21 Then Peter came up and said to Him, “Lord, how many times shall my brother sin against me and I still forgive him? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus *said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy-seven times.
23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 And when he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 But since he did not have the means to repay, his master commanded that he be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment be made. 26 So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ 27 And the master of that slave felt compassion, and he released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe!’ 29 So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ 30 But he was unwilling, and went and threw him in prison until he would pay back what was owed. 31 So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their master all that had happened. 32 Then summoning him, his master *said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ 34 And his master, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he would repay all that was owed him. 35 My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.”
Act 2: The Unforgiving Servant
In 2 Timothy 3, it is written that in the last days men will be “hating one another, unforgiving.” We live in a world of hatred, bitterness, anger, and revenge, whether in families, in the neighborhood, at work, and even in politics. Leaders who should have set an example for virtues and patience are filling the poison of hatred, violence, and revenge throughout the entire nation. It is getting worse. We are all affected by that.
In the midst of all this tension and darkness, what a relief to open God’s word and see the divine message of forgiveness. We often hear people say “I will never forgive you.” That means everyone realizes there is a moral obligation we should forgive. Otherwise, it will be harmful to both the victim and the person who did the wrong. Unforgiving wounds will remain, festering until it consumes the whole life. An unforgiving heart can never be happy even in the world, and today we will see that unforgiveness has terrible spiritual consequences.
Today, you come here with many troubles in providence, wondering what lesson does this chapter about forgiveness have for me in all my troubles I am going through. But God’s word will speak to you today and point out one of the main reasons why God chastises his children is for [having an] unforgiving heart. There are some people who can never forgive. [It is a] humanly very difficult attribute. But the Lord teaches in this parable a divine ability not only to forgive once or twice, but unlimitedly—a divine ability to forgive and forget harms done to us.
I have divided the passage into five headings:
- Peter’s Question
- Lord’s Answer
- Lord gives a parable to illustrate his answer (Act 1 already covered)
- Parable – Act 2 (This section)
- Passage ends with a terrible warning (Verse 35)
Peter, after hearing all Jesus’ teaching about forgiving and embracing a sinning brother, thought he had a generous heart when he went beyond Jewish tradition, doubled it, and in fact thought seven was the perfect number. He asked, “Should I forgive seven times?” [He was] expecting appreciation.
We saw the Lord’s answer must have thrown him, taken him aback, and left him breathless and shut up. The Lord said not seven, no, “seventy times seven.” If seven is the number of completeness and perfection, “seventy times seven” is that completeness to the nth degree. Interestingly, the Lord could have taken this 77 from Genesis 4:24 where Lamech promises to avenge himself on those who injure him 77 times over. “Kill one of his sons, he will kill 77 of yours.” That is the idea. Jesus then would be saying that in contrast to Lamech’s limitless spirit of vengeance, Christians should be constrained by a similarly limitless spirit of forgiveness. As his children, God doesn’t want us to put limits on the forgiveness. True forgiveness has no boundaries. It is a state of heart, not a matter of calculation. It is a divine ability to forgive, forget, and never keep an account.
Knowing this is humanly impossible, he illustrates how his children can have this divine ability by a parable.
We saw Part 1 of the parable. The King, checking the accounts of his slave governors, found one of them owed 10,000 talents—an amazingly high amount, an unpayable amount, the highest term in the Greek language to speak of numeration. He was brought before the king. He had nothing but his body. The King ordered him, his wife, and children to be put into slavery till death. Though he cannot get the full amount, He would get whatever he can get. Then, in the desperate burden of his sin, overwhelmed in his condition, he realizes the sentence is just, he cannot argue. He falls prostrate, pleads, “have mercy, patience, I will pay all.” Verse 27 we saw the king was moved with compassion. He not just gave what he asked for—that is, “time to repay”—but in his infinite compassion instead forgave the debt entirely. He set no conditions.
So nice, we all enjoy the story so far, because as believers, this is our story and this is our song. The King is God, we are all stewards. He is the one who gave us life, breath, and all things; we are all stewards of this God. God will one day call us for an account. We as sinners owe him an unlimited, infinite debt of sin we need to pay back to God. Man doesn’t realize the burden of it until he is called to pay back. He lives laughing, thinking the accounting day will never come.
