Lutheran Brethren Church of Nampa

There’s a lot of things in this world that we love to get, but we don’t love to give. ‘Tis greater to receive than to give! Forgiveness from God is the great joy of this Christian life. Forgiving others can be the cause of great pain. Aside from the struggle between our sinful nature and the new spirit given to us, forgiving others is probably the 2nd greatest struggle we have in this life. Forgiving others does not come naturally to us; it runs contrary to everything our sinful flesh wants, namely, revenge, pride, self-importance, and self-righteousness. And it is exactly this struggle that Jesus addresses in his parable today.

The Question of Forgiveness

So, what brought about this teaching? Well, Peter asks a pretty simple question. Jesus had been talking about restoring a brother when he sins, and so the thought that pops into Peter’s mind is how many times this should be done. Seven times? That’s showing some pretty great forgiveness right there. Somebody sins against you; what the sin is doesn’t really matter, but they’ve sinned against you. Let’s say they lie to you. And after that, you forgive them. And then they do it again. And you forgive them again. Seven times over they lie to you, and seven times over you forgive them. That’s showing some real patience right there! And I’ve got to give Peter some credit here for this seven times number. He would have grown up hearing that you forgive someone three times, but the fourth time, forgiveness ends. That was a popular teaching during Jesus’ day, and it comes straight from the Babylonian Talmud, the writings of the best of the best Jewish Rabbis as they deliberated on how to apply God’s law to daily life. That Talmud says, and I quote, “A man sins against you once: forgive. A second time: forgive. A third time: forgive. A fourth time: no forgiveness.” So Peter more than doubles what he had been taught all his life, showing that Jesus’ teachings about forgiveness were starting to sink in.

But, we find in Jesus’ answer that the question shouldn’t have even come to Peter’s mind. Given the greatness of the forgiveness Peter had received from God, he is to put absolutely no limit on his forgiveness toward others. He isn’t supposed to forgive seven times, but seven times seventy times. In other words, an unlimited amount of times. I’m sure you already realize this, but Jesus wasn’t setting a firm number of times to forgive by these words – that you forgive someone precisely 490 times and no more – but rather he is putting a ridiculously high number out there to make the point that there is to be no limit on the forgiveness we extend to others.

An Example of Forgiveness

But why? Why don’t we limit the forgiveness we extend toward others? Jesus, rightfully, could have just said, “Because I said so!” But that’s not how He operates. The directives we receive on how to live out our faith aren’t arbitrary. We aren’t called to act in certain ways just because God’s on a power trip and wants to control us. No, there are very good reasons for the ways we are called to live, and our calling to be forgiving has a really good reason behind it, which Jesus illustrates in this parable.

Now, some things get lost in the language here, so we’ll start with the image Jesus is painting for His disciples. We start with a king who is calling his slaves to account. And the first slave he summons is in charge of a huge sum of money. Now, that might seem weird to us. In our minds, slaves, by definition, don’t hold any money. But we have to take a look into Ancient Near-East society in order to understand what’s going on. A king then would have a great number of people who would rightfully be called slaves. And some of those slaves would be in charge of managing great tracts of land for the king – collecting taxes, maintaining the land, executing justice, and what not. You can consider them as if there were Satraps, or Lords, or Governors. Except for the fact that these people had no autonomy to rule over the lands that were placed in their care, but they were entirely subservient to the king. So, they fall under this blanket term of “slave.”

Anyway, this slave owed the king 10,000 talents. There’s another thing we’re not going to be familiar with. When Jesus said “10,000 talents,” the disciples’ eyes would have gotten really big. That amount of money would have taken their breath away. You see, just one talent is equal to the amount of money a common laborer would make in the span of about 15 years. One talent, 15 years of income. So, because I am who I am, I sat down to do the math. Figuring what the average laborer makes today, multiplying that by fifteen years, and then multiplying that by 10,000, you come up with a figure that’s just a little more than four. Billion. Dollars. In today’s money, this slave owed the king $4,000,000,000. Obviously this guy was in charge of a lot, but given his response, he hadn’t managed it very well. There was no way he was going to be able to pay this back. On his face he goes, pleading with the king to be patient. Somehow, some way, he’s got to find a way to pay the king back everything he owes. He can’t afford to be put into debtor’s prison. He’s probably got a family, a wife, children that need him. “Just give me time, and I’ll work it out. Be patient with me. I’ll figure out a way to get you your money.”

So, in order to make the point about forgiveness, Jesus starts with a man who owes an astounding sum to his king. This is the image of every person who stands before God. The sum we owe to God because of our sins is terrifying. Because we are born in sin and have sinned against God in our continual rebellion against Him, we owe him a sum that cannot possibly be repaid. If you absolutely have to put a value on it, just imagine that you owe $4,000,000,000 to someone and they need you to pay that back right now. This is the helpless state of everyone who is faced with God’s perfect law. If you had a dollar for every time you sinned, you’d be a multi-billionaire. Everyone who is faced with God’s perfect holiness, and just how unholy we are in comparison, knows how hopeless our case is. And the truth is, you really can’t put a value on the debt you owe to God for your sin. The only payment that can be rendered to our righteous judge is your very life and an eternity of punishment.

