Verse explainer

What does Matthew 6:12 really mean?

"Debts" means sins — and the little word "as" binds the mercy you ask for to the mercy you give.

KJV

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

BSB

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

The plain meaning

This is the fifth petition of the Lord's Prayer (Matt 6:9-13). The word "debts" is not about money — Luke's parallel version (11:4) reads "sins" outright, and Jewish idiom of the day used the same word for both. The picture is forensic: sinners stand before God as insolvent debtors who cannot pay what they owe, and they are asking the creditor to cancel the account. The clause "as we forgive our debtors" is not a boast that we have already earned forgiveness by our generosity. It is a condition on the petition — a self-check. Jesus hammers the point immediately after the prayer ends, in vv. 14-15: if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you. The prayer assumes a community of people who have been wronged and have chosen to release those wrongs, and who come to God on that basis.

The common misreading

"As we forgive" means we earn God's forgiveness by forgiving others first. This is one of the most common misreadings of the Lord's Prayer — that the clause sets up a transaction where human generosity purchases divine mercy. Both Gill and JFB push back on it directly: nowhere in Jesus' teaching does our forgiving create the ground for God's forgiving. The whole logic of the New Testament runs the other way — God's prior grace is what makes forgiveness possible for us at all (see Eph 4:32, "forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you"). What the clause does is closer to a self-examination: if you pray this prayer while nursing a deliberate, habitual refusal to forgive someone who has wronged you, you are asking God for something you are actively withholding from another. Jesus underscores this right after the prayer in vv. 14-15, making it the one petition he stops to amplify. The point is not that forgivers earn mercy, but that unforgivers have no honest standing to ask for it.

What the commentators say

John Gill18th c. · PD

Gill notes that calling sins "debts" was standard Jewish idiom — the Aramaic targums routinely render "trespass" or "sin" as "debt." He stresses that these are not debts we properly owe God, but obligations to punishment incurred by failing our true duties of love and obedience. The petition asks for a daily, felt application of pardon to the conscience, not a first-time justification — and our forgiving others is not the cause of God's forgiveness but evidence of the grace already at work in us.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown19th c. · PD

JFB identifies this as the primary lens through which Jesus wants us to view sin: the sinner as an insolvent debtor in the hands of a creditor. Forgiveness here means the removal of God's own displeasure — a crossing-out of entries against us in the divine record. On the "as we forgive" clause, JFB is careful: it does not mean our forgiving is the ground of God's forgiving, but that no one can reasonably expect divine forgiveness while being deliberately and habitually unforgiving. Our forgiving disposition is the mirror in which God sees His own image reflected.

The word behind it

ὀφείλημα opheilēma

"Debt" — something owed, an obligation outstanding. In Greek legal use it covers any liability; in the Jewish Aramaic idiom behind this prayer, the same root word served for moral transgression. Luke 11:4 swaps it for the plain word "sin" (hamartia), confirming the meaning. The forensic image matters: what is being asked is not moral improvement but cancellation of a debt the debtor cannot pay — pure relief from an outstanding obligation.

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