When people are spoken about the gospel, they are just careless, laugh at sin debt, and judgment. Life goes on seemingly without incident, and then a very, very severe issue happens in the family. Maybe one of the children takes on a terminal illness, or is killed in an accident, or whatever. Or maybe a spouse dies, or gets terminal cancer, or heart disease, or perhaps a job is lost, or perhaps a terrible accident is incurred, whatever. And in the midst of that extremity of circumstance, people see the bankruptcy of their own life. They are brought face to face with conviction. God may allow the gospel to come into their mind.
But sometimes God, through the preaching of his gospel, we are brought to realize face to face the reality of the great sin debt we owe to God. That is called conviction of sin. The HS creates that before saving man. We stand before a holy God, our creator, who gave us life, breath, and all things, give an account for the stewardship of life, and we stand before his holy law, and see what a wretched, sinful being we are. How much we owe him.
God has to deliver them over to judgment in hell. Even in hell, we cannot pay the debt. That is, they will spend forever in hell paying what they cannot pay. That’s why hell is forever, but they’ll stay there forever, paying all they could pay.
10,000 talents. Even during conviction, man can never get a grasp of the enormity of his sin. Conviction, we can say, is just a drop of it. I don’t think any man really does grasp how great the sin debt is. We don’t understand how great God is, how infinitely holy he is, how glorious he is, and how much of his glory we have robbed by our sins, and insulted his holiness and majesty by our sin. We cannot grasp, because we don’t realize how glorious God is.
But maybe before conversion, we just get a drop sense of that. When a man realizes that we can never pay that, it is too much to be paid, and they have no resources to pay it. That is when a man runs to Christ who alone has paid his debt on the cross. Falls prostrate before God and in brokenhearted repentance trusts Christ’s work on his behalf, and then God, moved with compassion on the basis of the glorious work of Christ, he covers and forgives all the debt of sin we owe. Just like that man, we never have to pay the debt of our past, present, and future sins. We are delivered from the penalty and power of sin. The glorious gospel delivers us from the greatest debt.
Have we thought what pain, cost, and suffering it must cost God to forgive us? We take forgiveness for granted. Though it was a great loss for God, unimaginable to us, how he sees sin against him from his perspective. That is why he uses the highest Greek number. Oh, we cannot even understand what cost he had to pay to forgive us. God doesn’t easily forgive, it is at the expense of great loss.
People ask, “Oh, so difficult to be saved? How to believe, how [to] repent?” See what we do to be saved is peanuts, nothing. Realize you are a lost sinner, and believe what God has done through Christ for your sins. Put your trust in Christ and his work can save you and come and fall prostrate and broken. That is all. See what God had to do to save you.
So Part 1 of this is our story. We enjoy it, and we tell it, share our testimony, “God saved me, forgave me all my sins.”
Now we come to Part 2. It is a dark, sad story you know. Sadly, in spite of God forgiving us so much, Part 2 is also our story, because that is how we behave with our brothers and sisters, unable to forgive them for small things.
Parable – Act 2: The Cruelty of the Forgiven
So let us look at Part 2 of the parable, the warning, and a few applications.
Part 1 was the introduction; we come to the main story that teaches the lesson. Verse 28: “But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe!’“
Wow, what a turning point! What a man he is, absolutely absurd. The fellow, instead of living in the joy of all his debt being forgiven. “How soon did this guy forget what he had been forgiven? How soon did he forget his Lord’s compassion?”
First, notice his timing. We see that Jesus says that the man “went out” and found this other servant, suggesting that his actions followed immediately the remarkable grace he had been shown by the king. When it comes to dealing with those who have sinned against us, isn’t it tragic how easily, and how quickly, we forget the grace that was shown to us for our sins?
“The same servant”—and it emphasizes “the same servant who had just been”—what? “forgiven.” The same one, the forgiven one, “Went out and found”—in other words, the idea is that he was looking for somebody. This was not an incident that he didn’t expect. He didn’t inadvertently run into the guy. He was out there searching for this fellow. And who was it? Notice, “one of his fellowservants.” He finds another fellowservant, not just another servant somewhere in the world, but one who serves the same king, one who is a fellowservant.
Now, this other servant was not necessarily of the same rank. He perhaps worked under this first servant. It may have been that he was a provincial governor and this guy was one of his local tax collectors, but they both served the same king. And what happens is really absurd. It is just beyond belief.
And then, notice his manner. We don’t read of the king grabbing this man by the throat and throttling him; and yet he is utterly graceless with respect to the one indebted to him. He goes, finds the guy, lays his hands on him, takes him by the throat—literally the Greek says “he went about choking him”—and saying, “Pay me what you owe me.”
