The Lord’s Prayer: Fifth Petition

Sermon for the Festival of St. Andrew

Romans 10:8-18  +  Matthew 4:18-22 + Small Catechism Review

This evening we’re combining our celebration of St. Andrew’s day, which was yesterday, with our study of the Lord’s Prayer. As usual, there’s a connection to be made between the Small Catechism and just about any lection in the lectionary.

Let’s start with the Lord’s Prayer. In the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, we’ve asked our Father in heaven that His name may be hallowed among us, that His kingdom may come to us also, and that His will may be done among us. Those three petitions dealt mainly with our spiritual needs. Then we were taught by Jesus finally to ask for something we need for the body, for today’s bread. But why should God listen to us at all? Why should He grant these first four petitions? Because we’re worthy of the things for which we ask? Because we’ve earned them or deserved them? Have we, as God’s children, done all our chores according to God’s Law? Have we loved Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? Have we loved our neighbor as ourselves? No, in fact, if we look at ourselves in the mirror of God’s Law, we’ll find that we have absolutely no right to expect any good thing from God. He has every right to deny us the things we’ve asked for because of our sins.

But the Lord, in His mercy, has taught us to go ahead and ask for those first four things first. “It’s all right,” He teaches us. “I know you’re sinners. But you are penitent sinners, aren’t you? You are sinners who have put your faith in Me, Jesus Christ, who have been baptized, who have been made children of God the Father. And so, for that reason, it’s all right to approach Him and to ask for those first four things and to expect that your Father hears your petitions and is attentive to them. But that doesn’t mean you’re sinless. And lest you begin to think too highly of yourselves, lest you start to depend on your own goodness or think of yourself more highly than others, there is a fifth petition you must pray: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

What does this mean?

We ask in this prayer that the Father in heaven would not look upon our sins or deny these petitions because of them; for we are not worthy of anything for which we ask, nor have we earned it; but we ask that He would give it all to us by grace; for we daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment. We, in turn, will also truly forgive from the heart and gladly do good to those who sin against us.

Let’s say a word about the translation “trespasses” and “those who trespass against us.” If you read Matthew 6, it says, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” That’s the equivalent of how Luther translated it into German. But William Tyndale, the first real translator of the Bible into English in the early 1530’s, translated that phrase, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive our trespassers.” And that early translation stuck (more or less) when the Anglicans put together their Book of Common Prayer in 1549, where many of our liturgical phrases still come from.

Now, trespasses aren’t exactly the same thing as debts, but the debts we’re talking about here aren’t financial ones anyway. They’re the spiritual debts incurred when one person sins against another. When that happens, the sinner owes a debt—a payment, or a punishment, or both—to the one sinned against. A trespass is just another picture of sin. It’s to go where you don’t belong, to violate someone else’s property or person, to do harm where you had no business doing harm, to fail to help where you owed help. If our trespasses against our neighbor are serious, our trespasses against God are far more serious, because the only payment that satisfies that debt is suffering and death—not just the death of the body, but the eternal suffering of the soul. There is no forgiveness of the trespass or of the debt, there is no letting the trespasser or the debtor off the hook, without that payment.

But along came Christ Jesus to the Jordan River, to where John the Baptist was baptizing. And John called out to everyone listening, “Look! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Like the Passover lamb, which was spotless and innocent, but which was put to death, so that its blood could save the Israelites from the destroying angel. Or like the lambs that were sacrificed constantly on the altar of sacrifice—innocent creatures who paid with their death for the sins committed by the Israelites. That’s what Jesus was, according to John the Baptist. The Lamb of God—offered by God—to pay for, to make atonement for the sins of the world. As Isaiah prophesied about Him, The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

So He is the payment, the atoning sacrifice, the Mediator, the Lamb. Now there is a basis for God to forgive any sinner in the world. All that is needed now is faith in the Lamb. But where does that come from? As Paul wrote to the Romans in the First Lesson tonight, Faith comes by hearing what is preached. But where does preaching come from? It comes from preachers. And where do preachers come from? They must be sent. They must be called by God to preach and to be His instruments of forgiveness.