Now, back to the parable. This man was crushed by the weight of his debt. But his understanding isn’t quite complete. He still thinks he’ll have the ability to pay back what he owes. But when he sees that this man is crushed by his debt and is looking for mercy, the king is filled with compassion. Isn’t that a wonderful image? He felt compassion toward this hopeless slave who has so squandered his life and placed himself into bankruptcy. And because of this compassion, the King releases him. Sets him free. The captivity this slave deserved is removed and he’s free to go. And he’s free to go because the king forgive the debt that he owed. You know those debt forgiveness programs you sometimes hear about? That’s what’s going on here. $4,000,000,000 dollars of debt immediately wiped away at the command of the king. What joy! This man was headed to prison with no hope of buying his way out, but now he’s free. He’s a free man, and he’s debt-free.

The Cost of Forgiveness

This is the magnitude of the forgiveness we have received from God through the blood of Jesus Christ His son. Again, you can’t put a price on the debt owed to God because of your sin, but if you absolutely had to, imagine that you had a four billion dollar debt wiped away simply because the bank had compassion. What joy! The unpayable sin-debt you owe to God because of your sin is wiped away in an instant. It’s put away from you as far as the east is from the west. It’s buried at the bottom of the deepest sea, and God remembers it no more. And what did you do to receive such forgiveness? Absolutely nothing! Just look at the slave in the parable. He had nothing to offer other than terror and a pathetic promise he couldn’t keep. The king was entirely responsible for eliminating his debt. The king made no demands on him in order to do this. He asked for no promises in order to do this. He just did it. Same with us. We come to God with nothing but contrition – fear and sorrow for the sins we’ve committed. And when that happens, God announces that He has sent His son to die and pay the full price for the debt of your sin. That debt is wiped away and you didn’t have to do a thing in order to have this forgiveness. You simply take God at His word and believe that this is true.

So, all of that had to be laid down in order to understand why it is we forgive others. This man had a ridiculous amount of debt, but his king forgave that debt instantly, completely, and unconditionally. Moving on, Jesus goes on to describe what this man does after receiving such forgiveness. He draws a comparison between the forgiveness he received from the king, and the forgiveness another person needs from him. He goes off and finds one of his fellow slaves – someone who’s not so high up on the ladder – and shakes him down for a hundred denarii. What’s a denarii? Well, doing the math again, 100 denarii amounts to roughly $12,000 in today’s economy. That’s not a small sum of money, but compared to the four billion he now doesn’t owe? Big difference. And so this man goes on as if he had never even heard of forgiveness. The other guy owes him a relatively paltry sum, and when he pleads with this slave for patience, compassion is the furthest thing from his mind. No compassion there. He’s completely unwilling to be patient or compassionate, and so he throws this slave into prison until he pays back his debt.

Do you see all the ways that this man had acted differently from his king? First of all, there is the matter of the debt. $12,000 compared with $4,000,000,000. If you had to put a price on what someone owes you when they sin against you, compared to what you owed God for your own sins, a person’s sin against you is ridiculously small compared to what you’ve been forgiven. 3/1000ths of a percent, according to these numbers. And the point is this: if God can forgive you so much, who do you think you are to not forgive so little? When you’ve been immediately, completely, and unconditionally forgiven the crushing and unpayable debt of your sin toward God, how can it possibly be that you can put a limit on how much you can forgive the teeny-tiny sins people commit against you? Put in these terms, the idea of being unforgiving is pretty ridiculous. And you’re not even God! Their sins against you are of no importance compared to the sins we all have against God. So just forgive already! Yeah, having to forgive someone else might be painful. It rubs up against your pride and anger and desire for revenge. But do you think that God forgiving you was easy? The perfect love and unity between God the Father and God the Son was torn in half as the Son was forsaken by the Father on that cross. None of us can imagine the pain that would have caused our perfectly loving God.

And what’s more, because the one slave was unwilling to forgive the other, he puts him in prison and continues to demand repayment. Rather than experiencing the beautiful freedom and joy of being forgiven, the slave experiences punishment and continued debt. This is precisely what we do when we refuse to forgive others. We bind their sin upon them and require satisfaction. This is not who we are called to be. We are called to be the hands and feet of Christ on earth, being conformed to His image. If we can give someone a little taste of what immediate, complete, and unconditional forgiveness looks like, we give them an idea of the enormous forgiveness they will receive from God. And I say it’s a little taste, because, again, their sins against us are nothing compared to their sins against God. But when they experience this very real forgiveness from us, as small as that forgiveness might be, they’re catching a whiff of the immense and perfect forgiveness that God has to offer.

You’ve been forgiven much. Don’t be afraid to forgive little. You owed God an unpayable debt because of your own sinfulness, and he has wiped that debt clean, setting you free to live as both His slave and His beloved child. Resist the temptation to be unforgiving. Resist the temptation to stand in the place of God as judge and instead forgive as you have been forgiven. It’s not easy, I know. The very idea of forgiving someone runs contrary to every desire of our sinful flesh. But do it anyway, because this is who you have been recreated to be. Have you failed to be forgiving in the past? Are you being unforgiving this very moment? Unforgiveness is not an unforgivable sin. Jesus’ parable conspicuously ends without knowing the future of the slave. Did he eventually come to his senses, repent of his unforgiveness, and go on to forgive his fellow slave? We don’t know. But we do know that God’s forgiveness is new every moment of every day. If you are, or have been, unforgiving, confess your sin to God and receive the perfect forgiveness Christ has bought you. Then you will be free to go on to forgive, exactly as you have been forgiven. Let us pray…