabitants get out of such nice beds, arise to such fine food, or have the assortment of clothing to put on that we consider a minimum.  Even fewer know who the provider of these blessings is.

Then we set out into the world.  Usually, we think it is too hot or too cold.  We have to work harder than we want to.  The people around us do not treat us as well as we think they should.  Our situation in life is often somewhat less than what we dreamed it might be, and we find ourselves chafing under the reality in which we live.

But our faith teaches us that God is with us, guarding us and guiding us.  He has planned good works for us to do throughout the day, and sets them in our path to do.  So, while we do not understand why the world around us does not see our true worth, we can be sure that whatever we find before us to do is what God would have us do.  If sin presents itself, we are to resist and flee from it, and that is our good work.  If temptation arises, we are to resist it, and turn our backs on it.  If menial tasks are required of us, we are to do them as though this is the work we are to do to worship God - because it is.

Our circumstances and our daily activities don’t have to strike us as special or important or earth-shaking.  Our faith teaches us that we are where God has placed us, to do the things God would have us to do for the blessing and benefit of our neighbor - just as they do what they do for our blessing and benefit, whether they realize it or not.  When we chafe at life and its demands, we are forgetting God’s hand in our lives.  When we despair of our situation or lose hope, we are forgetting God’s love and promises, and act as though it all depends on us, and not on God at all!  When you forget the promises of God and act as though He were not aware of your life or involved in your circumstances, that is a species of unbelief.

Of course, the difficulties we confront can be an opportunity to change things, make things different and better.  We can find a better job, one for which we are better suited.  We can take the opportunity of a broken relationship to repair it by humbling ourselves to confession, repentance, and forgiveness.  If we can find the courage to say, “I was wrong.  I sinned.  Can you, will you forgive me?”, we may also discover the joy of being forgiven, and find ways to put back together relationships that we imagined were broken beyond repair.  More than that, however, we may model the very things we confess; faith, forgiveness, humility.  We may have the chance to show someone how powerful the gospel is by acting out our part in it.

            We Christians talk a lot about grace, forgiveness, humility, and repentance.  Now and again, God gives us opportunities to put those things into practice.  Just being confident that God has forgiven us can give us the strength to admit errors, or open the door to forgive someone who has sinned against us.  Sometimes, people need to see Christ in us before they are going to be willing to hear about Him from us.

We can never tell what God is working through us in the various circumstances of our lives.  A hospital stay can be the platform for showing the reality and power of the hope of everlasting life to a nurse or doctor, another patient, or someone just visiting a friend.  Economic difficulties can position us to confess Christ without the one who hears our words thinking, “Yeah?, I bet you wouldn’t say that if you were in my shoes!”  Just being a decent and kind person, and doing all to the glory of God without hardly ever speaking a word can earn you the respect of those around you, who learn respect first, and then wonder, when they find that you are one of those “church people” who go to that church down the road.  Your witness - and your stock in their eyes - may never be noticed by you, but you cannot tell what God is doing by means of your faithful, holy, daily walk in the Lord.

Jesus never had much money.  He never drove a car, used a cell-phone, flew in an airplane, or appeared on television.  He was never what we would call popular, and He occasionally said things that drove many of those who followed Him for a time right up a wall, and out of His life.  He didn’t measure what He was doing by the reaction of those around Him.  He measured them by their reactions to God’s Word and God’s works.  What Jesus did do was keep the whole will and Law of God flawlessly, so that He could then die when He did not deserve to - and in doing so take our place, and die our death, and pay what was owed to the justice of God for our sins for us.  He redeemed us.

Because He died where and when and how He died, and because He rose from the grave, we are forgiven.  And we know the love of God for us.  And we know that God is with us and watching us and guiding us and blessing us.  We also know these things because Jesus said so, for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from the Father.  (John 16:27)   We have seen the love which the heavenly Father has for us - and we know the promises about resurrection and life eternal which lie ahead of us.  So we can live every day as though every bit of your faith is true - and we really should - because we believe what Jesus has done, promised, and given to us.  The only way anyone else can see that it is true is by your faith leaking out into your daily living.  Let us pray that God guards us and keeps us so that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us nor seduce us in to misbelief, despair, and other great shame or vice.