This is the Roman style. Roman writers, secular writers, often speak about men going to their debtors and wrenching/twisting their neck until blood ran out of their nose and mouth. That’s the old Roman loan collection agency style. Just find some big strong-arm guy to strangle them to death if he doesn’t pay. And he says, “Pay me what you owe me.”
What needed all this violence? The debt might have been demanded without taking the debtor by the throat. If he had been himself going to prison for his debt to his lord, his occasions would have been so pressing, that he might have had some pretense for going to this extremity in requiring his own. But now the man is free from all debt. Why, and for what?
Then, notice the amount of debt—how much? A hundred denarii. One denarius is a common local labor wage. If you are a higher position, you can earn more than one denarius. Even a common laborer, 100 days’ work, he can earn that. It is a very small amount compared to 10,000 talents. With a little time, it could be paid off. And it was nothing when compared to the impossible debt this man owed the king!
Verse 29: “So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’“
Does that sound familiar? Almost the same exact words the first man had said to the king. That’s the same speech in Verse 26. The guy got the same speech back that he gave the lord, just as if that might jog his mind a little. Didn’t those words sound familiar? Isn’t that the same thing you were pleading when you were pleading your case for an insurmountable, unpayable sum? And you were begging the king to let you off your unpayable debt, and now a guy owes you some money, if he makes him and his family and children work, maybe he can pay back in a week/month, and you’re strangling him?
Even the familiar words echoing in his ears can’t find a response from his heart. And the guy is begging. He besought him. He’s begging. This isn’t worship. He doesn’t say he fell down and worshiped him. This is no sovereign. This is a servant to a servant. And he says, “Look, just be patient and I’ll pay you all,” and he could have paid. There was possibility in that.
You would think that hearing them would have reminded him of the grace he had just been shown.
But Jesus says, Verse 30: “But he was unwilling, and went and threw him in prison until he would pay back what was owed.”
“He would not! He was unwilling“—It wasn’t that he “could not” be patient with his fellow servant; but rather that he “would not.” “But went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt.” It’s unimaginable. They have no compassion. This is an impossible reaction. He himself was pitied, he should have pitied. He himself was forgiven, he should have forgiven. He himself had been loved, he should have loved. He himself having received mercy, he should have dispensed it. So cruel.
He doesn’t sell him to slavery. He puts him in the jail to pay back what he owed. There was no reasonable cause. He didn’t refuse. He just asked time. Why take him to court and put him jail? In jail anyway he cannot pay. It showed more of love for money and cruelty. Unmerciful creditors may see their own faces, who take pleasure in nothing more than to swallow up and destroy (2 Samuel 20:19), and glory in having their poor debtors’ bones.
Verse 31: “So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their master all that had happened.”
“So when his fellowservants saw what happened…” Well, their response was grief. They were deeply grieved. “How can this guy do such a thing?” It deeply grieved them. Then, they go and report it to the master all that happened. They gave him a careful, detailed outline of everything. They must have gone through the whole process.
Well, their response was grief. What was the response of the king?
Verse 32: “Then summoning him, his master said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Verse 33: Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’“
“O you wicked servant.” The king didn’t call him a “wicked servant” when he found out about his great debt. But when he refused to forgive others, he is called wicked. See how terribly God sees forgiven people not forgiving. Lenski calls this a moral monstrosity, that anybody should be so forgiven and unable to forgive someone else.
He affirms the basic principle of the whole parable again. “I forgave you all that debt.” He reaffirms the reality of that full forgiveness. “Because you begged me.”
The king said that he had forgiven the servant of all his debt “because you begged me.” And yet, when another servant begged him with the exact same words, this man refused to have compassion on him.
Verse 26: it was out of that pleading that he was saved, and forgiven, and loosed from the debt. He says, “I forgave thee all that debt because thou besoughtest me.” And then in the next verse we find, Verse 33: “Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?”
This is a beautiful thought. It isn’t that he said to him, “Now you should have given the guy the opportunity to pay back the debt. I mean, you should have let him work it off in freedom without going into prison. I mean, you should have sought out justice some other way and gotten your justice.” No, he didn’t say that. He said, “You should have had compassion and pity just like I did.” And how did he have compassion? He had compassion, loosed him from the debt, and—What?—wrote it off, absorbed the loss, [and] forgave him. So you should have shown the same mercy to him. He should have been more compassionate to the distress of his fellow servant, because he had himself experienced the same distress.
The King’s Angry Verdict
Now the final verdict: Verse 34: “And his master, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he would repay all that was owed him.”
The same Lord earlier with so much debt had compassion and forgave all debt. Now, when he sees that he didn’t show forgiveness, he calls him wicked and, moved with anger, hands him over to torturers until he repays all that he owes, which, of course, will never happen. “Tormentors” is only once used in the NT.
A sad ending. The scene ends with the compassionate king angry, the slave, instead of enjoying all his forgiven freedom and joy, is sent to tormentors who torment him, and his fellow servants are all grieved, and then another servant is in jail. No one is happy. Sad ending. A masterful parable.
People really get confused with this parable. There is a big debate whether the man is saved or not. If he is saved, how can the King call him wicked? How can he be handed down to the tormentors? Then Arminians use this parable to say, “see, you can lose your salvation if you sin by not forgiving.” All this confusion is because we don’t understand the nature of a parable. You know why? Because they try to find meaning in everything in a parable. We have to understand this is a parable, and should not be trying to see meaning in everything. They are short stories that teach a moral or spiritual lesson by analogy or similarity. The story is not important in itself; it may or may not be literally true. A parable is a story told to highlight one or two important truths. Jesus was the master of teaching in parables. His parables often have an unexpected twist or surprise ending that catches the reader’s attention. They are also cleverly designed to draw listeners into new ways of thinking, new attitudes, and new ways of acting.
Each of Jesus’ parables teaches only one or two important lessons. Just like the rabbit and the tortoise, it is a story. We should not be asking “what does rabbit mean, tortoise, or resting mean,” but “what is the moral of the story?”—“Slow and steady wins the race.” In the same way, this is a parable. What is the moral of the story? The Lord himself says that in Verse 35, and it is a warning.
Verse 35: “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.”
This is the central lesson of this big parable. The climax of the parable. The Lord developed this whole parable to bring to this conclusion. He made us see the unimaginable size of the original debt forgiven (10,000 talents), that the man shown so much mercy should be the first one to show mercy to others, but he refused forgiveness for a small debt.
Those words may come as a shock. We might have expected that the Lord would have put the lesson in more positive terms. But instead, He puts it as a threat/warning. If we don’t forgive our brothers from the heart, our heavenly Father will not forgive our sins. If we are unmerciful, then we cannot complain if the Lord is unmerciful in his treatment of us.
This is not the first time he has put the lesson in such terms. In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6:14, having taught his disciples the model prayer that we call “The Lord’s Prayer,” which we studied and which we just prayed together, the Lord picks up on only one petition of that prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”—to add a comment: “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive you your sins.”
Or do you remember how He taught the same thing on another occasion? He said, “And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses” (Mark 11:25-26).
The Lord is saying that the spirit that is open to receive forgiveness is, in the nature of the case, the spirit that is open to bestow it. To make sure that we get the point, that we do not gloss over it, he puts it in terms of a threat, a warning. The argument is that if we do not extend forgiveness to others, we will not be forgiven ourselves. That reasoning is, of course, powerful [and] unimpeachable. We all instinctively understand the crime of that unmerciful servant.
This is talking about forgiving in the Christian family. This forgiveness of God is not talking about whether we will be saved or not. When we say the Lord’s Prayer, I said there are two levels of forgiveness. There is a legal forgiveness, that is, before God, all of our sins are paid for on the cross. There is nothing left for us to do before God to be declared righteous in His sight than to confess our sins and trust in the cross. That is positional standing as children of God. We are forgiven all our sins—past, present, [and] future—when saved, and we will not be judged for them.
There is a second kind of forgiveness. There is also relational, Father’s fellowshiping forgiveness. When we sin, we don’t lose our salvation. We lose God’s favorable, loving sense of relationship. The Lord says when we don’t forgive others, in a “relational” sense, our Father will withhold His forgiveness from us. You will not know the forgiveness of God in terms of communion, fellowship, joy, all that ought to be there between you and the Lord. You will not continue to experience the joy and blessings of salvation if you have an unforgiving heart.
Moreover, the Lord will not continue to allow us to live like that in unforgiveness; that is why he sends chastisements in life. When you don’t forgive someone else, you don’t experience the full joy of your salvation, and secondly, you will experience divine pressure and chastening.
So as Christians, this is a strong warning to us. The summation is drawn in Verse 35: “So likewise“—just as in the parable—”shall my heavenly Father do also unto you“—and again the “you” is the group of disciples who are believers, genuine ones—”if you from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother his trespasses.”
