{"id":1318,"date":"2019-09-26T05:18:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T05:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/?p=1318"},"modified":"2019-08-28T16:20:46","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T16:20:46","slug":"our-greatest-need-is-gods-greatest-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/2019\/09\/26\/our-greatest-need-is-gods-greatest-gift\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Greatest Need is God\u2019s Greatest Gift"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There Is More Grace in God than Sin in You<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Our greatest need and God\u2019s greatest gift are the same thing: forgiveness of sins. And to receive it, we have only to ask and pass it on. But to ask for it, we must first admit that we need it. Instinctively, we wriggle. We want to pass the buck. The man blames the woman. The woman blames the snake. Anything, anyone but us. \u201cWe make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars,\u201d says Shakespeare, \u201cas if we were villains on necessity .\u00a0.\u00a0. drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc\u2019d obedience of planetary influence.\u201d[i]<\/p>\n

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This is the hardest line of the Lord\u2019s Prayer, but it is also by far the most outrageous. No \u201cplease.\u201d No \u201csorry.\u201d Just this audacious request, sounding suspiciously like a demand: \u201cForgive us our sins.\u201d In Matthew\u2019s Gospel, it is rendered, \u201cForgive us our debts,\u201d because the Greek word opheilemata<\/em> is a commercial term, not a religious one, denoting \u201csomething which is owed, something which is due, something which is a duty or an obligation to give or to pay. In other words, it means a debt in the widest sense of the term.\u201d[ii] The word forg\u00a0 ive has similar commercial connotations, literally meaning \u201cto wipe the slate clean.\u201d Try that with your bank manager, your mortgage lender, your credit-card provider: \u201cTo Whom It May Concern: My family and I appear to have borrowed far more than we can afford to repay. I am writing, therefore, to ask you to erase from your hard drive all record of everything we currently owe. Forgive us our debts. Let\u2019s call it quits. Yours faithfully, etc.\u201d It\u2019d be preposterous. Naive. Not the way the world works. Not the way the world works at all.<\/p>\n

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Of course, some people will splutter with indignation at all of this. They\u2019ll point out, quite rightly, that forgiveness may be simple, but it isn\u2019t cheap. It \u201ccost the cross.\u201d And yet Jesus gave this prayer, and the disciples started praying it, at least a year before he died. Perhaps when they prayed \u201cforgive us our sins,\u201d they remembered the story of the prodigal son, stumbling stinking up the road with his fistful of mixed motives and that flimsy apology tucked in his back pocket: \u201cFather, I have sinned .\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d But before he could deliver it, he was hugged by the father, handed the credit card, welcomed home. It wasn\u2019t the speech. It was never the speech. It was only ever that he had come.[iii]<\/p>\n

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It doesn\u2019t matter what you\u2019ve said or done; what you\u2019ve thought about saying or doing; where you\u2019ve been or who you\u2019ve been there with\u2014there is more grace in God than sin in you. \u201cGod never tires of forgiving us,\u201d says Pope Francis; \u201cwe get tired of asking forgiveness.\u201d[iv] You cannot be too bad, too broken, or too boring for God\u2019s unconditional love, only too proud to acknowledge how desperately you need it. Ask and you will receive. Take one step toward the Father and he\u2019ll come running toward you. Splutter that unconvincing apology, and he\u2019ll hug you silent. Pray \u201cforgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us\u201d\u2014twelve words\u2014and he\u2019ll do it. He\u2019ll forgive you. Just like that. He\u2019ll wipe the slate clean. Here, then, is the gospel at the heart of Christ\u2019s manifesto: If we confess our sins to the Father, asking for his grace, we will be forgiven. Or, as the apostle John puts it elsewhere, \u201cIf we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.\u201d[v]<\/p>\n

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Taken from How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People<\/em><\/a> by Pete Greig.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2019. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

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——<\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1, scene ii.<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> William Barclay, The Beatitudes and the Lord\u2019s Prayer for Everyman (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 227.<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> Luke 15:11-24.<\/p>\n

[iv]<\/a> \u201cFull text: Pope Francis\u2019 first Angelus address,\u201d The Catholic World Report, March 17, 2013, https:\/\/www.catholicworldreport.com\/2013\/03\/17\/full-text-pope-francis-first-angelus-address\/.<\/p>\n

[v]<\/a> 1\u00a0John 1:9.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There Is More Grace in God than Sin in You Our greatest need and God\u2019s greatest gift are the same thing: forgiveness of sins. And to receive it, we have only to ask and pass it on. But to ask for it, we must first admit that we need it. Instinctively, we wriggle. We want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":1324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[97,37,193,82,8,135,133,7,157,57],"tags":[194,81,290,20,140,136,24,59,80],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1328,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions\/1328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}