All You Need Is . . .

If you are a fan of the Beatles and their music, the half-line above set music playing in your mind and you instantly knew how to end that phrase.  All you need is love!  Of course, that phrase is practically pure tripe.  It is not complete rubbish because it can be understood in the proper sense and be true, but that is not how most people would read it.

February is the month of Valentine's Day, the holiday in which we celebrate the grisly death of a third-century Christian Martyr (actually there seems to have been two or three Valentines) by giving one another little heart-shaped pictures and various candies, typically chocolate.  I know that is the way I want to be remembered when I am gone – hearts, flowers, erotic love, and dark chocolate.  If that is the kind of love you associate with the Beatles’ song, that is NOT all you need.

February is also the month of Ash Wednesday this year.  We begin the season of Lent, preparing to remember the greatest exercise of love in history – the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ for our forgiveness and salvation.  If that is what comes to mind when you hear the Beatles’ tune, the phrase is accurate, and your mind functions in a very peculiar way.

The Beatles were not known to be great Christian theologians, favoring Hindu thought instead, and their use of the language of love tended to be more secular than sacred.  The world around us means something entirely different when it uses the word “love” than Christians do – at least when we are speaking theologically.

The worldly idea of love is self-centered.  We love because it makes us feel good or because we have an expectation of good and pleasure or some other benefit arising from love.  Couples profess love as they approach marriage, for example.  Through years of pre-marital pastoral counseling, I have found that people generally mean that they enjoy the way the other person makes them feel, or does things for them, or they find their physical relationship satisfying or exciting or whatever.  It is a rare individual, and almost never a couple, that intends by the word “love” to indicate that they want to care for the other and enable them to be all that they can be, fulfilling themselves rather than making the one who loves feel something special.

Love that is patterned after the love of God for us – and remember, God is love – is a love that sets the beloved above one’s self, loving that person for who they are and wanting to protect and nurture that and advance the one who is loved to be the best and most complete and satisfied they can be.  Jesus loved us in that way. 

He loved His heavenly Father by listening to Him and putting the plans of the Father into action even at great personal cost.  He did not first love the Father, and then He acted as a response to that love, but rather He loved the Father by acting out the will of the Father which included the Passion and the crucifixion.  That was how He loved God.  We also are tempted to think that because He was also true God, Jesus approached the passion calmly, knowing how it would end and seeing with divine foresight the resurrection and ascension.  We think this way because we cannot imagine a love so great as to take up that cross.  Jesus probably knew what was coming, but in the passion and in the resurrection because the Scriptures told Him, but He denied Himself the insight and the comfort of that knowledge beyond what we might find.  The passion was real and the stress and power of the fear were real – as the passion narratives in the Bible tell us over and over.

The love of the Father for us caused Him to plan such a salvation, and the love of the Son for His Father and for us brought Jesus to the cross.  All we really need is THAT love, and we have it!  It is that love that overshadows our lives, walking with us daily in our joys and sorrows, our triumphs and our defeats and failures.  That is the love that provides us with food and clothing and all of the needs of the body for this life.

The worldly sort of love makes us feel good at times, but it also makes us miserable at times.  It is a powerful drug, and once you have a little of it, you want more and you can be miserable without it.  The difficult part is that it is usually all about you and not about the one you love.  The love of God, and love like God’s love, is about the one you love.  When it is the love of God, it is his love for you and it stays with you through good times and bad to bless you and strengthen you and bring you through, with the ultimate goal of everlasting life in glory.

