Welcome to The MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 195th episode. In this episode we’re going to continue our study of the gospel of Matthew. We are in chapter 6. In this chapter Jesus points to the conduct of the Pharisees as examples of dangerous hypocrisy in the practice of religion. They were hypocrites in giving of alms as well as in prayer. They gave not because they cared about the poor, but because they wanted to advertise themselves as generous. They prayed not because they loved God, but in order to draw attention to themselves as pious. In this passage of chapter 6, Jesus gives His disciples instruction on how they should pray. This is the Lord’s Prayer. You may have noticed I’ve been using the NASB translation for quite a few episodes. For this episode I’m going to provide our scripture in the King James Version, since this prayer is so famous as it is traditionally written. I may continue using the King James going forward — I’ve been known to switch between the KJV and the NASB as I love both of them. Let’s begin by reading verses 9-15:
Mat 6:9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Mat 6:10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Mat 6:11 Give us this day our daily bread.
Mat 6:12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
Mat 6:13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
Mat 6:14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
Mat 6:15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Something you should know about Jesus is that He rarely condemns without providing a better direction. His goal for you is restoration which is driven by His love for you. The corruption of the Jewish elite had reached so deep into the faith that Christ had to step in and teach His followers a better way to pray. He didn’t want them falling into the trap of using prayer as a performance to garner attention or power. This kind of temptation is not exclusive to ancient Pharisees, however, and we should be on guard for it in our churches today. Anytime prayer is offered from the platform I think it’s a good idea to follow the template given to us by Christ in the Lord’s Prayer. That doesn’t mean we are restricted to this prayer, but it just gives us a center of gravity so we can know when our own prayers are going sideways. The Lord’s Prayer has been used by the Church in all ages for nearly 2,000 years. It bears the rare quality of being both concise and comprehensive, and we should endeavor to understand its meaning — we should not fall into the habit of mindlessly repeating it.
You’ll hear some pastors describe prayer as talking to God, but I think a more apt analogy is the writing of a letter to God. You see all of the qualities of a written letter in the Lord’s Prayer: it is inscribed to the Father, addressed to Heaven, its contents contain the errands of request, and its salutation is Amen. The reason I prefer the analogy of a written letter is because I think prayers should be carefully thought out and reflected upon. Do you really want what you’re about to ask for? Are you prepared to have your requests denied? Are you properly postured in your relationship with God or are you approaching Him as your butler or servant? Are you being precise in your language? In my view all of these things are important in the appropriate practice of prayer.
So let’s take apart the Lord’s Prayer in segments beginning with what you might think of as the preface. It begins with an address to God by saying Our Father which art in Heaven. The use of the plural “our Father” instead of “my Father” points to the reality that Christians are designed to live in community. We are called not only to pray alone in private, but also to pray with each other and for each other. Praying together is an essential part of Christian fellowship and fosters a healthy church culture. The singular recipient of your prayers should be God Himself. We don’t pray to saints or angels because they are not in a position to hear prayers nor are they fit for the honor of being prayed to.
The fact that we can address God as Father is a miraculous consequence of the gospel. When the Jews worshipped using the Tabernacle and the Temple there was a veil in place which divided the sacred from the profane. In order to enter the holiest parts of the structure, the Levitical priests would have to conduct various cleansing rituals on themselves which reflected how difficult and dangerous it was for a blemished character to stand in the presence of a holy God. But when Christ breathed His last on the cross, scripture says this veil was torn. Jesus is the Son of God and He never had to cleanse Himself to stand before the Father because He is perfectly holy and without sin. The atonement of Christ means that when we have faith in Him we are covered in His own righteousness and we ourselves are revealed as sons of God. Since God is our Father, we can come boldly to the throne of grace and we have access to God as the beneficent being that He is.
So when you pray you should do so with reverence, but never with the terrifying fear which accompanied the unrighteous standing in the presence of the holy. You can talk to God freely and you can be vulnerable with Him, it’s just that you need to know who He is first and you discover that through the scriptures. God is a common Father to all mankind insofar as He created everyone. For those who are in Christ God is your father in a special manner by way of adoption and regeneration. He has brought you in as a child and has given you His Spirit to sanctify you into the likeness of Christ. This truth represents an unspeakable privilege which warrants our praise and gratitude for the rest of our lives.
