Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. ‘Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. ‘At this the servant fell on his knees before him. “Be patient with me,” he begged, “and I will pay back everything.” The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go. ‘But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. “Pay back what you owe me!” he demanded. ‘His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, “Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.” ‘But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. ‘Then the master called the servant in. “You wicked servant,” he said, “I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. ‘This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’
Matthew 18:21-35
My wife is not Korean. She’s been to Korean. She can’t speak Korean (although she tried to learn it on Duolingo). But she loves Korean drama.
However, there was one drama which was a huge global hit that she decided right away she wouldn’t watch. It’s a drama called ‘All Of Us Are Dead’. It’s apparently about a zombie outbreak at a school.
Now, I didn’t watch it. I spent thirteen years of my life trying to avoid ‘living zombies’ at school, so I don’t see why I should watch a drama about it – especially an ultra-violent one in a language I don’t speak.
You might wonder where I’m going with this.
I don’t know of any human being, living or dead, who could possibly read this parable and say they’ve obeyed it all of the time. If our salvation depended on us getting this right all of the time, all of us would be dead.
So if you like reading nice, encouraging stories of Jesus that leave you with a warm glow inside, better skip this one. Instead, be prepared for a tough, no holds barred challenge.
It’s nicely split into three phases. So let’s explore the first phase – the forgiven servant.
The parable starts with a king settling accounts – doing what we would call an audit – with his workers. During that audit, he discovers that one worker has been particularly negligent in his work.
I say negligent, but this is actually well beyond the pale. His debt is enormous and utterly unpayable – its value is equivalent to around two hundred thousand years of day labourer wages. Jesus is clearly being hyperbolic here – the chances of any human being able to run up that level of debt are clearly impossible.
However, the point He is trying to make is valid.
You see, sin is often compared to debt in the Bible. See the Lord’s Prayer:
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Matthew 6:12 NIVUK
Or Jesus’ correcting of Simon the Pharisee’s attitude towards a sinful woman (Luke 7:40-43).
And I like the comparison. Debt is not a nice thing. You might be tempted by the prospect of living beyond your means, but it robs you of your peace. It keeps you up at night, worried about what will happen if you can’t repay. And worse – something we don’t like to think about at all nowadays – it reduces you to slavery:
The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.
Proverbs 22:7 NIVUK
So using debt as a picture of slavery to sin is absolutely correct.
But Jesus has stretched the picture still further. Sin is an unpayable debt. Worse: our sin – your sin and my sin – is an unpayable debt.
When a debt like this exists, someone has to pay. Either the borrower has to pay it somehow or the lender has to take the hit and absorb the loss.
What happens in this parable is that the King forgives him the debt – in other words, the king absorbs the significant loss from the debt the servant cannot repay.
And that is an extraordinary thing.
Jesus told this parable because this is anat happened to us, if we are in Christ:
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53:5-6 NIVUK
Jesus took the hit for our sins. He bore the loss. His death on the cross paid our sin debt.
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
If only Jesus had stopped there. If only He hadn’t continued with the other two phases, because it’s here that the parable becomes incredibly challenging.
Now we move from the forgiven servant to the unforgiving servant.
You see, having begged and implored his master to not throw him and his family into prison for the debt, the servant goes out and finds another servant who owes him a much smaller amount – just a hundred days’ wages, instead of two hundred thousand years. It’s still quite a significant sum, but the difference in scale is very stark, and this is on purpose.
You see, the forgiven servant refuses to forgive his borrower. Just refuses. He even has the man thrown in prison to pay off the debt.
I see a very serious point being made here by Jesus. The money owed to the forgiven servant is not insignificant, as I said, and the loss he would be required to absorb it is not small.
But the King expects him to forgive as he has been forgiven (Matthew 6:14-15; Luke 6:37).
This parable does not minimise the scale of the debt or the impact that forgiving it would have on the forgiven servant. What it does, though, is remind us of one glaring, and deeply uncomfortable fact:
The forgiven servant’s debt was so much greater, so he ought to have forgiven his follow servant who owed him so much less.
So what is Jesus saying?
He is not at all minimising the hurt and the pain we feel when someone sins against us. He is not at all playing it down.
What He is saying is that the pain and hurt inflicted on Him to pay for our sins was so, so much greater. Therefore we ought to forgive other people, regardless of what they have done.
A little side note here. If someone commits a criminal offence, we can forgive them but also seek redress through the criminal courts. The two do not exclude each other. If someone has committed a crime against us, they will likely re-offend until they face the just consequences for their crime. If we forgive them, it simply means that we do not harbour bitterness towards them and are not out for revenge.
