The Lord’s Prayer · piece 20 of 26
The Fifth Request
From Luther’s Small Catechism, 1529
Practice mode shows the first letter of each word. Say the line, then tap it to check.
And forgive our guilt, as we forgive those guilty of sinning against us. (Matthew 6:12)
What does this mean?
We pray in this request that our Heavenly Father will neither pay attention to our sins nor refuse requests such as these because of our sins and because we are neither worthy nor deserve the things for which we pray. Yet He wants to give them all to us by His grace, because many times each day we sin and truly deserve only punishment. Because God does this, we will, of course, want to forgive from our hearts and willingly do good to those who sin against us.
In plain words
You sin every day, and you do not deserve what you ask for. In this prayer you ask God not to hold your sins against you. God promises to give you good things anyway, because of grace. Because God forgives you, you also forgive other people from your heart and do good to them.
Our summary of Luther’s explanation, for reading after his words, not instead of them.
Where Jesus says it
-
Matthew 18:32–33 In Jesus’ story, a king who forgave a huge debt says the forgiven servant should forgive others the same way.
Read Matthew 18:32–33
32 Then his lord called him in, and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt, because you begged me. 33 Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, even as I had mercy on you?’
World English Bible, public domain. The whole chapter on Free Scripture → · Read in the NRSVue, the ELCA’s standard translation →
Translated by Robert E. Smith for Project Wittenberg (revised 2004) and placed in the public domain by the translator. How we checked it, and the whole Catechism on one page