Matthew 6:5-15 And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 "This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' 14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Introduction: Soul and Body
If all your sins are forgiven when you become a Christian, and all of your debt to God was paid on the cross, why does Jesus tell us to pray, “Forgive us our debts”? What is forgiveness? And how do you know when it has happened?
It is worth noting that in the second half of the Lord’s Prayer there is just one short line devoted to the needs of the body. All the rest of the prayer is about the needs of the soul. The first half of the prayer is not about our needs at all – it is all about God. The second half of the prayer, where we pray for our needs, in the Greek – twenty-five words about the needs of the soul, eight words about the needs of the body.
That tells us two things. First, the body is important, and second, the soul is far more important. We do not want to miss that first point - the body is important. God made a physical world with physical things that we need to function and He delights in supplying those physical things, and so that is the proper subject of our prayers. However – far more important is the spiritual world.
If you could get one sin forgiven if you agreed to let them amputate your right arm, would that be worth it? Yes. Otherwise why would Jesus have said “If your right hand causes you to sin cut it off and throw it away”? If it is worth losing a limb to prevent a sin, it would be worth losing a limb to have a sin forgiven.
We all say “amen” when a preacher stands up and says “The spiritual world is more important than the physical world” and yet – is that belief reflected in the decisions we make in life? What sort of effort goes into your body – feeding it, resting it, washing it, dressing it, painting it – whatever needs doing, compared to the effort that goes into the needs of your soul? How much time and effort goes into strengthening your soul compared to what you do for your physical health?
1 Timothy 4:8 physical training is of a little value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.
All those six-pack abs out there will be dirt a few hundred years from now. Larry Ellison spent over $200 million to build this yacht.
It comes complete with onyx countertops, a gym, spa, sauna, wine cellar, a movie theater and basketball court. Someday it will be a rusting pile of trash in a scrap yard. One thousand years from now it will not exist. So, do we pray for our physical needs? Yes, but we pray far more for our spiritual needs.
Must the Forgiven ask Forgiveness?
And our chief spiritual need is forgiveness. We found last week that there are two kinds of forgiveness – the forgiveness you get the day you become a Christian and the forgiveness you get after you become a Christian. The moment a person believes, God forgives all His sin and all His wrath toward that person gives way to love and favor and delight. That is a single, momentary, once-for-all event that takes place at conversion.
Ephesians 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
1 John 2:12 I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven
Some of you have been taught that when you became a Christian God forgave all your sins past, present, and future, and therefore you never need to ask forgiveness as a Christian. But that theory runs aground on the Lord’s Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer is for believers. It starts with Our Father, so it is a Christian who is praying; and yet we are told to pray, Forgive us our debts. When you become a Christian are your future sins pre-forgiven? The price for redemption from all our future sins has been pre-paid on the cross, but there is more to forgiveness than the payment of a price. The concept of pre-forgiveness does not even make sense, because forgiveness has to do with the restoration of a broken relationship. How do you restore a broken relationship prior to it being broken? That is nonsense. You can prevent it from being broken in the first place, but that is not forgiveness. You can make provision for the restoration ahead of time, and prepare for it, and even promise it ahead of time, but actually restoring the broken relationship cannot happen until after the relationship has been broken. Nowhere does the Bible say our future sins are already forgiven.
But the Bible does tell us that there is more than one kind of forgiveness. Matthew 12:32 – there is eternal forgiveness with regard to the age to come and there is temporal forgiveness here and now. The once-for-all forgiveness you get at conversion is eternal forgiveness. But then as you walk through life as a Christian and fall into sin you receive temporal forgiveness day by day. One is a king’s amnesty for His conquered enemy; the other is a Father’s reconciliation to a disobedient son. There is a universe of difference between the two.
When an enemy of God finally surrenders, lays down his weapons, bows the knee to Christ and asks for pardon, at that moment God forgives all his past sins and adopts him into His family as His own child. And from that moment on, he has a much, much different kind of relationship with God than he had when he was God’s enemy. It is a completely different kind of relationship; however it is still possible for sin to disrupt the closeness of that relationship, and so there is still a need for a kind of forgiveness in those times when the closeness and intimacy are disturbed by sin. When God forgives an enemy, that person goes from being lost to being saved. But when God forgives one of His own children, it is not a matter of going from being lost to being saved – it is simply a matter of going from being at odds with your Dad to being on good terms with your Dad.