It pleases God when we call Him Father and it helps us to align ourselves into proper relationship with Him. If you addressed God as “Terrifying Sovereign” then this title would not be an accurate reflection of the relationship He wants to have with you. Psalm 103 says that God pities us for our weaknesses and infirmities the way a father pities his child. Malachi chapter 3 says that God will spare those who serve Him in the same way a father spares his son. God’s not watching your performance waiting for you to make a mistake so that He can judge you for it. God is watching your performance with love and compassion much the same way a parent makes the best of his or her child’s performance even though it is far from perfect. In the same way a father provides for his child, God Himself will provide you with everything which is good for you.
Understanding your relationship with God as your Father is an important part of preparing yourself for repentance. Repentance becomes much more difficult when you imagine you’re begging forgiveness from an unreconciled and avenging Judge. With Jesus you have an advocate with the Father which means your repentance is not received by an avenging Judge, rather it’s received by a loving, gracious, reconciled Father in Christ. Much of what secular people misunderstand about Christians comes from a misunderstanding of God Himself. They view Christians as judges because they view God Himself as a Judge. God is a Judge, but only to those who are not adopted as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ. Christians who routinely judge other people are mistaken in doing so. The proper mode of being for a Christian is self-sacrifice, encouragement to the good, and forgiveness.
The beginning of the Lord’s prayer uses the prepositional phrase Our Father in heaven. This does not mean that God is limited to His space in heaven. Scripture says the heavens cannot contain Him. Heaven is simply the place where God has chosen to establish His throne and manifest His glory. God’s throne in heaven is the target location of our prayers and Christ the Mediator, coequal in authority with the Father, sits at the right hand of this throne. Heaven is a spiritual domain, so when we pray we are making direct contact with a world of spirits. Prayer is a mode of expression which is lifted on high above the world. Heaven is a place of perfect purity which is in part why no human being can enter it without the righteousness of Christ. When we work to become better people and we work to honor God we do so because we understand that God is holy and He is treated as holy by all who approach Him.
Heaven is the place from which God looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth. When we pray and even when we live through the monotony of our daily lives, we should endeavor to make contact with the reality that God sees us in each of these moments. He is intimately aware of all our wants, burdens, desires, and infirmities. Scripture says God is able to do more for us than we can ask or think but that doesn’t mean we should ask for anything whatsoever. God is our Father and so we should approach him with some degree of familiarity but we must always remember He is our Father in heaven and that means we should practice reverence as well. One good barometer to determine whether your prayers are appropriate is whether they support the Christian aim of being with God in heaven. The final goal of all your movements here on earth is to honor God and be with Him in heaven. That needs to be the center of gravity for all the decisions you make and all the prayers you pray.
What I love about the Lord’s Prayer is that it mimics the priority of the Ten Commandments. The Lord’s Prayer contains six petitions, the first three being concerned with honoring God and the last three being concerned with our own temporal and spiritual needs. This matches the priority of the Ten Commandments because the first four teach us our duty toward God and the last six our duty toward our neighbor. Jesus sums up this priority when He says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all else shall be added.” Loving God and honoring God is the necessary prerequisite for being able to love your neighbor effectively.
Next we see the phrase: hallowed be thy name. The word hallowed here can also be understood to mean sanctified. This part of the prayer is entirely an effort to magnify and glorify God. God’s holiness can be understood as the greatness and glory of all his perfections. This part of the prayer makes clear to us the order of our relationship with God. We ought to serve God and give Him glory before we expect grace and mercy from Him. It’s simply the natural consequence of God being so great and we ourselves being so low. With that said, the beauty of the gospel is that it displays God’s unsearchable love for us insofar as He transcended this appropriate order by sending Christ to give His life for us while we were yet sinners.
It’s also the case that God’s goodness is the source of all good things we experience ourselves — and so we should recognize His goodness before expecting good things. Furthermore, the requests you do make of God should be colored by your motivation to honor Him. So if you ask for daily sustenance and the forgiveness of your sins, you ask for these things so that God might glorify Himself by giving them to you. Nothing has been created that wasn’t created of Jesus and through Jesus, and so we give all that we have to Jesus and for Jesus.
