Luke 11:4 And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation… God calls us to a daily and domestic scrutiny. We do not show a forgiving and generous spirit, in order that thus we may earn heaven; but we are warned that the indulgence of a contrary spirit necessarily forfeits heaven. We test our spiritual condition, not by asking how our feelings are towards the dead — to our best friends — or towards angels. The Pharisees could praise dead saints, and canonise prophets, when once safe and mute in their graves. But we ask, What are my feelings towards the living prophets and witnesses of heaven — to my living neighbour, and rival, and enemy? When our Saviour healed the sick man of his long and sore infirmity, and bade him take up his bed and walk; the poor man's lifting of his couch and flinging its light weight on his rejoicing shoulders, was not the means of his cure, or the condition of his healing. It was the evidence, tangible and visible to himself and others, in the streets along which he passed, and in the home he re-entered, that he had encountered a great Prophet, and had received a miraculous healing. And so, when the leper, purged of his leprosy, was bidden to go and show himself to the priest, as he bared the skin now clear and white to the glance of the Levite, he was not fulfilling a condition of the cure, but receiving an authentication, a public and unimpeachable and official endorsement of it. And even thus is it, in this prayer. It is not our placability that purchases for us remission. Had the imperturbable countenance which Talleyrand was accustomed to wear, even when insulted, been the index of as imperturbable a soul, free from all malicious remembrances, it would not in itself have merited eternal blessedness. But God would furnish, as it were, in the forgiving spirit of His people, a portable crucible, so to speak, in which to try and purge daily the fine gold of our own heavenly hopes. To arm us against the selfishness which Be clings to us, this petition, like all those preceding it, is not for the solitary suppliant. He asks not for himself, though like the prophet's penitents he "mourns apart"; but he implores in unison and sympathy with the absent. He says not, Forgive me, but forgive us. And then going beyond all the other petitions, he makes reference not to the absent only, but to the alienated — the injurious — the hostile. (W. R. Williams, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. |
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