“21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
23 Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 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. 26 The servant fell on his knees before him. “Be patient with me,” he begged, “and I will pay back everything.” 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. “Pay back what you owe me!” he demanded. 29 His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.” 30 But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.
31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. 32 Then the master called the servant in. “You wicked servant,” he said, “I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. 35 This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
We all have gifts. Some of us are quite discerning. Some of us have a sunny disposition. Some of us, like me, have perfect pitch. “This a G note!” When it comes to perfect pitch, I apparently believe I have a gift I never received.
If we really have a gift, it will show itself. Perfect pitch is like that. Mercy is like that too. If you’ve received the gift of mercy, it will show itself. If mercy doesn’t show itself, you haven’t received it. That’s the claim of this sermon.
We will study this in two points. First: the question. Second: the parable. First, in verses 21-22, we see the question. Second, in verses 23-35, we see the parable.
We see the importance of the gift of mercy in our first point: the question. The gospels aren’t a constant recording of Jesus’ life and life’s work. They are arranged. The arrangement of this chapter has to do with sin. Matthew’s purpose in chapter 18 is to share Jesus’ wisdom as to how the Christian community is to deal with sin. Jesus warns us saying it would be better for any of us to drown than purposefully cause another believer to sin. He says that sin is to be confronted for the sake of the community. Unaddressed sin causes fractures and factions within any community. The Christian community will need to learn how to restore relationships and this requires the gift of mercy—forgiveness—and so Peter’s question regarding this forgiveness is a natural development. Peter is clicking with what Jesus is teaching; that’s verse 21, ‘Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”’
We can be sadly, strangely, and awfully hard on Peter. He gets a lot wrong but he gets a lot right. He wants to be a forgiving person. Seven times was a high estimate. Rabbis thought three forgive nesses was sufficient. It’s worth considering that most people don’t do more than one. Forgiving someone four times was seen as over the top. Seven would be excessive. Peter is putting himself out there. He wants to be a forgiving person and that is rarer in this fallen world than any of us would dare to imagine. The gracelessness of this world would break your heart. It will break your heart. It is to break your heart in the way it breaks God’s. That’s the way forward without losing your soul.
Jesus thinks Peter is on the right path, but that he hasn’t gone far enough. Peter still has limits in mind and if you limit your mercy to others, why wouldn’t God limit His mercy to you? And so Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” There are different interpretations of this number, but to me the one that makes the most sense comes from a descendant of Cain. Please turn to Genesis 4:23. These are the words of vengeful Lamech. He is warning his wives that he retaliates with fury. “Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.”
The Lord promised to take sevenfold vengeance on anyone who attacked Cain. Lamech is saying that he’s far more vengeful than God. “You’d rather face the the Lord than face me.” Jesus refers back to that regarding the oppositive of vengeance—forgiveness—saying, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Jesus’ followers ought to be as fervent about forgiveness as Lamech was about vengeance. Lamech was creature of vengeance. We are to be creatures of forgiveness. The world will give you plenty of opportunities to respond with vengeance or forgiveness.
If you can understand the words I’m saying, you are old enough to know that you are, at times, sinned against. We humans rarely forgive. We might overlook. We might excuse. We pull back. We rarely, though, forgive. Forgiveness is judgment combined with mercy. Judgment for the sin and mercy for the sinner. Excusing refuses to judge the sin in order to maintain good relations with the sinner. Pulling back judges the sin without showing mercy to the sinner. Forgiveness is the only healing way forward, which is why Jesus says we are to be as fervent about it as Lamech was about vengeance. To drive this point home to our hearts he tells a parable. That’s our second point: the parable.
This is a kingdom parable; “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like…” Jesus’ parables are designed to teach us what life is like in God’s kingdom. There’s a thread online detailing what it’s like to live in different parts of the world. “What’s it like to live in Key West?” and the locals tell what you it’s like to not visit there, but live there. “What’s it like to live year-round in Aleutian Islands of Alaksa?” It’s likely not what you would imagine. “What’s it like to live in the kingdom of God?” The only local, Jesus, tells us in parable after parable. Here he tells us it’s a kingdom of mercy—receiving and giving mercy—and if that’s not for you, you’ll have to move somewhere else.