Do you remember what happened the next day, after John the Baptist declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? Jesus walked by again. And two of John’s disciples were standing next to John, and he pointed to Jesus and then spoke privately to those two disciples, “Look! The Lamb of God” One of those disciples was likely John, the brother of James, since it’s recorded in his Gospel and he often doesn’t identify himself by name. The other disciple was named Andrew.

Andrew, a fisherman like several of the Apostles, was Simon Peter’s brother. But Peter wasn’t there that day. It was Andrew who first went to Jesus, with that other disciples, and spent the day with Him, listening to Him, hearing the Gospel preached by Jesus Himself. And then Andrew brought the good news to his brother Simon Peter. We have found the Messiah!

So Andrew was one of the very first to hear Jesus’ preaching, and he then became the first to invite another to hear it for himself. At that time, Andrew wasn’t yet preaching the gospel; he hadn’t been sent to preach the gospel. But having heard the gospel, first from John the Baptist, then from Jesus’ own lips, and having believed the Gospel, he did what every believer is called to do: he confessed Christ with his lips.

Isn’t that how St. Paul summarizes the Gospel in Romans 10? If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is the Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For if a person believes from the heart, he will be justified; and if he confesses with the mouth, he will be saved. See, the Gospel doesn’t say, “Here’s what you must do in order to be saved!” No, the Gospel says, “Here is the One in whom you must believe in order to be saved! Here is Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. All who believe in Him will be forgiven, justified, and saved. So follow Him! Believe in Him! And then confess Him before men.” That’s the Gospel call that goes out to all men.

Some, like St. Andrew, are called to do more than that. They’re called, not only to follow Jesus, but to be “fishers of men,” as you heard in the Second Lesson. Preachers, like Andrew, who preach the Gospel in the name of Christ and who administer the Sacraments and forgive sins in the stead of Christ, who point sinners to Christ and cry out, “Seek forgiveness in Him!”, who point sinners to the Word and Sacraments and cry out, “Find forgiveness here!” And in this way, they bring people out of the sea of condemned sinners and into the boat of forgiven sinners, believers in Christ Jesus.

But even forgiven sinners still commit sins. Even though believers in Christ carry the status of “forgiven” at all times, as long as we remain in the faith, Jesus still teaches us in the Fifth Petition to continue to ask, daily, for the forgiveness of our trespasses, for “we daily sin much.” And He attaches both a warning and a comfort to that prayer. Father, forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us. God has not withheld His forgiveness from us poor, miserable sinners but has freely granted it for Christ’s sake to us who have repented and believed in Christ, though we provided no atonement of our own. So we are not allowed to withhold our forgiveness from those who trespass against us. We may not require our neighbor to make atonement for his sins against us, to make up for what he did before we forgive him. No, as Jesus teaches Andrew’s brother, Simon Peter, If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.

The one who is unwilling to forgive his neighbor who repents has broken away from Christ and should not expect God to forgive him his sins any longer. What wretches we would be if we were to say, “I want free forgiveness from God for my countless sins against Him, but I’m unwilling to show even a fraction of that forgiveness to my neighbor.” No, the one who believes in the free forgiveness God offers in Christ will also truly forgive from the heart and gladly do good to those who sin against us. That doesn’t mean your sinful flesh enjoys it or finds it easy. But the New Man will fight against the flesh and forgive, genuinely and sincerely.

And that’s the comfort. When we notice that there is a New Man within us, who treasures God’s forgiveness and wants to be like God in forgiving others, who struggles against the sinful part of us that wants to hold a grudge and remain bitter and angry—when we notice that the New Man is alive and trying to put to death the sinful desires of our Old Man—then we have evidence that we are, in fact, forgiven children of God, because only children of God have a New Man. And when the New Man forgives the one who sinned against us, we have God’s assurance that He will forgive us our sins in exactly the same way.

And so tonight we give thanks for St. Andrew, the first disciple of Jesus, who was later called to be an Apostle, a fisher of men, and who willingly faced death for his confession of Christ. He could only do that, and we can only do that, because of our Father’s promise to hear and grant our petition: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Amen.