John 13:8 "No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me." 9 "Then, Lord," Simon Peter replied, "not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!" 10 Jesus answered, "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean
Those people would walk around in sandals on dirt paths and get dirty feet, so when they arrived at a dinner they would wash their feet. We do the same thing with our hands. If you go to a friend’s house for dinner you don’t show up and say, “Hey, mind if I use your shower? I want to get cleaned up for dinner.” You took a shower at home – all you need to do now is rinse off the germs or dirt that your hands picked up on the way over. The day you became a Christian you got a bath. You do not need that kind of forgiveness again and again. The idea that you lose your salvation every time you sin and you get it back every time you repent is false. But we do need the Lord to wash our feet as we muddy ourselves by falling into sin.
What happens when we sin?
So what does it mean to have this dust on our feet? And what does it mean to have it washed off?
God is displeased
When you sin as a believer you are not kicked out of the family, but there are still some negative effects within the family. Even as a son or daughter, deeply loved by God, it is possible to do things that either enhance or disrupt fellowship with Him. Genuine, born-again, justified, adopted, saved, children of God can sometimes do things that especially please Him and can other times do things that grieve Him or even anger Him. So it is possible to have his favor in a general way as His beloved child but at the same time be at odds with Him in some particular instance. And that is not hard to understand if you just think about a loving family. If you have a son or daughter whom you deeply love and who is the delight of your life – there is a world of difference in how you feel about that child compared to how you feel about all the other children in the world.
And yet that child can still do things that put a strain on your relationship - so you are not as close as you were yesterday. But even when they have done that, and you are estranged and distant from one another in some way – still, even then, you still favor your child a million times more than any other child. They are not kicked out of the family every time they do something wrong, but there is a change in the degree of closeness and harmony you have with them.
We have favor with God because of our position in Christ. That is what enables us to be part of the family. When God is the most displeased He has ever been with you your whole Christian life – still you have far more favor with Him than the nicest, most upstanding non-Christian, because when He looks at you He sees Christ.
But He does not only see Christ. He does not only deal with us positionally. He also deals with us personally and individually. He is responsive to our obedience and disobedience.
This is part of what is unique about Christianity. We saw last time that the essence of forgiveness is not exemption from punishment. It is restoration of good favor with the person you sinned against. And it is one of the things that sets Christianity apart from other religions. Ours is not a religion of doing ceremonies and rituals and jumping through hoops to achieve religious merit badges. Christianity, first and foremost, is a matter of knowing God. It is a relationship. Sin disturbs that relationship, and forgiveness opens the door for the relationship to be restored. That is why there is no necessary connection between forgiveness and removal of punishment, but there is a necessary connection between forgiveness and love.
Luke 7:47 I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven--for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.
That is why whenever you see the word forgiveness in Scripture you do not have to look far to see words like love, compassion, comfort, and kindness.
Ephesians 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other
2 Corinthians 2:7 you ought to forgive and comfort him
Forgiveness is a replacing of anger with mercy.
Micah 7:18 Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives …? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.
God does get angry with believers
So forgiveness is when anger gives way to love. But what does that look like within the family? Does He get angry with His own people?
Micah 7:9 Because I have sinned against him, I will bear the Lord's wrath, until he pleads my case and establishes my right. He will bring me out into the light; I will see his righteousness.
The prophet was bearing the Lord’s anger over his sin for a time. It was not eternal wrath like God has for the unbeliever, but there was a very real sense in which God was unhappy with His prophet who was clearly a believer.
In Moses’ day no human being on the planet was more favored by God than Moses. And yet in Deuteronomy 3:26 it says the Lord was very angry with Moses. And in Deuteronomy 4:2 God was still angry with him. And in Exodus 4 God was so angry with Moses He was about to kill him, and the only thing that saved his life was when his wife intervened.
What about in the New Testament? As sons and daughters of God in Christ we have a much more favored position than even Moses had in the Old Testament. But does that mean God has become unresponsive to our obedience or disobedience? Does it mean that His emotions are no unaffected by what we do? No. In fact, just the opposite. The more you love someone the more your emotions are affected by what they do. God is pleased when we obey Him and displeased when we do not.