Glorifying God through your prayers might seem self-evident if you’re a believer, but consider the example of the Pharisees who did the opposite. Their chief goal in prayer was to lift up their own names and be seen of men. They didn’t care about God’s will so much as they cared about their own will and honoring themselves. One of the best ways to end any prayer is by asking for God’s will to be done rather than your own will. If God sees fit to give you what you ask for and if giving such a thing glorifies His name then so much the better.
There’s great peace of mind to be had in making your mission the glorification of God’s name. If your goal is to glorify God’s name then it won’t matter so much when your own name is tarnished. As a Christian who is bold in speaking the truth, you can expect your reputation to be dragged through the mud by the godless people around you. Persecution by itself is not a virtue, but those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake are blessed. There’s also peace of mind because you are aligning yourself with the winning team. God’s going to glorify His own name and exalt Himself above the heathen whether we help Him or not. If you make a virtue out of this inevitable outcome then you don’t have to worry so much about failure. If your goal in life is to amass great wealth, then it’s entirely possible for you to fail and realize a life that never came to fruition. But if your goal in life is to glorify God, you can be certain you will finish your days with a life well-spent.
We move on to the petition: thy kingdom come. This was the subject matter of the preaching of John the Baptist, Christ Himself, and the apostles after Christ — that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The Father’s kingdom and the perfect, eternal reign of the Messiah is at hand and so we pray for it to come. Anyone who has spent any amount of time studying human depravity and the most broken parts of this world should earnestly desire for the reign of Jesus to get here. One of the advantages of praying the scripture is that you end up echoing the will of God. A good example of this is read at the end of the book of Revelation when Christ says, “Surely, I come quickly.” And the response is, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
Some people think about the promises of God as if they render prayer an optional addition. But that’s really not the intent of God’s promises. The intent is for the promise to encourage or quicken the prayer. The sooner we get to a promise being fulfilled the more fervently we should pray for its completion. So in church when a minister is about to preach the word of God, and he knows the word of God promises never to return void, he should pray that God use the message for kingdom purposes and that the word preached should bear fruit in that moment.
One of the reasons why it’s critically important to understand this concept of the promises of God encouraging the prayers of the saints is that great among these promises is the advancement of the gospel itself. We know by the testimony of scripture that the Church will never fall and that the gospel will be preached to all people — but that testimony should not relieve us from the need to pray for its completion. The effective spread of the gospel should be one of the elements which constitutes our prayers every single day because its work means lives transformed.
Part of the arrival of God’s kingdom means ourselves and others being obedient to the laws and ordinances of it. We can’t perfectly reproduce heaven on earth until Christ finishes His work of redemption — but we have the capacity to make things a lot better or a lot worse. A Christlike person is able to introduce a little bit of heaven onto earth. A family and a home which lives submitted to God’s commandments gives a taste of our future in eternity. If we call ourselves Christians but refuse to live submitted to God’s design then Jesus isn’t really the Lord of our lives. Part of our daily prayers should be that we may in everything be ruled by Him.
One of the keys to effectively living in submission to God is to align your own will with His will. The best, and perhaps only, way to discover God’s will is by reading scripture. It’s a grace of God that we are enabled to please Him and have right knowledge of His will, so this is certainly a topic worth praying for. This kind of obedience isn’t going to happen overnight for you. There are many principalities and powers operating in cross-purposes to God’s will for you. The will of men, the will of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and the will of Satan just to name a few. But the closer you come to alignment with God’s will then the less likely you are to displease Him with the things you do and the less likely you are to be displeased with the things He does.
Notice how the Lord’s prayer seeks for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. It’s true that we should keep an eternal perspective, but not to the degree that we stop caring about what happens here on earth. The pain of this life is real and it works to shape a person’s eternity. All of us know what we know about God from what we’ve learned in this life. I’ve heard Christians speak many times about how since we can’t make the world perfect we shouldn’t be so concerned about improving it. This never made any sense to me. You may think evil doesn’t matter much to you, but that perception will be shattered when evil impacts yourself or someone you love. There’s no reason why we should allow those possessed by evil motivations to run the room. We should stand up for God’s will and do everything we can to make this place more like heaven than like hell.
