What I have been saying up to this point illustrates the connection between this petition and the one we studied together last Sunday morning. “Forgive us our debts” is a prayer that God will blot out the record of _past_ sin. “Lead us not into temptation” is a prayer for protection in the _future_. For I want you to notice that the man who has truly repented of his sin wants not simply the past to be blotted out, but he wants grace to shun sin in the days to come. He wants not only to be delivered from the _penalty_ of sin, but he also longs to be emancipated from its _power_. Let not the freeness of forgiveness ever lead you to think lightly of sin. There were some in the very early days of the Church who interpreted this freeness of forgiveness as a licence to sin. They said, “What matters it? God will forgive.” Nay, they even thought, or at any rate they tried to persuade themselves, they were doing a favour to God by continuing their old wicked practices, as the greater their sin was, the finer the opportunity for the display of God’s forgiving love. They sinned, so they said, that grace might abound. The Church has been troubled and harassed by many a heresy in the course of the centuries, but the most damnable, the most soul-destroying that ever assailed it, was this Antinomian heresy, which bade men sin on because God was ready to forgive, which taught that sin was light, trivial, cheap, because pardon was free. Sin light? Sin cheap? Sin trivial? Brethren, look at the Cross of Jesus Christ! Measure the enormity of the sin by the sacrifice of the Cross! It cost God the life of His own Son to deliver us from it. There was no other good enough To pay the price of sin, He only could unlock the gate Of heaven and let us in.