One of the major preoccupations with TV shows like Law and Order, is to establish the psychological state of the accused, and to determine whether he or she is mentally competent to stand trial, or whether there are mitigating circumstances which would diminish her responsibility. In a sense we conduct such a proceeding in our own minds when we feel accused by others, or ourselves, of breaches in our behavior or attitude. Deep-seated within us is the desire to rationalize what happened, and to find excuses for ourselves. Anything to avoid being in the bulls-eye of cross-examination. We just don’t want to feel guilty, because guilt damages our self esteem.

Guilt is a stigmatized word in our highly therapeutic culture. Psychotherapists long ago mislabeled guilt as a disabling emotion. It is true that some adults suffer from a neurotic fixation on childhood feelings of shame. It can be an obsessive-compulsive disorder in which you may be hyper-sensitive about sin, and are always afraid of doing something that will earn you God’s condemnation. Such scrupulosity can only be healed through counseling. The other extreme is the rejection of any kind of guilt by feel-good pop psychology, at the cost of a realistic and well-instructed conscience.

If we are created in the image of God with a conscience, and God has revealed to us his way of life through the prophets, apostles, and the life of Jesus, then we are accountable for how we use the life he has given us. The conscience is designed to register any departure from God’s moral law with feelings of discomfort. – what we call guilt. It alerts us to the presence of sin in our lives.

Sin is the spoiler of creation: the perversion, adulteration and corruption of the good for which God has designed the world. Someone has to take responsibility for that sin. We cannot blame all of it on others. Each of us shares part of the guilt. “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.” (1 John 1:8-10)

This is the presupposition we have to agree on. Is there such a thing as sin for which we need to be forgiven by God? If there isn’t, then the petition is unnecessary. If there is such a thing as sin, and God takes it seriously, then we had better pay attention. If sin is more than crime or anti-social behavior, and has to do with God, and affects our salvation, then we need to find a solution to it.

Jesus calls it a debt. A debt is that which is owed, that which one ought to give or to pay, that which it is a moral or religious duty to give. Forgive us, says this petition, for every failure in duty, for failure to render to God and to others that which we ought to have rendered, for the debt to God and to others which we owe and which we have failed to pay. It is the sin which is the failure to fulfill one’s obligation, a failure to realize the true aim of life, a failure to be and to do that which we ought to have done, and which we could have been and could have done. It is the trespass which means a false step, a slip, a blunder.

We ask for forgiveness of our sins. We are confessing that we share in the sins of the world. To ask forgiveness of sin is in itself a confession of sin. Tertullian said: “A petition for pardon is itself a full confession, because he who begs for pardon fully admits his guilt.” To pray this prayer a sense of sin is a prior requirement. This is an impossible prayer for those who are not worrying about their sin, or have no concept of sin.

In order to awaken a sense of sin, you can enumerate the debts which everyone owes.

1. We owe a debt to ourselves: to become all that we were created and redeemed to be. The sin for which we need to be forgiven is resistance, unwillingness, or failure to fulfill God’s purpose for our lives.

2. We owe a debt to others: to love our neighbor as ourselves. That love is described by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” The sin for which we need to be forgiven is when we fail to be what love prescribes.

3. We owe a debt to God: to fulfill the greatest commandment - to love God with all our heart, soul and mind – with all our passion, all our prayer life, all our intellect. The sin for which we need forgiveness is when we have lost our first love, and have failed to seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness in our priorities.

While we are alive there is not a single hour, day or night, when we are not debtors. Because we are set in the human situation we are under a series of debts which no one can ever fully pay. The penalty of sin is spiritual death (Romans 6:23). It is alienation from God and his love. Sin separates us from God’s blessing. If we were to be judged on the basis of our sins, we would not be forgiven. Sin is the spiritual disease from which we need to be delivered if we are to become whole, and able to enjoy God’s salvation.

