Forgiven to Love - Singing our Prayers

When we confess out sins in our worship service, we also hear words of forgiveness and grace. These three verses confess, hear words of forgiveness, and then show a life of proper response.

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Not What My Hands Have Done (Psalter Hymnal 260)

1 Not what my hands have done

can save my guilty soul;

not what my toiling flesh has borne

can make my spirit whole.

Not what I feel or do

can give me peace with God;

not all my prayers and sighs and tears

can bear my awful load.

2 Your voice alone, O Lord,

can speak to me of grace;

your power alone, O Son of God,

can all my sin erase.

No other work but yours,

no other blood will do;

no strength but that which is divine

can bear me safely through.

3 I praise the Christ of God;

I rest on love divine;

and with unfaltering lip and heart

I call this Savior mine.

My Lord has saved my life

and freely pardon gives;

I love because he first loved me,

I live because he lives.

Text: Horatius Bonar, 1861, alt.

Forgiven to Love - Praying with the Church

For several years I attended a church that followed the same liturgy for weeks at a time - liturgies shared by many Christian churches through the ages. Every week I learned to pray a prayer very similar to this one. Rather than allowing me to tune out, the repetition etched the words on my heart. I appreciate the balance and depth in such a prayer.

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Merciful God,

We confess that we have sinned against you

in thought, word, and deed,

by what we have done,

and by what we have left undone.

We have not loved you

with our whole heart and mind and strength.

We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

In your mercy forgive what we have been,

help us amend what we are,

and direct what we shall be,

so that we may delight in your will

and walk in your ways,

to the glory of your holy name.

Through Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

Forgiven to Love - Praying the Psalms

It is one thing to read a psalm; it is another to pray it. Psalm 51…

Psalm 51 (NIV)

For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.

¹ Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your unfailing love;

according to your great compassion

blot out my transgressions.

² Wash away all my iniquity

and cleanse me from my sin.

³ For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is always before me.

⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned

and done what is evil in your sight;

so you are right in your verdict

and justified when you judge.

⁵ Surely I was sinful at birth,

sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

⁶ Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;

you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

⁷ Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;

wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

⁹ Hide your face from my sins

and blot out all my iniquity.

¹⁰ Create in me a pure heart, O God,

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

¹¹ Do not cast me from your presence

or take your Holy Spirit from me.

¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation

and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

¹³ Then I will teach transgressors your ways,

so that sinners will turn back to you.

¹⁴ Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,

you who are God my Savior,

and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.

¹⁵ Open my lips, Lord,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

¹⁶ You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;

you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.

¹⁷ My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart

you, God, will not despise.

¹⁸ May it please you to prosper Zion,

to build up the walls of Jerusalem.

¹⁹ Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous,

in burnt offerings offered whole;

then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Forgiven to Love - Mining the Catechism

The request in the Lord’s Prayer may seem to some to make God’s forgiveness wholly dependent on ours, but that is not the true Biblical context of forgiveness. Jesus did want to make the necessary connection between the two clear to us, though. These two pieces of the Catechism, 70 questions apart, both root our forgiveness wholly in Christ’s satisfaction (payment), yet keep us “fully determined, as evidence of your grace in us, to forgive our neighbors.”

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Q & A 56

Q. What do you believe
concerning “the forgiveness of sins”?

A. I believe that God,

because of Christ’s satisfaction,

will no longer remember

any of my sins¹
or my sinful nature

which I need to struggle against all my life.²

Rather, by grace

God grants me the righteousness of Christ
to free me forever from judgment.³

¹ Ps. 103:3-4, 10, 12; Mic. 7:18-19; 2 Cor. 5:18-21; 1 John 1:7; 2:2
² Rom. 7:21-25
³ John 3:17-18; Rom. 8:1-2

 Q & A 126

Q. What does the fifth petition mean?

A. “Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors” means:

Because of Christ’s blood,
do not hold against us, poor sinners that we are,

any of the sins we do
or the evil that constantly clings to us.¹

Forgive us just as we are fully determined,

as evidence of your grace in us,

to forgive our neighbors.²

¹ Ps. 51:1-7; 143:2; Rom. 8:1; 1 John 2:1-2
² Matt. 6:14-15; 18:21-35