Oh okay, “I will forgive now onwards.” No other way. But some wish to retain some right to private vengeance. “We won’t be unforgiving. Oh no! We will certainly forgive. At least we will say that we forgive.” So we think and so we tell ourselves. Notice He adds those three words that unmask every effort we so naturally make to evade the force of his application.
The Lord adds as a thunderclap the last words of this teaching: “from the heart.”
No, the forgiveness has to come from the heart. The Lord understands our psychology. He knows our hearts. He knows how we think and how the heart is the wellspring of life. So love and forgiveness, to be real, must be found in the heart. That is where it comes from; that is how one knows he truly is merciful and practicing mercy: when he does not think evil of another in his heart. This is searching teaching our Savior has given us here.
If we do not forgive from the heart, for that is it that God looks at. No malice must be harbored there, nor ill will to any person, one or another. No projects of revenge must be hatched there, nor desires of it, as there are in many who outwardly appear peaceable and reconciled. Yet this is not enough; we must from the heart desire and seek the welfare even of those that have offended us.
So this lengthy passage has four things we have seen: Peter’s question about the measure of forgiveness, the Lord’s answer of unlimited forgiveness, then he gives the parable to illustrate, and closes it with a warning.
Applications: The Unalterable Duty to Forgive
The Three Powerful Reasons to Forgive
Your unalterable duty is clear. As surely as we are Christians, the whole command of the passage is we have to forgive one another for three powerful reasons:
- Positive: God has forgiven infinite debt for us, and the sins of our brothers are nothing before that.
- It is a great wicked sin not to forgive after experiencing God’s forgiveness.
- We have to forgive or else unforgiveness can block your fellowship with God and God can chastise you for that.
1. The Immeasurably Greater Debt
God has forgiven infinite debt for us, and the sins of our brothers are nothing before that.
God has forgiven your endless sinning against him; he has removed the mountain of sin and guilt that you have piled up; he has taken your selfishness and self-love, your pettiness and stinginess, your impurity, lusts, adultery, and greed, your worldliness, your ingratitude, your sinful anger, your vengeful spirit, and your constant neglect of Him, your maker, and your constant neglect of his calling upon your life; he has taken your debt of 10,000 talents, and he has separated it from you as far as the East is from the West; he has buried it in the deepest sea; he has cast it behind his back; he has trampled it under his feet; and he has remembered it no more. You have sinned against him repeatedly. In the very same way you have sinned against him time after time. You have taken his forgiveness and sinned some more. And He has forgiven you completely nonetheless.
But now, someone else sins, a brother or sister sins against you. You are not God. The evil of the sin is not magnified because it has been committed against you, an individual of lesser majesty and eminence, as our sins are committed against God. He just sinned against little you. And what was his sin?
Was he dishonest? Did he lie to you? Did he insult you? Did he rob you? Imagine the greatest harm he can do. Well, if he did, his greatest sin is only 100 denarii’s worth. Your lie before God is 10,000 talents, but his lie against you is only 100 denarii. Think of all the times you have been in this house and have made promises to God in this worship that you did not keep, read his word, hear a powerful sermon, and promise your obedience to it—you lied to God himself. You lied to him about his own Word and his own Law. And now, you pipsqueak, you are going to be in a huff because someone lied to you?! How silly to think your sins against others are big.
Or you feel that someone has not shown you proper respect. He/She has not treated you as you believe you ought to be treated. Maybe they did not. But with what respect and deference have you treated your King? How faithfully have you shown a proper fear of God and reverence for his name? Is it not the case that you have, times without number, used his name with scarce a thought of his majesty? All of that disrespect for God notwithstanding, how the infinite majestic God would have felt about your disrespect… if you yourselves feel… But he forgave all that. And you are going to take great umbrage because someone did not give you the respect you feel you deserve? How much gall do you have?
Oh, they do it repeatedly. Haven’t there been times without number that we’ve each had to come to our heavenly Father and humbly ask forgiveness? And isn’t it often for the same sins over and over? And yet, has the Father ever placed a limit on the number of times we may come to Him in repentance? There has never been a limit to how many times we may come to the Father and ask forgiveness—and what’s more, there never will be! The Father never counts the number of times we ask forgiveness. He is ready to offer forgiveness to us without limit. And now, our having tasted of His unlimited forgiveness for our every sin in His Son Jesus Christ, He now calls upon us to do the same toward our repentant brother or sister.
