Matthew 18:21-35 September 17th, 2017 A+D
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
+Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.+
The band Chicago had a #1 hit song in the 80’s called “Hard To Say I’m Sorry.” It’s a classic cheesy ballad, but it’s also wrong. It’s very easy to say I’m sorry. It is very, very difficult to forgive. Even once. Seven times? Tougher still. To truly forgive over and over when we are angered and hurt? It’s just not possible. Or is it?
How we live here on earth, whether or not we consider our life to have been good or bad, influences not only our troubles and woes in this world but in the world to come. We have a God who hates sin. Despite the world’s continued attempts to dumb it down and call sin “our mistakes” or lifestyle choices “freedom,” God’s Word has always called sin what it is.1 Psalm seven says “God is a righteous judge and a God who is always enraged by those who refuse to repent. If a man does not repent, God will sharpen His sword.”2 Paul writes “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what it due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”3 Finally, Christ tells us “Fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”4
This dumbing down of God’s law can often lead you into a false sense of security. As long as you think you are “living your life right” and come to church regularly, you’ll be OK. That is the devil deceiving you. God’s law is unchanging and final. There is no security in self-delusion, only eternal torment. Convincing yourself that “I’m doing all right, things are going pretty good!” doesn’t leave you receptive to God’s mercy, it shuts you out. Consider withholding your forgiveness from others, or holding a grudge. Holding a grudge is a sticky situation. Saying you’re sorry doesn't always heal the wound right away. Folks are resistant to let go of a deep hurt. Have you ever heard “I said I was sorry already – just drop it?!” Have you ever said that? When you withhold forgiveness, you are impeding others from receiving your own forgiveness and mercy in their time of failing or need. Do you even remember what the grudge you’re holding is really about anymore? When you silently hold it in your heart or quietly spread gossip, should you expect mercy from God yourself? If you are the knowing victim of such behavior, have you made an effort to reconcile yourself to the one who has wronged you? What does it mean when we ask of God “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us?”
Peter asks Jesus how often one should forgive his brother. He puts a number on it. Is seven times enough? Traditionally, seven is associated with perfection, so that is not an insignificant amount of forgiveness, in Peter’s mind! Jesus responds, however, “No! Seventy times seven!” – meaning an infinite amount of times. An infinite number of times because God forgives you an infinite number of times. Why should you hold your relationship between your neighbor and yourself to a lesser standard than God holds between you and Himself?
Jesus told Peter and the other disciples the parable of the unmerciful servant. In it, a man is brought before the king, who wanted all debts settled. The sum was more than any man could hope to pay back in several lifetimes of labor. An absolutely insurmountable debt. How can you run up a sum that huge? Jesus says the man fell to his knees before the king and begged for patience, and that he would pay him back in full. The king felt pity because he knew there was no way this debt could ever be repaid. Out of the depths of his mercy, he forgave the man his debt.
There is no possible way we can make our debt with God go away on our own. Despite our best intentions, the debt is still owed and the sum is too high for us to work off. Only an eternity of suffering can clear our account. How majestic, then, is our King who wiped out our debt. Our Father accepted the shedding of Jesus’ blood on the cross as payment in full. The debt was one perfect life. How many lifetimes would you have to live to be able to live even one perfect life? An infinite number? We cannot begin to comprehend the richness of God’s mercy and forgiveness.
It matters to God what you do with the state of Grace you have undeservedly found yourself possessing. By no strength of your own, you are shrouded in His Divine forgiveness. All the sins within you, the unrelenting debts that covered you, are completely gone, washed away by the blood of Christ. What will you do with the mercy you have been shown? Has God’s mercy made your heart tender toward those have slighted you in the past? Great or small, shouldn’t you now let those debts also be paid in full?
Jesus tells us of the servant to whom much was forgiven, that he, in turn, was owed a small debt, by comparison, only about three month’s wages. He didn’t forgive the debt, but rather had the man thrown in jail. Word got back to the king about what the ungrateful servant had done, and the king threw him in jail until the full burden of his original debt could be repaid, saying “Did I not have mercy on you when you pleaded with me? Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as well?”5 Justice is served.
