QQ104-105. What do we pray for in the fourth and fifth petitions?

A (104). In the fourth petition, which is, Give us this day our daily bread,” we pray, that of God’s free gift we may receive a competent portion of the good things of this life, and enjoy his blessing with them.

A (105). In the fifth petition, which is, And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” we pray, that God, for Christ’s sake, would freely pardon all our sins; which we are the rather encouraged to ask, because by his grace we are enabled from the heart to forgive others.

These two petitions are Matthew 6:11-12,

“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”

The first of these (petition four) especially has close contextual help in interpretation from the last half of Matthew 6, which is Jesus’ great discourse on anxiety and the superior goods of the kingdom. He teaches it in such a way as to direct a heart of happy dependence towards God.

Daily Bread

THE GOOD THINGS OF THIS LIFE, but this is balanced out by the words A COMPETENT PORTION. Watson defines this provision as, “that God would give us such a competency in outward things, as he sees most excellent for us.”1 In other words, this means “necessities, not niceties.” Now bread is the simplest of foods. I mentioned in my treatment of YOUR WILL BE DONE that the question, “Why aren’t my prayers working,” has to be met with this twofold standard: (1) Is the thing taught as a norm throughout the Scriptures? (2) Is the thing promised in the gospel to God’s new covenant people in this age? And if the answer to those two questions is no, then such things cannot function as the standard for right prayer. But now things get tougher because even Jesus says about bread, that, “your heavenly Father knows that you need them all” (Mat. 6:32). Here is a key, from the wise man Agur, in the Proverbs,

“give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God” (Prov. 30:8-9).

Watson is helpful here in what makes the difference:

“There is a great difference between praying for temporal things and spiritual. In praying for spiritual things we must be absolute. When we pray for pardon of sin, and the favor of God, and the sanctifying graces of the Spirit, which are indispensable necessary for salvation, we must take no denial; but when we pray for temporal things, our prayers must be limited; we must pray conditionally, so far as God sees them good for us.”2

Let’s also notice what God’s physical provision does not mean. That the Lord will provide does not mean that he provides apart from our stewardship and mutual care for each other. He works through these because the industry and charity of his image bearers glorify him, even as his direct provision glorifies him. And when he works through these, we may be encouraged to work all the more diligently, BUT ALSO, to give him thanks for even more than the end product on our table, but also our skills that lent a hand. As he reminded Israel, “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth” (Deut. 8:17-18). So, early application—PLAN and PRAY. Be all the more diligent, with all trust in the Lord. 

Bread, like everything else in this life, is a sign that points beyond itself. Notice Jesus’ response once the miracle of feeding occurred and they and the crowds got to the other side of the sea.

“Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you’” (Jn. 6:26-27). 

God made bread a central sign in the wilderness, in the tabernacle (the bread of his presence), and in fact the birthplace of Jesus, which became “the house of bread,” (bayit lechem), or simply “Bethlehem.” When Ruth pledged herself to Boaz, she was coming home to Bethlehem from which Naomi’s husband, Elimelech, was from (1:1). Likewise with Boaz (Ruth 2:4). Therefore David. Therefore Jesus. 

Bread is good and God is greater. On the one hand, we are not Gnostics toward bread: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:4-5). A Gnostic cannot pray with such simplicity because he thinks bread crumbs are too far beneath God. On the other hand, we do not make bread the chief end, but a means to it: “Then Jacob made a vow, saying, ‘If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear” (Gen. 28:20). Heidelberg Q.125 strikes the balance between these: 

“Be pleased to provide for all our bodily need; that we may thereby know that Thou art the only fountain of all good, and that without Thy blessing, neither our care and labor, nor Thy gifts can profit us; and may therefore withdraw our trust from all creatures, and place it alone in Thee.”

Ironically, when we start thinking that some things like bread are “too mundane” for God, while we think we are being spiritual, we are actually cutting off one more part of daily life from God and so making more of life unspiritual. God’s people have had to learn this the hard way in the past. Think back to the children of Israel in the wilderness. In commenting about them and the manna and their sin, R. C. Sproul noted a pattern:

“First, they stopped thanking Him for His provision. Second, they stopped asking Him for His provision. Third, they began grumbling about His provision. Finally, they began reminiscing about how good things had been in Egypt.”3

Daily Mercy

Two very persistent questions are two sides to the same coin: (1) Why do we need to keep confessing our sins, or asking for forgiveness, if Christ’s work is finished and we are already forgiven? That’s the positive way of asking: What is the point? But we could go a step further in this thinking and erode the whole foundation of grace. That is, we could ask: (2) Doesn’t Jesus make the necessity of forgiving others, here, a condition for being forgiven? So that if we have any unforgiveness in our hearts, then we are not saved? And both of those are very good questions and need to be answered. Now, in our answer here, note the gospel ground first: THAT GOD, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE. Here is the whole key to not wrapping the petition like chains around your neck. The next words may seem hypothetical—WOULD FREELY PARDON ALL OUR SINS. However, if there was ever a time to interpret Scripture in light of Scripture, we should be most motivated here.

Let’s start with the verse everyone tends to go to: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9). This teaches that there is some kind of ongoing need for forgiveness. We would say that King David was regenerated; that he was a believer in the promises of God that looked forward to Christ. Yet he prays in this way,

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! … Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow … Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities” (Ps. 51:1-2, 7, 9).