So, on February 26 beginning at 6:30 p.m., we will begin our Lenten observance with the Lord’s Supper and prepare our hearts for a season of repentance by looking at the Seven Deadly Sins.  They include (using the names of the sermons) Camel-like Pride; The  Green-Eyed Monster of Envy; That Old Dragon of Anger; The Three-toed Sloth; Greed, the Scrooge; The Twin Sisters of Gluttony and Lust – and a look at the Passover on Maundy Thursday, finishing up with the Nature of Sin on Good Friday.

We will discover once again how great is our sin, how undeserved is the love and grace of God, and how full and compelling is the love of the Father for us, and of the Son for His Father and for us.  All we need is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

2020

One more time we have the opportunity to mark a new beginning in our service to the Lord.  It is notable because the numbers seem to form a significant pattern.  2020.  Aside from echoing the name of a once-great, now kind of sad, news program, it seems to mark a new decade.  It doesn’t actually mark a new decade since the decade begins with year one and not with year ten, but many people get that confused and get all excited about it.

It is still a new opportunity to serve God by living in and living out the faith which we have and confess.  We can set aside our failures of 2019 and set the course of our lives one more time to faithful confession by word and deed of our forgiveness and the hope of salvation to which we cling.  We can gather in worship and Bible Study to discuss what that might look like in our personal situations, and proceed out into the world to put those plans into action among our neighbors and workmates.

The church year began in December with Advent.  This is merely the beginning of a calendar year – a year in the accounting of the world around us but not necessarily within the Church.  Even so, beginnings are important to mark.  The world likes to mark the new year with resolutions.  They are something like repentance on a secular stage.  The world sees where it may have gotten off track over the past twelve months and resolves to do better.  Such resolutions are famous for fading away in the next few weeks, but they are at least admissions that something needs fixing.

Christians recognize that repentance is a daily affair.  We bow our heads each day and acknowledge our sin and shortcomings, seek the grace of our Lord, and set off with a resolution to amend our sinful lives with the help of the Holy Spirit.  We don’t make a resolution once a year and let it fizzle away.  We continually update our resolve with prayer and repentance and the on-going intention to amend our lives by God’s grace so that we may more closely resemble the child of God He has called us to be and declared us to be in our Baptism.

The new year reminds us how close we have come to the end of the world.  The events of the world, troubling political developments and frightening weather and ecological activities, fulfill the signs of Jesus that the kingdom of heaven has drawn near and the end of all things is at hand.  While these signs frighten the world around us, they should be comforting to us.  Jesus said, “But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:28)

Not only is the end coming for us, of course, but the end is also coming for the rest of the world.  The signs of the end are also indicators of the need for us to show the world and to tell our neighbors about the great love of God and the salvation He has worked on our behalf.  How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard?, Paul asks in Romans 10:14.

2020 gives us another opportunity to share the good news of salvation.  We can do that by speaking the gospel when we are asked about our faith or when we are asked how we handle the various challenges of life; sorrows, fears, disappointments, or whatever.  We can also share the good news by simply living out what we believe about sin, about forgiveness, about helping those in need, about the power of God in our lives when we face sickness or sorrow.

We are the hands and legs and lips of God in the world around us.  Just as the faithful preacher is the voice of God in our church and the hands of God in serving us the gifts of the Sacraments.  We are what one wise man referred to as “God with skin on” for our unbelieving neighbors.  If they are to see Christ or hear His Word, it will be through us.  If they are to know the truth that Jesus said will set us free, they must hear about it from you and be led to the Word in which we all must abide to know the truth by you who know the truth and who trust in the Lord.

Only you can invite them to church services.  Only you can invite them to Bible Studies.  Only you can invite them to call the pastor when they have a question you cannot answer.  Only you can do it because sometimes you are the only one they will ask, and sometimes only you are the person they will actually listen to or trust in their moment of need.

Sometimes the need is urgent and immediate, and if you are there, you are the tool of God in that place and He has given you that task to perform.   On other occasions, the need is not immediate, urgent, or desperate in their minds, but it is the moment they are open and available and you are the one God has set the opportunity in front of.  What you do or don’t do at that moment may set their lives on a new course, or plant the seed for God to develop later.