Ephesians 5:10 find out what pleases the Lord.
2 Corinthians 5:9 we make it our goal to please him
If God were automatically pleased with everything we did and it were impossible to displease Him then we would not need to make it our goal to please Him. Obviously it is possible to displease the Lord in some measure.
It is nothing like His anger against unbelievers. We never experience His kingly enemy-wrath, but we do experience His fatherly displeasure. It is the displeasure of jealousy (the good kind of jealousy). If your wife commits adultery against you and it has no impact at all on your emotions that means you do not love her. Because the more you love her the more it will provoke godly jealousy if she is with another man. And in the same way it is possible for us to provoke God’s jealousy. In 1 Corinthians 10 the people were dabbling in idolatry.
1 Corinthians 10:22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
Jealousy in that context is a form of anger.
It is also possible for a Christian to grieve the Lord.
Ephesians 4:30 do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God
There is a whole range of negative emotions we provoke from God when we sin – from grief to displeasure to jealous anger.
When the people in Corinth were getting drunk during communion and God responded to that by causing many of them to get sick and even struck some of them dead, are we to imagine that God was happy with them at that moment? Or that He was emotionally indifferent? Putting to death His own children for their blatant sins at His table without feeling any negative emotions of any kind toward them? No – God was acting out of His displeasure.
Sin would not be sin if it had no effect at all on our fellowship with God. Yes, things are much different now in the New Testament because we have a much more favored position with God than Old Testament saints had – but that makes the reality of a disruption in intimacy even worse. The deeper and sweeter a love relationship is, the more painful it is to have it disturbed. So if anything our sin provokes more emotion from God than in Old Testament times, not less.
What is His displeasure like?
A good father loves his son but he is not always smiling at his son. But what is His displeasure like? How do you know when you are at odds with your Father in heaven? And how do you know when it is forgiven and your relationship with Him is back on a joyful footing? In Micah, the prophet has sinned against God and is experiencing God’s anger.
Micah 7:8 Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. 9 Because I have sinned against him, I will bear the Lord's wrath, until he pleads my case and establishes my right. He will bring me out into the light; I will see his righteousness.
He has fallen and is sitting in darkness. Darkness describes a time of hardship, gloom, confusion, fear, etc. That is what it is like in between when you sin and are forgiven. He is looking forward to a time in the future when the Lord comes and pleads his case and establishes him and brings him out into the light. But for now he is in the darkness.
David describes the same thing in Psalm 51 where he confesses his sin of adultery and murder. He feels guilty (vv.1, 3). He feels dirty (vv.2, 7, 10). His joy is gone (vv.8, 12). He feels broken and contrite (v.17). He writes about it again in Psalm 32.
Psalm 32:3 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
Your bones are the internal strength of your body. The image of his bones wasting away points to a sense that deep down inside him, his inner strength felt worn out and broken. And it was expressed through a continual groaning.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.
His life became dry and barren.
Psalm 38:2 your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me. 3 Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin. 4 My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. 5 My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. 6 I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning. 7 My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. 8 I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart. 10 My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes. 11 My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away. 12 Those who seek my life set their traps… 13 I am like a deaf man, who cannot hear, like a mute, who cannot open his mouth…17 … my pain is ever with me. 18 … I am troubled by my sin.
The writer of Psalm 39 was suffering because of his sin…
Psalm 39:10 Remove your scourge from me; I am overcome by the blow of your hand. 11 You rebuke and discipline men for their sin; you consume their wealth like a moth … 13 Look away from me, that I may rejoice again before I depart and am no more.
That is talking about God’s look of anger – “Turn Your angry face away and let me see Your face of favor once again.”
Psalm 40:12 troubles without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within me.
Psalm 102: 2 Do not hide your face from me … 3 For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers. 4 My heart is blighted and withered like grass; I forget to eat my food. 5 Because of my loud groaning I am reduced to skin and bones. … 7 I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof. 8 All day long my enemies taunt me … 9 For I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears 10 because of your great wrath, for you have taken me up and thrown me aside. 11 My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass. 23 In the course of my life he broke my strength
That gives you an idea of some of the effect it has on a believer when God turns his face away.
In this life it is really a lot worse for us than it is for unbelievers. The more you love someone and the more you treasure a good relationship with that person the more it hurts you to be at odds with that person. What could be worse in this life than the consequence Peter received when he denied Christ?
Luke 22:60 … Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. 61 The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. … 62 And [Peter] went outside and wept bitterly.
It was the worst sin Peter had ever committed in his life. One of the worst sins anyone has ever committed. But Jesus did not have to yell at Him, did not have to whip him, did not have to give him two years probation from ministry or strip him of his Apostolic credentials; all He had to do was look into his eyes and it was more than Peter could take. The more you love the Lord the more painful any kind of estrangement from Him is.
How to know when your suffering is God’s anger
But how do you know when that is happening? Obviously the Lord does not become upset with us every time we sin – otherwise He would be constantly angry with us. But we know from Scripture that most of the time He is not angry with us – He is pleased with us. So how do you know when things are not quite right between you and God?
Is it suffering? Should you interpret all hardship as God’s anger over sin? No – that would be the mistake of Job’s friends. There are times when God’s face turns away and you feel internal weakness or your life seems dry or you lose all your joy – but it is not because of any sin you committed. It is because God is testing your faith or building it or teaching you something or preparing you for something or whatever. The people in Corinth got sick and some died because of their sin. But Job got sick and his children died and it was not because of his sin. So when you suffer, how do you know which it is?
That is a hard question to answer. The best I can do is to say this: When suffering comes into your life, look to see if there is some particular ongoing or recent act of disobedience that it might be connected to. When Jesus looked at Peter it was not ten years after the sin. It was obvious what that look meant. And when suffering hit Job, one of the first things he did was search his life to see if there was any particular sin it could be tied to – and he could not find anything. He was not sinless. But when he did sin, no doubt he was quick to repent and there was no particularly egregious sin that he had committed that could explain God being especially upset with him.
It is hard to imagine that God would discipline in a way that would make it impossible for you to connect the discipline with the sin. No parent would see his 2-year-old touch something he was not supposed to touch and then three weeks later walk up and slap him on the hand and say, “No!” That would be worthless as discipline. And I don’t think God will give you the flu because of a sin you committed and confessed and repented of two years ago, because you would have no way of drawing the connection between the sin and the effect. So when hardship breaks into your life, and you are trying to figure out if this is a Job situation (where it is not because of sin) or a Corinth situation (where it is because of sin), search your heart and examine your life to see if there is some egregious sin.
Great sins
And there are egregious sins by the way. I know many of you have been taught that all sins are the same. They are not. All sins are the same in the sense that all of them are an offence against a holy God, and any sin is enough to damn a soul forever. But that does not mean there is no difference at all between sins. Scripture itself speaks of great sins. Jesus spoke of people having more or less culpability on Judgment Day based on what kinds of sins they had committed (Jn.15:24, Mt.10:15, 11:21). There are sins that are especially egregious and especially damaging.
Sometimes people recoil at the idea that God could ever be displeased with us based on some sin that we commit because they figure if God is unhappy with us when we sin, that means He is always unhappy with us because we are never perfect. But that is a failure to understand fatherly love. Most of the time God simply overlooks our sins. He does not allow them to spoil our fellowship with Him. Just as a father overlooks a hundred imperfections in his son before he disciplines one. Depending on the severity of the sin it can be more or less disruptive in our fellowship with God.
What is forgiveness?
So what are we asking for when we pray, forgive us our debts? We are asking for that disrupted fellowship to be restored. We are asking God to turn His face of favor back toward us. While we are being chastised God is dealing with us according to that sin – treating us in some measure as our sin deserves, and asking forgiveness means, “Father, please, don’t deal with me according to my sin. Don’t let that sin have any more impact on how You deal with me and feel toward me.”
Jesus calls our sins debts – not because the price has not already been paid – it has. They are debts in the sense that the issue between us and God regarding that sin is unresolved. It is an issue that needs to be worked through. God wants you to acknowledge your guilt and confess it to Him. He wants you to repent and turn from that sin. He wants you to stop moving away from Him and begin to seek after Him.
When you first sin it is appropriate to feel bad. Forgiveness is the moment when God says, “OK, that’s enough.”
