SINS, DEBTS AND TRESPASSES

Most of us when we say the “Lord’s Prayer” (it is called that, of course, because it is the only prayer Jesus taught his followers – us – to say), ask God “to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. The newer translation asks God “to forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. Our Presbyterian brothers and sisters normally ask God, “to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”. According to most of the theologians I read, the Presbyterians have it right, or more right as the case may be.

Nevertheless, my suspicion is that, given a choice, most of us will stick with the word with which we are most familiar and, in all honesty, more comfortable: trespasses. For when we think about that word, we usually think about going into another person’s property that has a “No Trespassing” sign posted. The property is off limits. Thus, if we do in fact trespass, we know we are doing wrong and will probably get into some kind of trouble if we are caught. But let’s be honest, we do not think it’s any big deal unless the property owner has a shotgun pointed at us or is the federal government.

“Sins”, on the other hand, are a big deal. When we trespass on someone else’s property, we may be breaking the law but we don’t usually consider what we are doing as being sinful. Sin has to do with a deliberate moral failure and not a deliberate legal wrong. When we sin, we know that what we are doing is not what God would has us do, but we do it anyway, whether it is a sin of commission or a sin of omission: dog what we know we should not do or not doing what we know we should do.

In the realm of morality most of us would consider sinning as being worse than trespassing even though, in the real world, we sin more every day than we trespass: we break more moral laws than we break civil laws. Yes, we know in our heads that when we say the Lord’s Prayer and ask God to forgive us our trespasses, we are really asking God to forgive our sins. So why are we so reluctant to say so?

Even more may be our aversion to the word “debts”. We don’t owe God anything, do we? How are we so in debt to God that we have to ask God to forgive whatever debts we have? Yes, we may have financial debts, but those are not any of God’s concern are they? Or at least they are not so much a concern that we have to ask God to forgive us for getting into debt in the first place, are they?

Well, maybe; maybe if we have gotten into debt because of some sinful and foolish action. But, then, that is not the point of the prayer is it? The debts we are asking God to forgive is based on our awareness that everything we have is a gift, a freewill gift from God. What we owe God is to use those gifts and those talents to the very best of our ability. The fact that we do not always do so is the reason why we need to ask God to forgive us for not so doing.

Maybe we really need to ask God to forgive us our “sins, trespasses and debts” and will be covered. But, the other side of the coin is that we must so forgive as well.