Immediately it is objected that we cannot have an ongoing need of forgiveness unless we are in some way un-forgiven by God; but this would seem to contradict both the perfection of Christ’s atonement for our sins and the one-time verdict of justification when we first believed. And sometimes people will even take Martin Luther on for his statement that, “The Christian life is a life of repentance.” So, let me help with a distinction that is made in virtually every area of theology. We have to distinguish between the objective (the thing in itself) and the subjective (my own perspective on it). And the 1 John 1 passage gives us our first clue as to that relation. In fact, it sandwiches verse 9, in between verses 8 and 10: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us … If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” Now, how does this help us?

Ongoing need for forgiveness is a subjective need. The Bible says that, “there is no one who does not sin” (1 Kings 8:46). In fact, we sin every single day. And when we sin, we have the sense of separation from God because that is what sin, by its very nature, does. Now it is true that in the gospel, we find a Substitute, in Jesus Christ, that covers all of our sin, and yet we are still affected as we are. We are ashamed. We may even make excuses and so harden ourselves more. We are not quick to spiritual exercises in this state. Can anyone of us deny that our sin has this effect on our attitude? I am not asking whether it has any effect on Christ’s finished work. But our consciences and our own attention spans are not Christ’s finished work. Our hearts need to catch up to Christ’s finished work in real time. And thus the confession of 1 John 1:9, and thus this petition in the Lord’s Prayer. “But why say it in these words?” we might still ask. Our first answer should be: Because He said so.

Ongoing need for forgiveness is rooted in that objective, finished work of Christ. In such a prayer, we will be reminded of the gospel where full forgiveness is already provided, but which our sin, in real time, dislocates our hearts from its memory. Now hear the prayer of another Old Testament saint, Daniel.

“Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name” (Dan. 9:17-19).

Note that he roots the plea for mercy in the divine initative of mercy—not because of our righteousness—and then also in the glory of God. Twice he says FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, which is to say that God would receive glory in such a people being restored. But the request for God to cleanse now and to pardon now is to push through, into the Fatherly presence of God, through what is available in the Son: “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 Jn. 2:1).

Finally we see that ongoing forgiveness extends to outgoing forgiveness. The end of the catechism answer takes a very pastoral angle on Jesus’ other words in this verse: WHICH WE ARE THE RATHER ENCOURAGED TO ASK, BECAUSE BY HIS GRACE WE ARE ENABLED FROM THE HEART TO FORGIVE OTHERS. That marks one way to read this. But then there is another, which is the more troubling. We might also couple this reading with the passage at the end of the Parable of the Wicked Servant:

“So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (Matt. 18:35).

We can see the connection easily enough. Spurgeon once said that, “Unless you have forgiven others you read your own death warrant when you repeat the Lord’s Prayer.” Sproul comments on this, “It is an insult to God for us to withhold forgiveness and grace from those who ask us, while claiming to be forgiven and saved by grace ourselves.”4

6. Outgoing forgiveness is evidential grace. It is not grace that is conditioned upon our performance. This is to read it wrong. We are talking about something that naturally follows, and yet it is stated as an imperative; as Paul says, “if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Col. 3:13). The key principle at the heart of rightly reading this and rightly praying this is that outgoing forgiveness is fitting to someone who has been forgiven. Perhaps the best picture of this comes in the Gospels as well. There is the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus, of whom he said, 

“Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (Lk. 7:47). 

In other words, what the Scriptures are saying to us about this symmetry between God’s forgiveness and ours, is that this outgoing forgiveness is demonstration of God’s perfect forgiveness. Ours is evidential of God’s forgiveness. It is not causal to God’s forgiveness.

This life of confessing our sins and forgiving others are both necessary, without being causal, to salvation. To put it in a more precise way, these works are necessary as a fruit of salvation and not its legal ground. In the first place the word “necessary” is ambiguous. In texts that speak about this or that “necessity” (following Jesus, picking up our cross, bearing fruit, good works, ongoing repentance, and forgiving others) their necessity is one of something which naturally follows, not as that which causes salvation. It was when the tax collector brought his sins to God and confessed them that he was justified (Lk. 18:13), and likewise with the thief on the cross turning to Christ and using his words (Lk. 23:42). 

PRACTICAL USE OF THIS DOCTRINE

Use 1. Therefore, do not be anxious (Mat. 6:25). The lesson of the end of Matthew 6 was that “all these things” (v. 33), while “necessary” in an earthly way, are not so necessary as the things of the kingdom. In fact, daily bread is kingdom fuel! God gives us those things that pass away as a means to the end of those things that never pass away. He gives us grace for glory, enough to get by to do that which lasts. Anxiety may not seem to be a sin to us. It is an emotion after all—and a gut-level one to natural fears. But Jesus shows us that anxiety is actually disbelief. It is the attention span of corruption. The petition for daily bread trains us to be content with what God gives us and increases our faith that He will. 

Use 2. Resist the temptations to grumble or strive for bread. Temptation to receive “the devil’s bread” will come. Now of course, the devil has no real power to make bread. But that doesn’t mean he won’t tempt you about what is all rightfully God’s. Think of the link between the manna in the wilderness, and Christ as the fulfillment; yet there was also the temptation in the wilderness for Jesus. Notice it was basically the same temptation that Israel had failed. The devil said, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, ‘It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Mat. 4:3-4). Now we can’t miraculously turn stones into bread. But what is the temptation, really? It is to seek first the so-called needs of this earth. We are told instead that, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep” (Ps. 127:1-2).

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1. Watson, The Lord’s Prayer, 195.

2. Watson, The Lord’s Prayer, 198.

3. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things? 34

4. Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things? 37