Sunday, September 6, 2026
“‘Forgive our sins as we forgive,’ / You taught us, Lord, to pray; / But You alone can grant us grace / To live the words we say.
“In blazing light Your cross reveals / The truth we dimly knew: / What trivial debts are owed to us, / How great our debt to You!”
“Forgive our sins as we forgive.” That is a very serious petition. Do we really want God to forgive us as we forgive others? Yet Jesus taught us to pray in just that way. The precious words of His prayer are imprinted on our hearts: “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). It is a petition of such importance that Jesus underlines that lesson on prayer with additional teaching: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).
When we focus our attention on what we perceive as the unrepentant attitudes and sins of others, we lose all interest in repenting of our own sins. As we watch, shocked and horrified at another’s sins, we imagine that nothing we have done could be quite so bad. Surely what others do is far worse than anything we might even think of doing. When we carefully adjust the mirror of God’s Law to get a good look at others and their transgressions, it becomes very difficult to see our own sins reflected in His Law. Our failure to forgive others is a clear sign of another failure on our part, our refusal to repent our own sins.
As our hymn declares, in the blazing light of Jesus’ cross the truth is revealed. Jesus kept God’s Law perfectly, obedient to His Heavenly Father to the point of death on a cross. The sinless Son of God suffered and died for the sins of all people—for our own sins and for the sins of those we refuse to forgive. God judged and condemned the sins of all people in the body of His Son and through Christ’s death, God reconciled the world to Himself. He does not count our sins against us (see 2 Corinthians 5:19). Jesus Himself embodied the petition of forgiveness that He taught in His prayer. As our Savior hung on the cross, He asked His Heavenly Father to forgive those who crucified Him. Now our Savior commands us to express that kind of forgiveness in our lives. We seek in the power of the Holy Spirit to forgive as we have been forgiven, and our prayers and our forgiveness reflect our Savior’s mercy: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
WE PRAY: Jesus, teach me to forgive others as You have forgiven me. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Carol Geisler. It is based on the hymn, “Forgive Our Sins as We Forgive,” which is number 843 in the Lutheran Service Book.
Reflection Questions: