Into the Prayer Life of Jesus: Forgive us...we forgive

This is our Sunday teaching from Alex Lyne. Recorded live at our service in Harris Academy Purley, Croydon on Sunday 19th October, 2025. Below you can find the full talk audio, and a summary article.

Want to lead a Connect Group session on this teaching? The notes are here!

Forgive Us, As We Forgive

Forgiveness sounds simple until you actually have to do it.

It’s one of those parts of the Lord’s Prayer — “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” — that most people can recite by heart. Yet when life gives us the chance to live those words, our instinct is often indignation, not mercy.

Forgiveness isn’t just a nice idea or a religious formality. It’s a pathway to freedom — freedom for ourselves and for others.

When we come to God for forgiveness, we aren’t trying to prove anything or earn His love. We’re admitting we can’t “atone alone.” Forgiveness restores relationship; it releases us from the burden of guilt and shame. And when we extend forgiveness to others, we pass on that same gift of freedom.

It’s rarely easy. To forgive means acknowledging that something genuinely wrong has been done — that there’s a debt, and we’re choosing to cancel it. Forgiveness always costs something. But this is the way of Jesus. He absorbed the greatest debt of all so that we could go free.

There’s a powerful image from Les Misérables, when a priest forgives Jean Valjean’s theft and hands him the silver candlesticks, saying, “Take these and be free.” That radical grace changes Valjean’s whole life. In the same way, God’s forgiveness transforms us — and enables us to forgive others in return.

Jesus is the expert Forgiver. He spent time with those who wronged or misunderstood Him. He extended mercy to the broken and compassion to those who didn’t deserve it. Even from the cross, He prayed, “Father, forgive them.”

Forgiveness doesn’t deny pain — it simply refuses to let pain have the final word.

Two simple habits help us live this out: keep short accounts with God — bringing our failures to Him quickly and honestly; and radically release others — offering daily, quiet acts of forgiveness that mirror the mercy we’ve received.

Every time we forgive, we participate in the very heart of the gospel: setting others — and ourselves — free.