God’s justice will be served as well. But God is not only just, but merciful. You can stand in the flow of God’s mercy letting it wash over us like a boulder in a river, or choose to be swept out to sea by the current of sin.
A boy was once given a toy boat by his father. He was told the boat was special, because it belonged to his grandfather, but now it was his. The boy loved the boat, it was precious. He played with it, but one day lost it in a river’s current. One day, the father and son were walking down the street and saw the boat in the window of a shop. They went in, and the boy told the store owner “That’s my boat!” The store owner said, “No, that’s my boat.” The boy replied, “It was my boat, but I lost it!” The store owner and the father came to an agreement, and the father bought the boat and gave it to his son. What was once lost was now found again, the cost paid in full.
You were bought for a price as well. We had our precious gift once before but lost it to sin. We are God’s twice over – once because He made us – and again because he bought us back from sin. Because of Christ, we are forgiven, and you are filled up to overflowing with that forgiveness, like the cup in the twenty-third Psalm. And what does the Psalm say next? “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life!”6 The natural consequence of this outpouring of God’s mercy and forgiveness means you are filled to the brim with the opportunity to forgive your neighbor in love, because God first loved you.7
This means that you, as a disciple of Christ should forgive8, because your Master has forgiven you. It is the right thing to do, by His example. It is also commanded by our Lord to do so. You must forgive. There is no other option under God’s law. Since it is the right thing to do, and God tells us it is something we must do… How can we do it?
How is it possible to forgive someone who repeatedly sins against us? Jesus tells us in this parable. Are we to be like the evil servant, to whom a little was owed but to whom much was forgiven? From his perspective, he was owed a debt and sought out the one who owed it to him. To us, this sounds rational. If the evil servant applied his own logic to his king, he would see he deserved nothing but what his own reason told him was just – a lifetime of servitude for his insurmountable debt. But Jesus shows us His perspective. The one to whom much was forgiven should see that opportunity he now has in his life to forgive those who owed only a little. He is living only by the grace of his king’s pardon.
We then must put away our “rational” perspective, and put on Jesus’ perspective, which is ours only by faith. In faith and trust, we are then made able to forgive others as the forgiveness we have received spills over onto those who need our forgiveness. We are to forgive as we have been forgiven. That’s not so easy to do in practice.
Our sinful human nature doesn’t want to forgive. Sure, we can forgive the so-called “little things” and our modern culture even gives us a catchphrase for doing so: we “let it go.” But you can forget about me forgiving the one who just continues to do me wrong over and over and over. That kite won’t fly. Again, we look to Jesus for an explanation by example. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”9 Forgiveness flows from God to us to our neighbor. There is a difference between the decision to forgive, the rationalization that someone is worthy of our forgiveness, and the release of the one in our debt for their wrongdoing.
This flies in the face of our human reason, but it follows the example laid out by Christ. We can forgive because we have been forgiven. Our heart and our emotions may follow eventually, even if it seems as though whoever has wronged us is fully deserving of our scorn and wrath. We may all bear the wounds of deep hurt, and some grudges can take years or even a lifetime to resolve. But forgiveness is of the Holy Spirit. It is a free gift of God – given to you when you were undeserving. Who are you, then, to withhold it from another? It isn’t yours to keep, but yours to share from that overflowing cup of mercy. Unconditionally and always. Jesus offers us that flood of forgiveness when we are driven back to Him in our failure to forgive, to be forgiven again ourselves. Your life is a cycle of repentance and forgiveness between yourself and God, and yourself and others. Forgive, as you are forgiven...
+ In the Name of Jesus, Amen.+
And now may the peace which surpasses all human understanding keep your hearts and your minds focused on Christ Jesus.
+ Amen +
κήρυξον τὸν λόγον
1The ideas in this paragraph are paraphrased from Walther, C.F.W., Heck, Donald E. Trans., Gospel Sermons, Volume 2, St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House, 2014. p. 193.
2Psalm 7:11-12a. The Jerusalem Bible.
3II Corinthians 5:10.
4Matthew 10:28b.
5Matthew 18:32-34.
6Psalm 23:4-5.
7I John 4:10.
8CC Matthew pp.937-938.
9Luke 23:34.