Okay, perhaps you have had other opportunities and failed to take advantage of them.  If that is so, 2020 is another year to set things right and to do what you did not have the courage to do before.  That would be a nice way to recover your self-confidence.  If you have taken full advantage of such opportunities in the past, this new year may give you another chance to serve the Lord.

Keep in mind that God has already done everything you need to be done for your salvation and has poured it out on you already.  You have forgiveness, life, and salvation already.  Anything you can do now is for those around you, your neighbors (whether you call them family, friends, or strangers).  Your faith and your courage and your patience with others will speak to the world around you about Christ and the Gospel.  2020 tells us that we have another chance and that the task is more urgent than ever before.

BETRAYAL!

Who gives the various state governments the right to betray their charter?  The government was instituted by the people to maintain order and keep the public safe.  Where do the officials serving in the government derive the authority to use their office for personal and political gain and to put the public at risk by releasing violent felons into the general population?

The various offices of government were established for order, not to approve the use of the streets as a public toilet, or to erase our borers for their own short-sighted political gain, or to attempt to rob the populace of its God-given
rights.

We the people need to find and establish a peaceful method of bringing those who fail in their duties or use their offices to oppress the people to justice - swiftly.

It might be nice to find a way to bring balance and honestly back to the press -- perhaps by limiting the freedom of the press to print, physical and or electronic, and exclude from 1st Amendment protections the video media.

I. O. U.

When I was a child, I was always surprised to hear people saying, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” when they prayed the Lord’s Prayer.  I had learned “trespasses” so I knew that this had to be the right way!  I was even more surprised when I grew up and went to school and found that the original, the Greek version of the prayer in Matthew uses the word ojfeilhvmata, which means “debt,” or “that which is owed.”

In casual circumstances, we sometimes arrange debts with I.O.U.’s.  An IOU a promissory note.  Perhaps we borrowed money.  Perhaps we received merchandise on credit.  The IOU represents that which is owed.  So this evening I chose to link the idea of the IOU and the idea of the debt from the Greek text of the Lord’s Prayer as we discuss the Fifth petition with the theme I.O.U.̓s.

The Fifth petition is “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
What does this mean?  We pray in this petition that our Father in Heaven would not look upon our sins, not deny our petitions because of them; for we are worthy of none of the things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them; but [we pray] that He would grant all of them to us by grace; for we are gross sinners every day and genuinely deserve nothing but punishment.  So will we also forgive from the heart, and also freely do good to those who sin against us.

Most people think of sin as a mistake, a bad deed, or as some kind of corruption.  Here in the Fifth petition it is presented as a debt.  None of these ideas is wrong, nor do they contradict one another.  They simply express different aspects of the same topic, Sin.  Since we pray for forgiveness of sins in this petition, it might be useful to talk about the nature of sin at this time.

Sin is the breaking of, or violation of, the will of God.  It is something we can do by actions, by speaking, or by thought.  We can even sin by doing nothing.  Sin is divided, for teaching purposes, into different kinds of sins and different ways of sinning.  The two kinds of sin are Original sin (which we inherit and which completely corrupts our human nature) and Actual sin (which is the sin we personally do or “act out”).  Both are sin, and both deserve eternal damnation.  Then there are two basic ways of sinning.

The Church has long taught about sins of commission and sins of omission.  A sin of commission is a sin you commit.  Actually, it means that you do something which is wrong or sinful.  A sin of Omission is a good thing you omit to do.  This is not doing something forbidden, but failing to do something commanded, right, or necessary.  The Bible says, James 4:17, “Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin.”

