Saturday, July 15, 2006

Mat 18:35 So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if you from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

Here, even though Christ is saying that we are being judged, he offers a non-judgmental view of people's mistakes. As we so often see, he does not categorize others errors as evil. He considers them blunders, missteps. We have seen this again and again in the original Greek. The world translated as "evil" really means "worthless." The word translated as "sin" means mistake. Here, the word translated as "trespass" means simply "slip."

"Trespasses" is a paraptôma, which means "false step," "blunder," and "slip." Only in the NT is is defined as "trespass." This is interesting because "trespass" is the way "debt" is often defined in the translation of the Lord's Prayer.