The next phrase of interest is the request to: give us this day our daily bread. This petition for bodily sustenance comes immediately after praying for the things of God’s glory. A healthy spirit is not divorced from a healthy body. This doesn’t mean a person who gets sick is doomed to an unhealthy spirit — indeed the grace of God is sufficient and His power is made great in our weaknesses. But a person who’s constantly starving or malnourished is less likely to be cognizant of the good kingdom work available to them. God knows we need clothing and food, and Jesus tells His disciples in this passage to pray for bread everyday. He also says that if you seek first the kingdom of God then all these other things will be added to you.
Comforts and physical nourishment are gifts of God and so it’s appropriate that we pray for them. This doesn’t mean we should pray for wealth or pray for provision in excess — but that we should pray for what we need in order to carry on in good spirits. We should thank God when He provides for us and our families. Recognition of how important God’s provision is results in many Christians praying together before every meal. Asking for bread teaches us to pray with sobriety and maturity because it allows us to meditate on what we need from God more than what we simply want from God. The aim of God’s provision is always sustenance and never gluttony.
Praying for your daily bread means realizing the value of honest work. We’re not praying to receive someone else’s bread, nor are we asking for the bread of deceit or the bread of idleness. You can’t steal something or acquire something wrongfully and then claim it was God’s provision that you have it. Another principle our daily bread teaches us is to stop worrying about tomorrow and instead constantly depend on God’s providence day-to-day. This doesn’t mean we are inevitable beneficiaries of His grace even if we choose to remain lazy in idleness. It does mean that we are set free to work without undue fear or stress because we know all good things come from God and that He is faithful to look after us. From the least of men to the greatest of men, all people are entirely dependent on God’s mercy for their daily bread — this prayer is simply encouraging us to recognize that fact.
Like we said earlier, there’s language in this prayer which implies it’s being prayed in the collective even though it’s also the best template for private, individual prayer. This part of the prayer continues the plurality by asking God to give us our daily bread rather than to give me my daily bread. Part of the implication here is that you should be seeking God’s provision for your family and your faith community as well as for yourself. It’s a Christlike characteristic to be concerned for the poor and to pray for God’s provision for them. Your hunger, thirst, and your need for nourishment is renewed everyday. In the same way your desire for God and your dependence on Him should be renewed everyday. This is part of the reason why it’s daily bread and not monthly bread. God knows human nature and how abundance often breeds complacency. Your relationship with God is not supposed to be one where you check in once or twice a year on Christmas and Easter. We are designed for daily dependence and daily worship.
Next we examine the piece which asks God to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Notice how this petition is directly connected to the previous one asking for daily bread. It’s true that God’s grace means He makes the rain fall on both the righteous and the wicked — but I don’t think we should expect comfort and provision in this life if we remain in unrepentant sin. The connection to daily bread also implies we should be praying to God seeking His forgiveness not just once but every day.
Sin is conceptualized as debt here because sin causes us to become debtors to our Creator. Sin is deserving of justice in the form of God’s wrath, and since God — by His grace — has withheld wrath from us, we owe Him a debt for that. We’re also in debt to the Law because of our innumerable infractions against it. This idea of debt is why you hear pastors talk about Christ’s sacrifice as if He were paying the debt of our sins Himself. Praying daily for God’s forgiveness is exactly analogous to a daily remembrance of Christ’s work on the cross. One of the safest and most profitable prayers you can make is asking God’s forgiveness for your sins.
There’s a clear biblical principle which explains the importance of forgiving other people who have sinned against you while you seek forgiveness for yourself and for your sins against God. If you accept forgiveness for yourself but deny others who seek your forgiveness then you bring penalty down on yourself. Christ gives the parable of the unforgiving debtor in Matthew 18 to explain the importance of readily forgiving other people. As Christians we should not exact the payment of debt from another person if such payment means the ruin of that person or his family.
This idea also extends to Christ’s doctrine of turning the other cheek. Personal injury at the hands of another is often legitimately evil and able to be prosecuted under the strictness of law. In many cases full prosecution is necessary for the interest of maintaining law and order. This is not a bad thing. But there are other cases where a person hurts you and you trying to even the scales of justice yourself is the unwise course of action. Christians who come into contact with how much they’ve been forgiven should be quicker than the godless to forgive others.
