Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Matthew 6:12 - 6:12
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Our debts (ta opheilēmata hēmōn). Luke (Luk 11:4) has “sins” (hamartias). In the ancient Greek opheilēma is common for actual legal debts as in Rom 4:4, but here it is used of moral and spiritual debts to God. “Trespasses” is a mistranslation made common by the Church of England Prayer Book. It is correct in Rom 4:14 in Christ’s argument about prayer, but it is not in the Model Prayer itself. See Mat 18:28, Mat 18:30 for sin pictured again by Christ “as debt and the sinner as a debtor” (Vincent). We are thus described as having wronged God. The word opheilē for moral obligation was once supposed to be peculiar to the New Testament. But it is common in that sense in the papyri (Deismann, Bible Studies, p. 221; Light from the Ancient East, New ed., p. 331). We ask forgiveness “in proportion as” (hōs) we also have forgiven those in debt to us, a most solemn reflection. Aphēkamen is one of the three k aorists (ethēka, edōka, hēka). It means to send away, to dismiss, to wipe off.