Some of you may have been curious about the different versions of the Lord’s Prayer. Is it supposed to be debts or trespasses? The word in v. 9 should be rendered as debts, and that is the best strict translation. Wycliffe rendered it as debts. But then later, Tyndale translated it as trespasses. The argument for this is that just a few moments later when the Lord Jesus comments on the prayer He just taught the disciples, He uses the word trespass to interpret debts (v. 14). The Book of Common Prayer uses trespass, but then later, the King James Version of the Bible was back to debts.
Fortunately, it doesn’t matter because as we compare Scripture with Scripture, the debts and debtors we are talking about are those incurred by people who trespass, including of course, ourselves.
The heart of what we are taught to request when we pray is this: we are asking God to be as strict with our accounts payable as we are with our accounts receivable. This sometimes seems grossly unfair to us because—using the image of debts—one of the reasons we struggle to meet our obligations to others is because others have not met their obligations to us. Yes, I owe you, but if he didn’t owe me, we wouldn’t be in this jam. And given how the world works, we shouldn’t be surprised if someone else even further downstream is unable to meet his obligations because of us.
The same image can be used with regard to trespassing. You are out hiking in the fields, and didn’t see the fence, didn’t see the signs. That is why you walked all over somebody’s heart. When you trespass in this way, it creates obligations, it creates a sort of indebtedness. But the first step in clearing things up downstream is to extend every grace possible upstream. I am not talking about seeking forgiveness (although that is also a good thing), I am talking about extending it.
Put another way, those who give jubilee gifts receive jubilee gifts.
I’ve long been curious how this verse (whether translated as debts or trespasses) can be reconciled with the idea of Justification by Faith Alone.
Gad saves us by his power, but that doesn’t deny there may be criteria for God to apply such salvation, such as trust in him. Not certain how we can say we trust God if we refuse to obey him.
Certainly, from a Catholic point of view, trust in God and obedience to His commands are very much involved in our salvation.
My understanding of the “Sola” part of Sola Fide, though, was that it excluded all other criteria for applying salvation.
God saves. Faith is the sole criterion (that God has set). But I do think that faith (belief) has a specific meaning. Could we say an active belief that obeys the object of belief rather than an intellectual belief that just acknowledges that God exists.
If your wife asked you to trust her and you said you did, but checked up on every thing that the trust was supposed to cover, then your wife could say that: you say you trust her but you actions prove that you do not trust her.
If we define “Faith” as active belief that includes trusting behavior and obedience to the object of belief (e.g., by forgiving our brother seventy times seven) then we are not far apart.
Catholic use the word in a more limited sense as meaning intellectual assent or strong belief. Jimmy Akin has a good comparison of the two meanings.
“Forgive us our sins, as we forgive our sinators”–one of my kids.
Forgive us our wrongs as we forgive our wrongers, anyone?