I would say the most common reason a person withholds the forgiveness of others is because they’re afraid justice will not be served or that they will become a pushover. But this just isn’t true at all. In fact the opposite is true. When you are quick to forgive, your spirit becomes aligned with God’s Spirit because you take part in His gracious disposition. This alignment brings you peace. This peace is a result of the realization that you’ve been pardoned and extending this pardon to other people reinforces your own peace. We know that grace and forgiveness are eminently desirable traits because they are traits which characterize Jesus.
The last petition in the Lord’s Prayer says: lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. This request begins with a plea that we may never return to the folly for which God has forgiven us. When we ask God not to lead us into temptation we’re not implying God tempts us to sin. We’re asking that He restrain Satan from deceiving us. We’re asking that His Holy Spirit remains within us so that we’re not caught alone in the face of temptation. There’s great humility in seeking God’s protection from temptation because it’s born of a realization that we are broken sinners liable to transgress.
An all-too-common misconception among Christians is that Satan is weak and nothing to be concerned about. It’s true that under the protection of Christ Satan can do nothing to separate you from Him, but it’s also true that without Christ you are not a match for Satan. In the Lord’s Prayer, Satan is conceptualized as evil or the evil one. He is the devil, the tempter, and this part of the prayer is seeking protection so you won’t be overcome by his assaults. Your adversary has been killing, stealing, and destroying since the dawn of man and so he’s not to be trifled with. Every day you should pray for protection from Satan and the principalities and powers he uses to wreak havoc on the world.
This is also a plea to be delivered from the evil of the world which exists as a consequence of sin. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life serve to tempt men and destroy them. The prayer is that we be delivered from the sting of death, that we be delivered from the plots of evil men, and that we even be delivered from ourselves. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “The line between good and evil runs down the middle of every human heart.” The twofold purpose of praying deliverance from evil is that we may not become prey to it, and that we may not become evil ourselves.
The Lord’s Prayer finishes with an honorable salutation extended to God: For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever. Amen. It’s possible this salutation is inspired by David’s doxology in 1 Chronicles 29:11 which reads similar. One principle we learn from Job is that our prayers should be filled with arguments to encourage our faith in God. So for instance, you might plea with God that He do a certain thing and then reinforce the plea by recalling something else He has done in the past or some part of His character which is congruent with what you’re praying for. The goal of argumentation in prayer is less about persuading God and more about establishing a proper understanding of God in yourself. This idea goes back to the importance of ensuring your prayers are in alignment with who God actually is.
Notice how this closing salutation makes reference to the first three petitions of the prayer. Father in Heaven and thy kingdom come correspond to for thine is the kingdom; thy will be done corresponds to for thine is the power; and hallowed by thy name corresponds to for thine is the glory. This kind of consistency throughout the prayer reflects intimacy with God and the understanding of His character. A closing review of these characteristics also serves to encourage us in the petitions we had made earlier in the prayer. We know God is sovereign over whether our prayers be answered because thine is the kingdom. We know God is powerful enough to answer our prayers because thine is the power. We know that whatever God does with our prayers is the correct thing to do because we know God has victory in the end because thine is the glory.
Every time you pray you should remember that the highest form of pleading comes in praise and thanksgiving. Praising God is the best way to obtain further mercy from Him because our praise of Him qualifies us to receive it. This doesn’t mean God is merciless against those who don’t pray — indeed Jesus gave His life for us while we were yet sinners. But God does not cause a person to sin, and so He won’t answer certain of your pleas if your character is not mature enough to receive it. We don’t give God praise because God needs praise, but rather because we are designed to give Him praise. It was always our original purpose. God does not need our praise but God deserves our praise and therefore it’s our duty to give it.
In heaven, somehow, we will be praising God for all of eternity and this praise will be a consequence of our everlasting joy in Him. Prayer allows you to begin this part of your life in Heaven right now. The saints of God are copious in their praise of Him and they never feel like they’ve honored Him enough. That’s why the praise Jesus recommends for us at the end of this prayer is so all-encompassing. There’s no room for anyone or anything to share the glory which belongs to God.