Jesus describes it in terms of “a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him.” The number ten thousand wasn’t simply chosen as an exorbitant number. It is the highest number that can be expressed in one Greek word. It’s like our, “zillions.” The point isn’t the number; it’s the inexpressibly large amount. A talent was the largest unit of currency. Ten thousands talents is the largest times the largest.
If you want to be literal with the amount, it was more money than existed in circulation in Judea at that time. Right now, in this nation there is $2.3 trillion in circulation. None of us could pay that off if we worked millions of lifetimes. That’s the point. The man can’t pay it off. You can’t pay off your debt to God. We are all debtors. “There is no human being who has not amassed an unpayable debt to God,” as Bruner comments on this verse.
The answer in that day to unpayable debt was debtors prisons; ‘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. The servant fell on his knees before him. “Be patient with me,” he begged, “and I will pay back everything.” Such prisons have been the case until quite recently. They were only abolished in this nation in 1833. You were released from debtors prison when you could pay the debt. This man will never pay off his near infinite debt and so he and his family will be imprisoned forever. If I want to spiritually stand on my own solvency, that’s my future. If you want to stand on your rights, that’s your eternity too.
Vengeance and any lack of mercy is obsessed with rights and solvency. It will not move beyond the injury. Vengeance sits on that injury as if it were a throne of self-righteousness. It is, in a twisted way, refusing to leave a situation in which it knows it’s in the right. The problem with vengeance is not so much with what it does see, but with what it doesn’t see. It doesn’t see its own sin. That’s part of why we love to judge. As long as my finger is legitimately pointed at your fault, my faults are out of my focus. The more obsessed I become with your sin, the less I can see my own sin. Vengeance mentally minds move in a circle covering the same ground again and again. It refuses to leave its groove because it thinks it’s groove is right.
Moving in a circle, though, is only a way forward if you want to stay stuck. There is another option. “The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.” The first word of that sentence in Greek is “compassion.” It’s a choice of the master. It’s not dictated by the situation. It’s a choice. ‘[God] chooses not to enforce His authority harshly but rather with unimaginable generosity because His “heart goes out” to [us],’ as France put it. Such mercy is unexpected. That’ s how mercy works. The man in debt would never have dared ask for such loan forgiveness. He got it because it was the master’s good pleasure to give it.
That is the only way to live. You can do nothing to make God forgive you. If God wanted me damned, I would be damned and the same goes for you. You have no leverage with God. You have nothing He needs. You just have more debt; that’s question and answer 13 of the Catechism, “Can we make this payment ourselves? Certainly not. Actually, we increase our debt every day.” That’s Romans 11 from which we get our Romans Doxology, “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” You have no negotiation collateral with God and so you will get whatever H gives you and, inexplicably, what He loves to give is mercy. It’s only our remarkably blessed gift in existence that God who has every reason to be hostile toward us loves to be friendly.
The master forgives the debt. The NIV translates it as “cancelled the debt” but it’s the same word for “forgiveness” Peter uses asking, “how many times shall I forgive?” The master’s action toward his servant tells Peter all he needs to know about forgiveness. It’s undeserved. It’s not proportional. There’s nothing about fairness in it. It is not seven times but a zillion times.
But if you’ve really received it, you will show it. “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.” A hundred denarii is a hundred day’s wages. If you trimmed the fat off your budget, you might be able to pay off such a debt over three or four years. The point is that it’s large but doable. That’s our sins against each other—they can be large but they are doable when compared with our debt before God. The point of the difference between the debts is that, “no one can offend our human moral sensibilities as much as everyone offends the moral sensibilities of a perfect God,” as Keener put it. No matter how much anyone has done to me in this fallen world and we humans can offend one another grievously, it isn’t a measurable faction of how offensive my general way of life is to God. Take the most disturbing injury you could imagine receiving and recognize that this pales in comparison to the sinful pattern of life you confessed in worship this morning. If that seems off, please recognize that you are off in the same way my G note in singing was off.