“OK Peter – you’re out here weeping bitterly, now you’ve shed enough tears. You’ve been broken and contrite long enough. You’ve sought My face long enough, now I’m going to put aside My displeasure. It’s over. You don’t have to weep about it anymore. You don’t have to continue in sorrow over it. It’s OK for you to return to joy now.”
That is the forgiveness of the Christian life. It is over. Nothing remains to be done, nothing remains unresolved – it is all wrapped up and filed away and, as far as your relationship goes, there is no need for it to ever be mentioned again. “I forgive you” means “Case closed.” That sin no longer determines the nature of God’s feeling or actions toward you and it need not determine the nature of your interactions with God. No need to keep apologizing, bringing it up, fretting over it – once you are forgiven it is over.
How do you know when you are forgiven?
So how do you know when you are forgiven? Sometimes it is not instantaneous. You read some of those penitential psalms and you can tell the psalmist has been suffering God’s anger for a long time and they want to know how much longer it will be. It seems too long to them – longer than they would have expected. While God is displeased it is appropriate to be broken and sorrowful and contrite and to weep. After forgiveness it is appropriate to return to the joy of His salvation. So how do you know when you have reached that moment?
I do not know how to answer that other than to say you know that moment has come when the effects of God’s displeasure are gone. I am not talking about the discipline; I am talking about the displeasure. Those are two different things. Sometimes discipline remains even when sin is forgiven.
2 Samuel 12:13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." Nathan replied, "The Lord has taken away your sin.
So David was forgiven at that moment. But then Nathan went on…
14 But because by doing this you have made the enemies of the Lord show utter contempt, the son born to you will die.
The Lord has forgiven your sin, but the child is still going to die. Sometimes the consequences of our sin can be lifelong, but that does not mean God’s displeasure with us is lifelong. Forgiveness is not the removal of consequences; it is the removal of hard feelings and the restoration of favor.
When God is unhappy with you it dries up your whole life and takes away your joy. There is as sense of darkness and gloom over your life. I am not talking about the gloom that you inflict on yourself; I am talking about the sense that the prophet Micah had when he said, I sit in the darkness … because I sinned against Him. He was waiting for the Lord to come bring him back out into the light. When God turns His face away from you in discipline sorrow takes over and you lose your ability to enjoy good things. You open your Bible and it is just print on a page. You try to pray and there is no sense at all of God’s presence or His smile. You try to serve in ministry and it is like your gifts are dried up. All your work feels like spinning your wheels. You do not have favor in people’s eyes. A beautiful sunrise leaves you flat; a delicious meal is just – blah. Relationships fall apart.
And when God forgives, all that is over. Now again – just because those things are all happening does not always mean God is upset over some sin. They may happen for other reasons. But when it is because of sin, you can tell when God forgives because your ability to enjoy good things returns. Your ability to delight in worship, in His Word, in His people – all the joys of knowing God return. Insight returns, effectiveness returns, good desires return.
I realize what I am describing is very subjective, but I can tell you it is something I have experienced. I tend to be a very non-emotional, logical kind of person, so I do not notice much in the experiential realm. But I can tell you this is something I have experienced in very dramatic and clear fashion. Many of you know the reason I left Creekside Church was because of sin in my life. I had fallen into terrible sin, and the result was devastating – for me, my family, and the whole church. I lost most of my friends, my job, my ministry, my integrity, and my reputation. The consequences for my sin were devastating.
And when that happened I was absolutely crushed. I experienced sorrow and grief that was far more agonizing than anything I have ever experienced in my lifetime. I was absolutely shattered. And for the first time in my life I could acutely feel God’s displeasure. That lasted for several weeks. I cannot remember exactly how long (it seemed like an eternity). But I will never forget the day the darkness lifted and the Lord came and brought me back into the light. There was one day when I could feel it was gone.
All the external consequences of my sin were still in place. Everything I had lost was still lost, nothing changed in my circumstances; but my fellowship with God was restored. All that darkness and internal dryness went away. I felt His displeasure lift, and the ability to enjoy good things returned. The ability to delight in prayer and His Word returned, and I could tell that it was OK now for me to get up out of the ashes and get on with my life without continuing in brokenness anymore. I was forgiven.