Christians spend so much time talking about sin because it is so natural to man and so very deadly in effect.  Sin is the issue, not just specific sinful actions, thoughts, or words.  Sin is the basic state of rebellion, the twisted-ness of the heart which will not and cannot obey or love God.  It is Sin in us which produces all those individual sins.  Those individual sinful acts are not all that damns us, they are part of the problem, but they are really primarily the symptoms and the fruits of Sin in us, and it is Sin which brings about our condemnation.

The Bible talks about the ways of sinning – or doing sin – by using a number of different words.  The New Testament word “sin” in the Greek means literally “to miss the mark.” We try and fail.  We aim at good thoughts and have evil ones.  We do not come up to the standard of holiness set for us.  What we do is not what God wants - and often not what we want.

Another sin-word is Transgression.  It means trespass (which is another sin-word).  It means to step over the line, or go where you don̓t belong.  Adultery is a transgression, going where we do not belong, using what we ought not even to touch.  When we say or think, “Oh-oh!  Now I’ve gone too far,” we have transgressed.  God has drawn a line in the sand, so to speak, and we have stepped over it.  You may desire to possess, but you are forbidden to covet.  You are permitted to become angry, but you must forgive and not let the sun go down on your anger.  You may righteously speak about a neighbor, but not gossip, judging him or her, and damaging his or her reputation.  Too much or too little is transgression.

We use the word iniquity.  It means un-equal, unjust, or uneven.  Inconsistent behavior is iniquitous.  It is behavior, speaking or thinking that doesn’t follow the even rule of the Law of God.  Prejudice is iniquity, it has a basic inequity or inequality.  When you treat someone poorly for no reason, or for a poor reason, that is iniquity.  When you favor someone for their money or looks or some other inadequate reason, that is iniquity.  James writes about this too, chapter 2, verses 2, 3 and 4, If a man comes into your church with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one wearing the find clothes and say “You sit here in a good place,“ and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,“ have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?

Wickedness is another term for sin.  It suggests a twisted-ness.  Luther spoke of man’s inclination to sin with the Latin phrase “Curvatus in se,” meaning ‘twisted in on one’s self’. Perversion, rape, incest, abortion, and the like are wickedness.  They are twisted, and turn deliberately away from the way of God and the way of life.  Homosexuality - male or female -is wickedness, twisting the natural relationships of men and women.  Pornography is wickedness, it is twisted and perverse, using something delightful and holy for profane, cheap and illicit purposes.

Again, there is guile - deception, sneakiness, trickiness.  These are the things we often hear called “good business”.  Guile involves false weights and measures, fine print hidden to deceive, and such things.  Guile is lying and cheating.  But guile also includes clever advertising which suggests what it doesn’t clearly state, putting the best forward and just not mentioning the bad, painting over rust, or putting a good face on something bad.  Even make-up, as used by some women can involve a measure of guile.

Finally, sin is lawlessness.  Anything which does not recognize the order and will of God is lawlessness.  Lawlessness acts as though it were free to do whatever it pleases.  The false concept of freedom, which does not recognize the binding nature of laws, or the responsibility of the individual which always accompanies personal liberty, is lawlessness.  My ‘rights’ become sinful if they do not balance my responsibilities and duties.  The rights issues which are destroying the peace of America are just such sin.  They are lawlessness, and God is a God of order, and of Law – although not only of Law.

And the wages of sin is death.  I imagine that I have said things about sin this evening which make you uncomfortable.  If I haven’t, raise your hand and I will try harder.  We all sin.  I have and so have you.  We feel comfortable admitting past and minor-seeming sins, or generic sinfulness, as long as we don’t have to name the sin, the time and the place.  We don’t mind the generalized and sanitized sin, but not one of us likes the thought that we are gross sinners, really wicked and evil people, every day - but you are.  You sin all of the time, but those individual sins are not the issue - Sin is!  And the wages of SIN is death.  You and I deserve to die, right now, and go to hell.  Everyone does.  If you disagree with that, you argument is not with me, it is with God and with His Word.

