<p>11:4 <i>And forgive us our sins. For we ourselves also forgive everyone that is indebted to us. And bring us not into temptation</i>- There is a parallel between &quot;sins&quot; and being &quot;indebted&quot;; probably an allusion to the jubilee. We release / forgive men their debt to us, as God does to us. If we chose not to participate in this Jubilee by not releasing others, then we cannot expect to receive it ourselves (note the Jubilee allusions in Lk. 24:47). Around 90% of Old Testament references to sin use the metaphor of a weight or burden, which can be lifted by forgiveness. The Lord Jesus prefers to speak of sin as a debt, which can be forgiven by not being demanded and the debt erased. The metaphor of debt is somewhat richer than that or burdens. It opens the possibility that God lent to us, that He allowed us to get into that debt- because He didn't strike us dead for the sin. 'Debt' also carries with it the idea that we would like to repay, but cannot. This is the flavour of the Lord's opening to the Sermon- that He is the solution for those who would like to be spiritual but feel unable to be as they would wish to be (see on Mt. 5:6). The release of debt carries with it a greater sense of gratitude, knowing that we should not have got into the debt in the first place. All this was foreseen by the Lord in His change of metaphor from sin as weight to sin as debt. It has been noted that sin was not spoken as debt until Jesus introduced the idea. We are in debt to God. And yet so many have the idea that God owes them, and big time. The prayer of Apollonius of Tyana was that &ldquo;O ye gods, give me the things which are owing to me&rdquo;. And that ancient attitude is alive today, leading to some who think it is their right not to work and to be supported, or expect some kind of material blessing from God. When actually, we are in deep debt to God, and forgiven it only by pure grace.</p><p>Those &ldquo;indebted&rdquo; to us are those who have a debt to us. But Biblically, who are those who are &lsquo;indebted&rsquo;? The same Greek word occurs often in the New Testament. Mt. 18:30 explains that there is a debt to us if we have been sinned against and it&rsquo;s not been reconciled. The debt our brethren have to us, and we to them, is to love one another, to lay our lives down for each other, to entertain and receive each other at home (s.w. 3 Jn. 8; 1 Jn. 3:16; 4:11). A wife has her husband in her debt if he doesn&rsquo;t love her with the love of Christ (Eph. 5:28); our brethren are in debt to us if they don&rsquo;t give us material help when we truly need it (Rom. 15:27); or if they don&rsquo;t wash our feet (Jn. 13:14). A debt implies that it&rsquo;s not been paid; and so I come to the conclusion that the&nbsp;<i>forgiveness&nbsp;</i>of our debtors is forgiving our brethren when they don&rsquo;t love us as they should, don&rsquo;t care for us&hellip; and never apologize or rectify it. The debt is outstanding; they&rsquo;ve not cleared it. But we are to forgive it; we are to forgive unconditionally, without demanding restoration or grovelling repentance before us. This is the challenge of that phrase in the Lord&rsquo;s prayer. For we ask for &ldquo;our sins&rdquo; in general to be likewise forgiven; and they surely include many &lsquo;secret sins&rsquo; which we don&rsquo;t even perceive or haven&rsquo;t repented of. And further. &ldquo;As we also forgive every one that is indebted to us&rdquo; (Lk. 11:4) can actually be read as a word of command, a statement that is actually a request. The request is that the sins of those who&rsquo;ve sinned against us be forgiven- in this sense, &ldquo;whosesoever sins ye remit s.w. forgive they are remitted unto them&rdquo; (Jn. 20:23). That&rsquo;s another challenging thought. If they&rsquo;re impenitent, how can they be forgiven? But if&nbsp;<i>we</i>&nbsp;forgive them, perhaps we are to understand that God is happy to forgive them. If we feel, as I do, that we&rsquo;ve been sinned against so much&hellip; then we have a wonderful opportunity to gain our own forgiveness and even that of those people&hellip; by forgiving them. The more I hurt at how others have treated me, the more I realize my own desperate need for forgiveness. The two things, as the Lord foresaw in His model prayer, dovetail seamlessly together.<br />Further evidence that Jesus prayed in Aramaic is found by comparing the two records of the Lord's prayer; Matthew has &quot;forgive us our debts&quot;, whilst Luke has &quot;forgive us our sins&quot;. The Aramaic word&nbsp;<i>hobha</i>&nbsp;means both 'sin' and 'debt'. The conclusion is therefore that Jesus taught the disciples to pray in their native Aramaic dialect rather than in Hebrew or Greek. Further, the Lord's prayer has many links to the&nbsp;<i>Kaddish</i>, an ancient Aramaic prayer which included phrases like &quot;Exalted and hallowed be his great name... may he let his kingdom rule... speedily and soon&quot;.</p><p>&quot;As we<i>...&quot; </i>is a challenge.&nbsp;The crucial little Greek word&nbsp;<i>hos</i>&nbsp;is elsewhere translated: according as, as soon as, even as, like as, as greatly as, since, whenever, while. Clearly enough, our forgiveness by God is dependent upon and of the same nature as our forgiveness of others.</p><p>&quot;Forgive us our / debts sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us&quot; uses the aorist which implies 'Forgive us this once'. Could this not be an anticipation of the state of the believer before the judgment seat of Christ- 'forgive me please this once for all my sins, as I have forgiven those who sinned against me'. If so, we have a powerful exhortation to forgive&nbsp;<i>now</i>; for in that awesome moment, it will be so apparent that the Lord's gracious acceptance of us will be directly proportional to how deeply we accepted and forgave our brethren in this life. Notice how strongly Jesus links future judgment with our present forgiveness (Lk. 6:37). He teaches us to pray now for forgiveness on the basis of how we have forgiven others, knowing that in prayer, we have a foretaste of the judgment. Now we can come boldly before the throne of grace in prayer, just as we will come before that same throne in the last day.</p>