That sin was paid for on the cross two thousand years ago. It was wiped off my record forever the day I became a Christian. The condemnation to hell that I deserved was eliminated at the moment of my conversion. That kind of forgiveness I had received years earlier. But the other kind of forgiveness – family forgiveness, came weeks after my sin. The displeasure of my Father in heaven over that particular sin was removed and fellowship was restored.
How do you ask forgiveness?
So that is what we are asking for when we pray Father … forgive us our debts. The other question we need to answer is, How do we ask? When you sin against God as a Christian is it simply a matter of mouthing those four words: Forgive us our debts? Or is there more to it than that?
Nothing in the Lord’s Prayer is a mere recitation of words. Each phrase points to a body of doctrine, so we need to look at what Scripture teaches about how to come to God after sinning against Him.
Confession
The beginning point is confession.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Confession means admitting that you have sinned and are guilty. And in the context of 1 John 1 we find it also means dealing with the problem of self-deception, and wanting to believe that you are not guilty. (Those times when you ask yourself, “Why do I fall for such stupid rationalizations?” The reason is not because you are dumb. It is because there is something in you that wants to fall for them. Part of confession is facing up to that.) Also in the context of that chapter we see that confession means having the truth in you. You accept the truth about God and the truth about yourself. If you go through the motions of mouthing the words, “Yes, I sinned. I did wrong,” but it is all just words – that is not confession. It must be a true expression of your whole heart. Confession has to touch your whole being – including your affections.
Another thing we learned about confession in 1 John was that it has a public aspect to it. We must confess not only to God but also to the people we have sinned against.
Sorrow
Secondly, there must be godly sorrow. We read about how devastated and crushed the psalmists were over their sin in the penitential psalms. If we love God in greater ways than Old Testament saints did then shouldn’t our sorrow be more profound when we do something that is not pleasing to God? 1 John says we are not to condemn ourselves, but there is a place for godly sorrow over sin. I do not think Peter was guilty of self-condemnation when he went out and wept bitterly. He was not failing to understand his privileged position as a son of God. It was precisely because of his favored position as a son of God that he had such deep sorrow.
2 Corinthians 7:10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret
Repentance
So we confess our guilt, and we subject ourselves to the throes of sorrow as we consider the evil and harm of our sin. And then that godly sorrow, according to 2 Corinthians 7:10, brings about repentance. Repentance means to resolve to turn from the sin back to God, and to do everything in your power to make that successful.
Seek His face and wait
So what does it mean to seek forgiveness? Confession, sorrow, repentance, and then – wait. Seek His face, seek restored intimacy with Him, and wait for Him to open the door.
Psalm 130:5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. 6 My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning
That passage is in the context of a penitential psalm. He is confessing sin and seeking forgiveness. The Lord has turned His face away and the psalmist is eagerly waiting for restored favor and fellowship as the watchmen wait for the morning. Waiting involves two things – eager expectation, and refusing any substitute. You do not run to anything else to alleviate your sorrow and misery. You just seek hard after God and wait for Him to restore you – as long as it takes.
And depending on the sin that whole process can more or less rigorous. You do not go out and weep bitterly and sit in dust and ashes for two weeks every time you commit the slightest sin. Most of the time, when you stumble you simply confess it to God, take a moment to pray about it – you take it seriously, but you deal with it right there on the spot and God forgives you and it is over. Every day we confess our sins and ask forgiveness and receive it immediately and it is over. Once in a while a sin is damaging enough where the process is more involved. Just as with your spouse, most things require nothing more than, “I’m sorry,” but once in a while you hurt your spouse deeply and it requires much more than that. You know that has happened with God when He turns His face away.
I realize that is subjective and it is not an exact science. But I can tell you if you are sitting in darkness and guilt most of the time – you are probably misreading God’s discipline. Because the great majority of the time God is pleased with His children.
One last thing Jesus throws in before moving on. He teaches us to not just say, forgive us our debts, but forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Father, forgive us the same way we forgive each other. That is a frightening thing to pray, isn’t it? Jesus throws it in, and he knows it is going to throw us for a loop so after He finishes the prayer and then comes back in verse 14 and says, “For…” and then gives an explanation about forgiveness. So we will follow Jesus’ lead and wait until we are done with the prayer to talk about that part
Benediction: Hebrews 10:19-22 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus…21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.
