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What does Matthew 6:12 mean?
"Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors."
— Matthew 6:12 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Pray like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.
Let your Kingdom come. Let your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.
Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.’
“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Explanation
Matthew 6:12 is one line within the Lord's Prayer, the model prayer Jesus gave his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. In plain language, this petition asks God to forgive our sins—pictured here as "debts," things we owe but cannot repay—and it ties that request to our own willingness to forgive those who have wronged us. It is not a bargain in the sense of earning forgiveness, but a recognition that receiving mercy and extending mercy belong together.
The context is Matthew 6:9-13, where Jesus teaches his followers how to pray, contrasting genuine prayer with the showy, repetitive prayers of religious hypocrites and pagans he had just criticized. Matthew, writing to a largely Jewish-Christian audience, records Jesus using "debts" (opheilēmata) to describe sin, a common Jewish way of speaking about moral obligation to God. Luke's parallel version (Luke 11:4) uses "sins" directly, showing that "debts" and "sins" were understood as equivalent. Jesus gives this prayer as a pattern—brief, sincere, and centered on God's kingdom, provision, and mercy—rather than a magical formula to be recited mechanically.
Theologically, the verse teaches that all people stand before God as debtors—morally indebted through sin, unable to pay what they owe. Forgiveness is something we must ask for continually; it is not a one-time transaction but an ongoing need, reflected in the prayer's present-tense, daily rhythm ("give us
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