The prayer finishes with the final word: Amen. The word amen means so be it. When we’re praying for something that is within God’s divine fiat, our own amens are merely an expression of our agreement with His amen. So if we pray for His kingdom to come, we already know He’s going to see to it that His kingdom comes whether we pray for it or not — so our amen just puts a voice to our alignment with God. When we’re praying for our own needs like healing of sickness, saying amen is a way of gathering up any unknown details we may have missed in the expression of the prayer. Amen should be proclaimed with a sense of desire and confidence. You conclude your prayers with “so be it” because you trust your God and you know He will do what’s best.
The Lord’s Prayer is very similar in character to many of the prayers the Jews had classically used in their own devotions. But there’s a key distinction between the Lord’s Prayer and these prayers of antiquity insofar as the Lord’s Prayer includes the line: as we forgive our debtors. The Jews who lived during the time of Christ were incensed at His forgiving of sins. They understood that His forgiving of sins was a claim of deity. If God is the only one who can forgive sins, and Jesus is forgiving sins, then Jesus is God. His association with deity is why they were so driven to crucify Him.
One of the most important consequences of Christ’s work on the cross is the democratization of forgiveness. When you have a relationship with your Savior and you come into contact with His forgiveness of your own sins, then suddenly you are set free to forgive those who have sinned against you. You know that you’ve been the recipient of grace and so it no longer makes sense to withhold grace from others. The primary characteristic of all godless worldviews is the erosion of forgiveness. Secular people may be able to forgive for a little while, but as they descend further into idolatry in their efforts to establish a perfect society — they lose their ability to extend forgiveness. That’s what cancel culture is. It’s the societal manifestation of a graceless population. The more self-righteous you become, the less grace you’re willing to extend to others.
The Lord’s Prayer calls the actions of those who have sinned against you “trespasses” instead of “treasons” for a reason. This is a stroke of divine wisdom. Anytime a person wrongs you, the posture of grace and mercy demands that you extend the maximum possible charity to their actions until proven otherwise. The Greek is paraptomata which means stumbles, slips, and falls. Jesus requires that you defer to forgiving those who wronged you AS IF they merely stumbled. You must learn to forgive if you yourself hope to be forgiven. We should bear no malice against our brothers and sisters and we should resist fantasies of revenge. We should not seek to harm them and we should be ready to help them and do good for them. If the person who has wronged you genuinely repents and seeks to be friends again, it is your Christian obligation to let go of the past and cultivate familiarity with this person as you had before the injury.
There’s a twofold danger in refusing to forgive others. The first danger is that you will harbor resentment and bitterness which will poison your own quality of life. It’s possible for your inability to forgive someone to plague you long after the offending person has departed from you. Why would you allow this person to dominate your life even in their absence? The second danger is even worse, because scripture indicates that if you withhold forgiveness from others then you’re very likely living in an unforgiven state with God. Your Father in heaven has extended grace and mercy to you on reasonable terms, but if you won’t do the same for others then your unwillingness is likely a symptom of an absence of God’s Spirit within you. If God’s Spirit is not in you then you can’t be sanctified. If you can’t be sanctified then you can’t be Christlike.
If you want mercy from God you need to practice extending mercy to others. We can’t expect the favor of God unless we are lifting our hands to Him purified of our own wrath. Throughout the Psalms we see king David pray for wrath to fall upon his enemies — but this was the broken, human side of David. It’s not a good idea to pray angrily to God for the punishment of your enemies. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” If we want to be like Jesus then we need to practice meekness with a desire for peace. If Jesus came to reconcile us to God then who are we to resist reconciliation with each other?
At the end of the day it’s important to remember men’s passions will not frustrate God’s word. This means you can feel all the hatred you want, but God’s word remains settled in Heaven. It just is what it is. Jesus commands us to forgive and so the best thing we can do is forgive, no matter how much it hurts. You don’t do it to justify those who have wronged you, you do it because you love and trust Jesus. You trust that He won’t lead you astray. You trust that whatever He commands you to do must be bringing you closer to Him. And in the final analysis being closer to Jesus is all we can really hope for anyway.
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