And we pray in this petition that God would forgive us the sin, transgressions, iniquity, wickedness, guile, and lawlessness which we do and think and say every day.  We pray that God would forgive us so that these sins will not stand in the way of His blessing us and loving us here in time, and from saving us and giving us eternal life in eternity.  We ask God to forget what miserable sinners we really are and deal with us as though we have never sinned.  We ask Him to bless us as though we were good people.  We ask Him to deal with us according to His forgiveness in Jesus, because Jesus bought our forgiveness on the cross.

And – praise to His grace – He does!  That is the good news of the gospel.  He still loves us and he richly blesses us, because of Jesus.  He listens to our prayers and answers, because Jesus took our sins to the cross and nailed them there in His flesh.  Not just our sins, but Sin itself.  Then He died to sin, and in baptism He connected us to His own death and resurrection, with the result that we are now spiritually dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.  But our flesh is still sinful.  It has not died yet, and so we ask God every time we pray this prayer to forgive us anew and help us to start over and to live for Him.

I told you a couple weeks ago that this prayer was the most dangerous prayer in the world.  This is the petition that makes it so.  You pray here for God to forgive you as you forgive others.  “Forgive me God just like I forgive those who cheat me, steal from me, call me names, and are out to get me.  Forgive me like I forgive the insults.  Forgive me just the same way – and to the same degree – as I forgive my enemies and those who get in my way and those who hurt me.” That is what this prayer is about.

And Jesus makes it clear in Matthew that this is just the way God hears and answers this petition.  He says, Matthew 6:14-15 - the verses immediately following the prayer, for if you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

This prayer is dangerous, because you owe God your life.  You owe God obedience.  You owe God worship and praise and thanksgiving.  You have piled up the IOU’s of deeds of righteousness undone, and obedience discarded.  You owe Him holiness and glory and honor, but you give Him sin and selfishness and lawlessness and blasphemy and shame.

Then someone else who owes you courtesy forgets, someone else who owes you a kindness is rude, someone else who owes you love strikes you or robs you or calls you a name, or makes your life less pleasant, if only for a moment.  They sin against you, and you get angry and hold their sins against them and stew.
God says, I will forgive you your entire life of debt to me, and now you must also forgive the debts of those who owe you.

God has nailed the bill of debt, the IOU of your sins on the cross with and in Jesus.  The Bible uses almost those exact words.  And then God tells us that we must do the same, we must forgive those who sin against us if we will receive His forgiveness.

So Luther says that we promise, in this petition, to forgive from the heart, and freely do good to those who sin against us.  We remind ourselves that our forgiveness goes hand in hand with us forgiving others.  The parable of the unjust steward, who was forgiven the 6 million dollar IOU but could not forgive the six hundred dollar debt is Jesus’ way of telling us again that this petition speaks the truth.

So if you want to carry the grudge - don’t pray this petition.  If you feel that it is only right to remember the wrongs done to you, an unkind word, or a hurtful deed, then don’t pray this prayer.  If you feel that the wrongs against you have been too often and too much, and now it is right to hold it against them, then don’t ask God to forgive you.  You can say all of the God-words and Jesus-talk you want.  If you don’t forgive others, all others, then you actually pray in this petition that God does not forgive you - and whether you pray it or not, He will not.  If you cannot forgive others, you are not a Christian in any sense of the word which ought to bring comfort to anyone.

The whole of the Christian faith is wrapped up here.  God forgives us for Jesus sake.  His love and forgiveness transforms us into new creatures.  We are dead to sin and alive to God because of and in connection with Christ Jesus.  But if we cannot and will not be like Him and connected to Him so that we also forgive, then we are not in connection with Jesus, and then we are not really dead to sin or alive to God, and we are not forgiven either.

IOU̓s.  We owe.  God has forgiven our debts to Him.  We owe Him to forgive others.  That is a debt we will gladly pay, and we pray for it in this fifth petition.  God grant our prayer to be forgiven and give us the grace to forgive others, for Christ’s sake.