Thinking that someone else’s sin against you is in the ballpark of your sin against God is a sign that you aren’t receiving mercy. You think you have a gift you haven’t received. Such self-righteousness leads to what we see this servant do with his fellow servant; ‘He grabbed him and began to choke him. “Pay back what you owe me!” he demanded.’ You can barely comprehend that as you hear the parable but that’s how we live quite often. The unimaginable nature of it is the point. It’s as unimaginable as a zillion dollar debt being forgiven. We live in an unimaginable world either in vengeance or in forgiveness. Life won’t be fair but you can pick in way it’s not fair—mercy or self-pitying, self-righteousness.
The servant who moments ago couldn’t stand in his own solvency now demands his rights. He wants from someone else what he couldn’t offer. We do that with remarkable regularity. We judge in others what we ourselves do. We have eagle eyes when it comes to spotting other’s shortcomings and sins and are blind as bats when it comes to ourselves. “What is candid frankness in us is discourteous brutality of speech in others. What is selfishness in others is standing on our indisputable rights in our own case,” as one commentator put it. That, by nature, is humanity—hypocrites. You can deny it, distract yourself from it, despise yourself because of it, or confess it. The Bible everywhere encourages the last option.
The man with the hundred denarii debt begs this now debt-free servant saying, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.” That’s exactly what the forgiven servant said to the master. Remember, though, it’s not the situation that dictates what will occur; it is the heart, which is why the master with his grand heart forgave and why this servant with his shriveled heart refuses and has the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.
The other servants saw what we’re seeing and were greatly distressed went and told their master everything that had happened, and we are back to earlier in the chapter and dealing with sin in the community. Refusing to forgive is yet another form of sin like the others that need correction. The presence of these other servants remind us that we are all servants. We are all on level—only the master is above. The point is that we who have been forgiven our incalculable debt by the master ought not spend our lives calculating the extent of other’s debts to us.
The master summons this unforgiving servant and makes clear that his lack of forgiveness is just as wicked as any other sin. “You wicked servant,” he said, “I canceled 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?” The unforgiving servant gives no reply because there is none that could be given. That’s the final judgment for the wicked—every mouth will be shut because there is no defense. Don’t wind up there. Repent. Receive forgiveness. Forgive as you’ve been forgiven. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
It ends up worse for this servant who wouldn’t forgive; “In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.” When we first met him, he would have just been thrown in prison until he can pay it back. Now he is tortured until he can pay it back and he will never be able to pay it back. That’s hell—trying to pay back an unpayable debt. “Woe to you if you stand on your rights for God will then stand on His and see that judgment is executed,” Jeremias put it.
With all of this in mind, Jesus turns back to Peter’s question about how often he is to forgive and in verse 35 says, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
There are matters to consider regarding reconciliation, but that’s not the focus on this parable. It’s not fair to want every parable to answer every question just like it’s not fair to want every conversation to answer every concern. Learning and practicing the distinctions between reconciliation and forgiveness, though, is no excuse for refusing to forgive from your heart. There is no excuse for any of us with forgiven hearts to refuse to forgive from the heart. We’ve just heard how Jesus’ Father will treat us if we refuse to do so.
Obedience to God isn’t just not sinning. It’s also confessing when you sin and it’s also forgiving when you are sinned against. Refusing to cease sinning and refusing to forgive sin winds up in the same place. What will you do regarding sin? Sin in yourself? Sin against yourself? What will do you regarding mercy.
Mercy is the only way forward. It’s the only way that’s not stuck. Otherwise, it’s “unblessed are the unmerciful,” as Bruner flips Jesus’ beatitude. You know you’ve received the gift of mercy if it shows itself; otherwise it’s like me deceiving me thinking I have perfect pitch. Amen.