Strangely enough, one of the most difficult words in the whole New Testament is this word translated “daily” in the Lord’s Prayer. Nobody can be quite certain what it means, but probably it means “the bread for the coming day.”[71] Give us to-day the bread for the coming day, is therefore a prayer that the bodily needs of the immediate future may be supplied for all members of the Christian family. It is a prayer which only those can truly pray who are contented with such satisfaction of their bodily needs as enables them to do the work of God, who will ask nothing for themselves that they do not ask for others, and who are content to wait from day to day upon the hand of God. “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” We cannot do God’s work without the supply of our physical needs: therefore the last prayer was offered. But equally we cannot do God’s work unless we are at peace with Him: therefore this prayer follows. Sin may be regarded from many points of view――as a flaw or mistake in our nature or conduct: as a violation or transgression of a divine law (as in ver. 14): or (as here) as an act by which we have robbed God of His rights and incurred an obligation or debt which we cannot satisfy, and in regard to which we can only appeal to the divine pity. From the first point of view what is needed is nothing else than recovery and correction: from the second point of view we need forgiveness, but forgiveness of such sort as is only morally possible when our will is brought back into harmony with our Father’s will. Only from the third point of view is forgiveness the same as being let off. And the position which the petition to be forgiven holds in this prayer, prevents us from supposing that we can be “forgiven our debts” without having been brought into union with God’s will and into the fellowship of His Kingdom. On the principle involved in this petition our Lord Himself immediately comments: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Here is the divine principle which, as we noticed before, is made so plain in the parable (St. Matt. xviii. 31), where the unthankful servant finds that all the debt which had been forgiven him has rolled back upon him because he in his turn has behaved himself unforgivingly, unmercifully, towards his fellow-servant. God deals with us as we deal with our fellow-men; and if we want to know how the face of God looks towards us, we must examine ourselves to see what is the aspect we present towards them. “And bring us not into temptation.”