This is why the Gospel begins and ends with the forgiveness of sins. John the Baptist comes preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The blood of the covenant, represented by the cup in the Last Supper, and in our Holy Communion, is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. St. Peter urges his hearers on the day of Pentecost, to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. The sins of the people in the old covenant could only be atoned for by the sacrifice of the high priest in the holy of the holies of the Temple. “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God … and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” (Hebrews 9:14,22)

When we pray “forgive us our sins,” we are confessing our sins and seeking to be cleansed from their consequences in our lives. We claim the cleansing, the purification, offered us by the costly sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. We pray, not only generally for sins of commission and omission: those things we have done that we ought not to have done, and those things that we have not done that we ought to have done. We have to pray specifically for those sins which we know we have committed or omitted in the previous day. When I pray this prayer I hear the voice of the Lord saying to me: “which sins do you mean, Ted?” It is harder to have to name them in order for them to be forgiven, yet such a diagnosis is needed if we are to be forgiven and healed of our besetting sins, our habitual sins.

But what about experiencing the forgiveness that this prayer is meant to provide? Some people find it very hard to experience forgiveness even after bringing their sins to the Cross. Jeffery Smith, in his memoir, Where the Roots Reach for Water: A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia, explains how difficult forgiveness was for him in the midst of his depression. All he wanted was some self-esteem. His self followed him everywhere, mostly unforgiving.

“I became a bean counter hoarding my transgressions. It would not stop. Finally I phoned my friend Tony Sayer. Tony was a Methodist minister in Asheville…. I found it easy to talk to him. ‘I know this,’ I had said to Tony: ‘I am nobody’s victim. All my messes are my own doing. There is nobody I need to forgive but myself. So how do I do that?’

“You know,” Tony said, “you can be exasperating.” He could also be blunt. “You just refuse to accept forgiveness. That’s the whole problem. If you choose, you can go on believing that you are so flawed, put together so poorly, that whatever comes next is just the natural progression of your doomed and damned character.”

“Show me evidence to the contrary,” I said.

He came back low and gentle: “Nothing I could say would convince you anyway. What would? Listen, it’s really about as simple as this: you have to get beyond your Self. Centered. Ness.”

He paused…and went on: “Do you have any idea how arrogant it is to reject forgiveness?” He paused again. “That is the real gift of Jesus – we are forgiven, one by one, because with him human flesh is capable of rising above its ordinary selfishness, its ordinary preoccupations with itself. And when flesh does – as it will – follow its own desires, you are forgiven. You don’t need to linger over it, you don’t need to assume that you are one and the same with your sin, now and hereafter. And you, sir, you see fit to reject that.

“You put your particular sins, in other words, even above Jesus’ ability to forgive them. Seems to me you think they make you special. Do you really think they are so unique, or even especially interesting?”

Tony laughed. “No, no, erase that question. Clearly, you do think so, or you wouldn’t insist on telling this one story over and over again: how I am fated to fail you. I am worthless, you keep saying. I can’t do anything, you keep saying. It’s just as bad as pride, I’d say, your obsession with your sins and shortcomings: just as self-important. I’m not saying that you’re wrong: you might well be worthless. Maybe you can’t do anything. Maybe you don’t know anything.

“Maybe you are empty, or worse than empty: full only of yourself. But what does all of that matter anyhow? Living in faith requires none of them. You worship a graven idol, and that idol is your self. You need to get out of your own way. Forgiveness – for you, forgiving yourself – will relieve you of that burden. What’s the point of refusing forgiveness, except to feel unique, self-important. You are human, remember? Here’s my advice, old friend: put your self in the hands of something bigger and wiser than you.”

To pray, “forgive us our sins,” is to put ourselves in the hands of the God who loved us enough to come and suffer for us, to take the penalty of our sins upon himself, so that we might be forgiven. It is to ask for and to receive that which God longs for us to enjoy, restoration to fellowship with him.

Amelia Plantation Chapel
Amelia Island, Florida