"'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'"
— Matthew 6:9-13

Remember Wonga? Borrow a couple of hundred pounds on Monday to cover a gas bill, pay it back on Friday. Fine. Miss the payment, though, and the interest — running at thousands of per cent APR — gets going. People were buried under debt many times the original loan.

Debt has been normalised for us. We borrow to buy homes, to get through university, to buy cars. In Jesus' day, debt could cost you your freedom — you could become the property of whoever held your debt. So when the Jews seized Jerusalem around 30 years after Jesus, the first thing they did was find the records of borrowing and lending and burn them.

That's the weight behind the word when Jesus puts it in the prayer. The language of debt is a metaphor for the burden of sin. So what is it that we owe to God?

Some people can't really pray this line because they don't think there's much wrong with them. Mistakes, yes. But mistakes can be explained and corrected. They don't need forgiving.

Others don't need convincing that they're sinful. They know the weight. The problem isn't awareness of sin, but that no one seems able to help.

One won't accept the problem. The other has given up on a solution.

David, in Psalm 51, wrote: Against you, you only, have I sinned. What about Bathsheba, Uriah, the child, or the army commander he dragged into the whole awful plot? But David isn't doing a celebrity non-apology. He is recognising that human beings are made in the image of God, so any wrong done to a person is ultimately an offence against their Creator. The spiritual debt — David's, mine, yours — is owed to the One whose beloved children have been harmed.

The good news is that someone else has settled our debt. The weight carried, the stain cleaned, the legal charge cancelled — nailed to the cross, as Paul puts it in Colossians.

There's just one thing.

As we also have forgiven our debtors.

Twenty years ago, a man entered an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, took ten young girls hostage and shot them. Six died. That same afternoon, Amish neighbours visited the killer's family to offer them comfort! At the murderer's burial, the Amish outnumbered non-Amish.

Forgiveness isn't a one-time transaction. It's a way of life. We can't be in two places at once — receiving forgiveness for ourselves and refusing it for others. That's not a trade. It's about the posture of our hearts.

The journey of forgiveness may be long. But it's the journey the prayer calls us to take.