For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. Jesus returns to the forgiveness petition to underline its condition: the disciples' forgiveness of others and the Father's forgiveness of the disciples are linked. Ephesians 4:32 says forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you — the motivation for forgiving others is not to secure God's forgiveness but to live consistently with the forgiveness already received. The verses 14–15 function as an explanation of the as we have forgiven our debtors line: the prayer assumes that the one praying has forgiven others, because a person who has genuinely received God's forgiveness has been transformed in their capacity to forgive.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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