When he saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven you."
I generally find myself using this in two ways. One is as an assurance that I am forgiven, so that the words "Forgive us our sins as we forgive ..." are given a background sense of assurance as they are said; a sense that the asked for forgiveness is being granted. The other way is to appropriate the words to myself in relation to people that I hold a grievance against; and so the words then foreground the phrase "... as we forgive those who sin against us". Sometimes with each bead a person is thought of along with the phrase 'your sins are forgiven. It is salutary to acknowledge that in many cases I would only be playing catch-up with God's own forgiveness, in any case. And if God either forgives as a present reality or at least stands ready to forgive, who am I to hold out?
And what of the corporate dimension? -The fact that it is 'us' and 'we' means that we need to be forming communities where forgiveness is practiced and encouraged. It also seems to me to imply that there are dimensions to forgiveness that may be corporate. This is a big and contested issue at the moment, but I think that the corporate language of the Lord's prayer not only encourages a solidarity of confession but perhaps the recognition that human groups may need to be factored into our forgiving.
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