Millions of believers around the world pray about forgiving ‘trespasses’ or ‘offenses.’ In French it goes “Pardonne-nous nos offenses,” and in the English tradition we hear the familiar “Forgive us our trespasses.” Devout as this sounds, behind it lies, in my view, a flawed translational choice that clouds our understanding of forgiveness. The original Greek and Aramaic texts do not speak of moral missteps, but of hard, financial debts.

Whoever opens the Greek source text of Matthew 6:12 (the Lord’s Prayer) runs up against the word opheilēma (ὀφείλημα). In the classical world and in the Septuagint this word has a very specific meaning: a juridical or financial debt. The Latin of the Vulgate followed it faithfully with debita. In the Aramaic mother tongue of Jesus, the word khoba was layered: it meant both a monetary debt and a sin.

A Linguistic Compromise

Why did translators in French and English choose offenses and trespasses? In the sixteenth century, influential translators such as William Tyndale (English) and later French theologians chose words meaning ‘offense.’ The fear was that the believer would take the text too literally – as a license not to repay loans from the bank. They wanted to ‘spiritualize’ the text.

In the English-speaking world this even led to a liturgical split: while the Anglicans clung to trespasses, the Scottish Presbyterians and other Reformed Christians chose strictly for debts. But by turning debt into a ‘trespass,’ we have exchanged the essence of Christian liberation for an emotional quagmire.

Debt as a Juridical Chain

Debt, in the biblical context, is a bond. Whoever owes another something is bound to that person. In antiquity a debtor could become the property of his creditor; they were knotted to each other by a contractual cord.

When we refuse to forgive, we set ourselves up as a ‘collection agency’ of the soul. We keep a ledger in which the misdeed of the other is precisely recorded. The irony is that this unpaid debt perpetuates the role of victim: through the unpaid debt you remain inseparably bound to the perpetrator. So long as you wait for payment (recognition, an apology, or the suffering of the other), the perpetrator has a claim upon your inner life. The debt holds the two of you together in a poisoned embrace.

Forgiveness Is an Act of the Will, Not an Emotion

Modern society has reduced forgiveness to a therapeutic process. People say: “You have to give it a place” or “You have to feel peace in your heart.” This places a leaden burden on the victim. If the anger or the pain does not vanish, one supposes the forgiveness has failed.

But if we return to the term ‘debt,’ we see that forgiveness is a juridical transaction, not an emotional state. A banker need have no “warm feelings” for a client in order to write off his debt. He draws a line through the account and tears up the contract. It is an act of the will: “I no longer demand this payment from you. Our bond is hereby dissolved.”

This is crucial in cases of grave crimes – for example, the brutal case of a rapist. The modern demand that a victim must “understand” the perpetrator or “forgive in the heart” is often a form of secondary victimization. The biblical way of forgiving the debt is more radical and more sober: by canceling the debt, you sever the cords that bind you to the perpetrator. You declare yourself free from the obligation of collection.

No Longer Your Own God

The deepest error of modern man is that he wants to be his own god. We want to hold the scales of justice in our own hands. By clinging to the ‘offense’ and trying to collect the debt ourselves (through resentment or psychological retaliation), we claim a position that is not ours.

When we pray “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,” we are in fact taking a step back. We lay the bill in the hands of God. To Him belongs vengeance, to Him belongs the final judgment (Romans 12:19). To forgive is therefore not to say that the misdeed was “not so bad.” On the contrary, it is the recognition that the debt is so great that only the highest Court can handle it.

By handing the perpetrator over into the hands of God, we free our own hands. We stop playing God and acknowledge that we are not the ones who must put the cosmos in balance.

Conclusion

It is time to admit the language of the law back into our prayer life. “Debts” reminds us that forgiveness comes at a cost – it costs us the claim to retribution. But it frees us from the suffocating bond with those who have done us harm.

Forgiveness is no emotional sentiment for the “pious”; it is a clear decision of the will to cut the chains of debt. Only when we have the courage to give up the debt of the other and to hand it over to God do we discover the true meaning of the freedom that is given to us in Christ.