Marmie's Musings

For God’s honor and our good, we should bring every sin we become aware of to God in confession and repentance.  But what if we forget one? Will God cast us away because there is a sin we’ve committed and never repented of?  If we fail to ask his forgiveness for one of our sins, will that sin remain unforgiven? Will God hold it against us? We confess our sins to honor God’s perfect holiness.  We ask his forgiveness so we will have the comfort of having our peace with him restored.  But God knew every sin we would ever sin when he chose us to be his own and committed himself to the task of redeeming us. When Jesus died for us on the cross, every one of our sins was still in the future—and he knew them all.  Our Savior will never learn something about us that will surprise him. He will not discover that we have committed a sin he never thought we would commit. He will never break off his love for us. We wouldn’t want anyone else knowing all the evil secrets of our...

If God already forgave us when we repented and put our faith in Christ, why do we still need to ask that our sins be forgiven?  The sad truth is that we still need forgiveness because we still sin. We are still sinners. We will sin until the day the Lord takes us to be with him and makes us perfect at last.  As long as we live on this earth, even though we long to please our Savior, we still sin.  And when we sin, we find that our peace, our joy in the Lord, and our relationships with God and with others are broken.  The only solution is to come again to God, acknowledging our sin, and seeking his forgiveness.  We will sin every day of this life. What a great comfort it is that God’s forgiveness is big enough for the sins we keep on sinning. Excerpt From: Starr Meade. “Comforting Hearts, Teaching Minds.” 

In the fifth request, we pray for the one thing we need more than any other—the forgiveness of God.  Our whole purpose for existing is to know and enjoy God.  Ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed God, though, we are not able to know and enjoy him because we are sinners who do not want to.  Not only that, but because God is holy, he cannot have fellowship with sinners.  There are other things we need—peace, the power to resist sin, the hope of heaven when we die—but we can have none of them until we are reconciled to God.  We can only be reconciled to God if he forgives our sins. If God never answered this request, “forgive us our debts,” if we never had his forgiveness, what else could we have that would be worth having? Excerpt From: Starr Meade. “Comforting Hearts, Teaching Minds.” 

WHAT DOES THE FIFTH PETITION OF THE LORD'S PRAYER MEAN? A. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” means: Because of Christ’s blood, do not hold against us, poor sinners that we are, any of the sins we do or the evil that constantly clings to us. Forgive us just as we are fully determined, as evidence of your grace in us, to forgive our neighbors. - Question 126 from The Heidelberg Catechism