Debt or Trespass?

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NI KA

God’s eternal self-gift is like water poured out – from the Father to the Son, holding nothing back, from the Father to the Spirit, holding nothing back, from the Son, through the Spirit, to us, holding nothing back. God gives his entire self to us. When we could not accept this gift because of our selfishness, he sent himself to us to make us his daughters and sons, so that we might also be able to give our sleeves entirely, in self-gift, to each other and the world.

When we pray the Our Father or “The Lord’s Prayer” we can hear, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. More recent translations can say, “Forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Older translations (even older Catholic ones) said, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” What is the difference between “debt” and “trespass”? Is either more correct?

The Greek word in St Matthew’s text, recording the Lord’s prayer as part of the Sermon on the Mount, is ὀφειλήματα opheilӕmata. It means debt or “that which is owed”. It does not mean “trespass” or “sin” and, in this case, it is the correct literal translation. The other two words can be seen as carrying some of the meaning of the literal translation. But they also carry their own meanings. Those meanings can distort the prayer. They can also lead astray the person praying.

Sin tends to be thought of as breaking rules. It’s an active thing, an action one does. If one gets out of a car without having broken any driving rules, one can be said to have driven well enough to pass the Road Test and get the license. Yet, in both Greek and Hebrew, the words for sin carry the meaning of “missing the mark” as when one shoots at a target and misses. Yet, as everyone knows, a target may have a bullseye and many concentric circles extending wider. One can miss the bullseye and still get some points. One gets fewer points, yes, but still, there are points. To sin, then, is to somehow miss the target that God has set for us. We can do this even when we do everything right: getting a driver’s license and driving 100% correctly does not mean that one drives well. Driving involves not only the technical details of the car, navigation, and vehicular safety. Driving involves a very complicated cultural dance all drivers do together, at high speed, in mechanical enclosures that can explode if not managed correctly. But the best drivers rarely think about that, exactly, they go to the store without ever noticing what they are doing. And the worst drivers can think of that all the time and still be bad drivers exactly because they think about it all the time. They miss the mark of driving even though they know what they are doing. If we think of sin as simply breaking the rules, we are like these last drivers.

Using words like “trespass” and “sin” can allow one to walk away from an Our Father feeling like everything is copacetic because no rules have been broken. Yet we do not think of sin that way in our daily lives, certainly not the sins of others. To return to the driving analogy, the stereotypical driver doing exactly the speed limit drives everyone else bonkers even though it is they who are breaking the rules. Yet, technically, if everyone is going 90, it’s the double nickel that is unsafe and causing danger for everyone else – including themselves. And, a mechanical enclosure filled with explosive liquids is just as likely to explode even sitting still if hit right by another, so is the 55mph driver doing anything other than annoying folks? While they are not breaking any rules and not actively doing anything against anyone, they are missing the mark.

They are incurring debt. This is not meant as a financial statement. Sins are not fiscal or pecuniary deductions from a bank account of virtue or even life. You do not need a balanced checkbook to enter Eternal Glory. Debt, in this theological concept, is all the ways we fail to live up to God’s love; all the ways we fail to self-gift in the 100% capacity to which God calls us all. Jesus calls us to “be perfect as your Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). “Perfect,” there, is the Greek word τέλειος teleios. Meaning something that has reached its end. Debt is the distance between our perfect end and where we actually end up; the distance between the bullseye and where the arrow actually lands. It can be an overshoot or an undershoot, to the right or the left. We are not perfect. There’s a debt.

What we are asking is not for absolution so much as to have God fill in the blanks! We are acknowledging: God, I can only love so much here, take over. This is true everywhere in our lives, not just those places of which we are painfully aware – especially coming to confession repeatedly with the same sins. We know exactly how we break the rules. But do we realize the debt of love we incur even when we act 100% correctly – according to all the rules – but fail to do so in God’s love and mercy? That is a debt beyond repair and, after the fact, all we can do is beg forgiveness. Yet, in the moment of debt, we can do something else.

If praying the prayer has brought one to a place where it can be realized that literally, everything fails to be done 100% in love as God would have it – if nothing can be perfect – then one can simply get out of God’s way! “God I cannot love here as I should – as you would have me do – please love through me or even in spite of me. Let your love take over.” God takes over and fills in the gaps, levels the barriers, and moves souls towards himself.

As we forgive our debtors. This is where it gets complex: the Greek used for “forgive” means “release, let go, or leave behind”.  We are holding on to the debts others incur to us – we are holding on, carrying that pain, that gap, that failure. The prayer asks God to fill in the gaps for us as we do so for others. God doesn’t move the target for us, nor does he undo the shot we made. The sin happened. But he lets go of the debt. As we let go of others’ debts. We are called to love 100% and to also love fully even when others cannot or will not. When I forgive the debt of my debtor, I’m making the relationship “whole” to use the legal term by filling in the gaps myself. I promise to love fully – infinitely – just like God and to love in that way in this situation in which you have failed to do so. Be perfect (full, complete) as your heavenly Father is perfect. To release your debt, I will have to get out of the way and let God love you fully via the mediation of my presence.

Building sand castles, you can fill them up with water, eventually, the water breaks through and the castles collapse. God’s love is like the water – he keeps pouring. When we let him in – but don’t let him pour out through us fully – we are incurring debt. It is our job to keep pouring as well, we become like him fully, pouring his love through us out into the world. Even when we meet with obstacles, like God, we keep pouring. Everything will be perfect.