So we have a forgiven but unforgiving servant. Lastly, we see the unforgiven servant.
Their fellow servants are very offended, and rightly so. Scandalised, they tell the king what has happened. He rescinds his forgiveness towards the servant with the unrepayable debt and throws him into prison to be tortured until the debt is repaid.
Not a happy ending, then.
In fact, a deeply shocking, disturbing one, because here we have a servant who was in the clear, home and dry, on to a winner, and yet in a fit of spiteful pique, and finds himself in a worse position than he ever anticipated.
I’m sure our heads are spinning at the prospect.
So let’s see what this really means.
Firstly, we need to understand that grudges have always been seen as completely wrong, even from Moses’ day (Leviticus 19:18). And no wonder.
It was a grudge that caused Abel to be slain at the hands of his brother (Genesis 4:1-16).
It was also a grudge that damaged the relationship between Jacob and Esau (Genesis 27:41).
It was a grudge that led to Joseph being sold as a slave to Egypt (Genesis 37:4,18-20).
It was a grudge that led to John the Baptist being beheaded (Mark 6:19).
It is perfectly reasonable to see the bearing of grudges being frowned upon in Scripture.
Secondly, anyone who has borne a grudge and has felt the inner poison of unforgiveness will know what it does to you. It is torture.
However, the torture here is described as being until the debt is paid back. Since this debt is unrepayable, the torture would, in effect, be until the unforgiving servant dies.
So I doubt this is simply the inner torture from not forgiving.
No, this would seem to be eternal torture.
But why would Jesus say that eternal torture is a consequence of not forgiving?
Quite simple: because it is.
As Jesus has pointed our through this parable, forgiveness is an example of the work of grace in our hearts: we forgive because we have been forgiven; we forgive because the magnitude of sin that we were forgiven in Christ makes any sin committed against a mere trifle by comparison.
If we point blank refuse to forgive, we are denying the work of grace and closing the door to the Holy Spirit's work in us – since Jesus Christ forgave, we are out of step with Him and not following Him.
But, and this is important, that forgiveness does not always happen right away.
Take Paul, for example. He had a sharp falling out with Barnabas – the son of encouragement – because Barnabas wanted to take Mark with them on a missionary journey, but Paul disagreed (Acts 15:36-38) because Mark had previously let them down.
Paul, in effect, had not forgiven Mark and bore a grudge against him.
But look what happens years later:
Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry.
2 Timothy 4:11 NIVUK
The same Mark, who earlier Paul distrusted and held a grudge against, is now not only asked for by name, but considered helpful.
What happened in the interim? It seems that a work of grace took place in Paul’s heart and he allowed Mark to prove himself to be helpful once more.
I also find it striking where this parable falls in the Gospel of Matthew. In the same chapter, we see teaching against causing little ones to fall (Matthew 18:6-9 – perhaps by not demonstrating forgiveness?), the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Matthew 18:10-14) and church discipline (Matthew 18:15-20).
The latter is really interesting because we see an example of it in action across 1 and 2 Corinthians.
We see a man put out the church for a gross, and public, act of sexual indecency (1 Corinthians 5). So far, so understandable.
But Paul does not tell the church to hold against this man his very public fall from grace, even if it has likely caused damage to the image of the church.
No, he puts him out so that the man would repent (1 Corinthians 5:4-5).
Which it seems he does, because Paul later tells them to forgive him and welcome him back (2 Corinthians 2:5-11).
Do you see this?
The discipline was necessary, if painful. But it was carried out with compassion and forgiveness so that the offender could find a way to repent and come back in.
Oh, that more Christians would learn from it!
This parable is like a scalpel. It cuts and it wounds – often without anaesthesia. And that really hurts.
But the pain is necessary. Without the pain, the bitter root (Hebrews 12:15) of unforgiveness is allowed to thrive among us like a cancerous growth. It’s difficult parables like this that expose it for what it is and enable us to deal with it.
As the American author Mark Twain put it, ‘It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.’
Few are more problematic and troublesome for us as human beings as this one.
But if we let the Divine scalpel cut us, and cut deeply, then we will be the better for it.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, this parable leaves me reeling. I confess that I find it really hard to forgive those who have hurt me. I need your strength. I also need your assurance that your death on the cross is more than enough for both my sins and theirs. Help me to release the pain to you. Help me to truly forgive, from the heart. Amen.
Questions
1. What does this parable teach about forgiveness?
2. Why is it so hard to forgive?
3. Who do you struggle to forgive? How can this parable help you to forgive them?
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