Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us

Lecture 4 covered what Dr Bray described as 'perhaps one of the most difficult passages in the NT'.

In the first instance he demonstrated that the context shows that 'debts' and 'trespasses' mean 'sins'. The passage refers not just to mainly ritual sins, concerning purity and keeping of the law, nor just small errors or faux par, but rebellion against God that we, as descendants of Adam, actively participate in.

He spent a long time outlining exactly what sin is. Interestingly, he again made the point that sin is not natural and was not intended by God. In this regard he echoed what he had said the other day, that Jesus would not have stood out as being unnaturally human. His sinlessness would have stood out, but not as something abnormal, rather as being the most normal and natural thing, for he was behaving in the way that humans were originally created to behave. I found his point that the human nature refers to the physical being of humanity and his observation that Adam and Eve were mortal beings, protected by God and thus sustained an interesting notion. He was using this to demonstrate that the human nature was not sinful in itself, but it left me wondering what that means for our anthropology. Does this not mean that the new life we have in Christ, indeed that eternal life is of a fundamentally different character?

I was really encouraged to think through what it would mean for me to focus less on self and more on Christ as I approach the kingdom, and to think through how a growing awareness of Christ will help make me more aware of my sin and have a greater appreciation of God's goodness as a result.

The final section dealing with the need to forgive others recognized how hard this could be and acknowledged that at times this can be almost impossible. He distinguished between forgiveness and reconciliation, arguing that because we are sinful, that our forgiveness of another would not guarantee a reconciliation of relationship, but it should be our goal. This is different to God's forgiveness, which always achieves its end. It was on this point that in question time he argued necessitated belief in limited atonement.