And we could make the same argument, we could trace the same reasoning if someone stole from you, or someone was cruel to you, or someone was thoughtless of you. What has anyone ever done to you that you have not done much more and much more seriously to God? How much bad God would have felt, but he forgave all that. Do you realize what it costed God to forgive, how much he had to go through?
So every time someone sins, imagine how you sin against God and how he forgave. What it costed God. That will give you the divine ability to forgive unlimitedly.
We cannot act out a drama. It is forgiveness of the heart, realizing God’s forgiveness.
C.S. Lewis: “For a long time I believed that I believed in the forgiveness of sins. But suddenly, on St. Mark’s day, this truth appeared in my mind in so clear a light that I perceived that never before (and that after many confessions and absolutions) had I believed it with my whole heart. So great is the difference between mere affirmation by the intellect and that faith, fixed in the very marrow… which the Apostle [called] substance.“
He had understood God’s forgiveness; he had even given thanks for it many times. But he had not fully understood or appreciated what a glorious thing it was to be forgiven so completely for so many sins committed against God himself. The majesty of God’s forgiveness had dawned on him; it stirred his heart. Well, that is something of what the Lord is after here. It is easy to believe that you believe in the forgiveness of sins. But there is a way to test your belief, to tell whether you really grasp the concept, the reality, the power, the glory of divine forgiveness. There is a way to know whether your belief in forgiveness is merely intellectual or is the very substance of your faith. And that way, Jesus said, is to look to the way in which you forgive others.
Is your forgiveness willing, cheerful, ready, heart-felt, ungrudging, and even grateful? That is, are you even glad that you have the opportunity to forgive a wrong, because to forgive another is the very best way to love God for his forgiving you and to prove that you understand, really understand what he has done for you in canceling your enormous debt.
[It flows] only from a humble heart, grateful for an immeasurably great gift, expressing itself toward another like sinner.
Someone sins against you. Will you be patient with that brother or sister? Do you see the great sins, the years of inexcusable sins, that God has swept away by his mercy and remembers no more?
Christians will be patient with one another, forgiving one another, so patient that the world will scratch its head in wonder and confusion that Christians so easily, so cheerfully put up with so much in one another. And when they ask why, we will tell them about the 10,000 talents and the 100 denarii and about how much God forgives sinners. That is what the Lord wanted; the Lord said they will know you are my disciples when you love them in forgiving love, that you are my disciples.
You and I ought to love to be sinned against. We ought to welcome such offenses. We ought to value them and be grateful for them as almost priceless gifts. We really should. Not that we love to see anyone sin, but because we ought to be hungering and thirsting to forgive others and to forgive them over and over again and, by so doing, show the Lord and others that in regard to this greatest reality in the world, the forgiveness of sins, the love and grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ, we get it. We really get it!
2. The Wickedness of Unforgiveness
For those who have experienced forgiveness of God in salvation, it is a great sin not to forgive their brothers and sisters’ sin.
See, the King didn’t call the man wicked when he had such debt, but when after experiencing forgiveness of God and when he fails to offer that forgiveness to his brothers, the King sees it as a wicked sin. Calls him wicked. It is a profoundly wicked sin for us to receive God’s gracious forgiveness for our great sins, and then to turn around and withhold forgiveness from those who sin against us.
How many of you have this problem? “I cannot forgive others, even small things they do. They mocking laughed at me, they didn’t respect, they insulted me.” You know, somebody says something you don’t like, their personality, and for the rest of the time in the church you avoid that person. Every time you see that person, the anger comes up in your heart. You hold bitterness. You hold a grudge. It throws back all the garbage of what happened years and years ago, because you just can’t let go of that. If you are struggling with that in the church, realize it is great wickedness before God.
We cannot say we are Reformed Christians; we don’t have this problem. We all struggle with that, right? We don’t show continual, unlimited forgiveness to our brothers. I myself sometimes lose patience. Remaining sin comes forward and sometimes wants to hold grudges and bitterness. The flesh rises to seek its vengeance. There are people in this church right now who are unforgiving toward each other and causing all kinds of anxiety, pain, and friction here. But in the light of this teaching and warning, it should make us realize it is great wickedness.
If you allow that, you don’t know where and to all it can lead. It’s just like 1 Corinthians 6, where the Christians were suing each other. It can even grow to become a big fight, warfare with each other. They can really hold grudges, retain bitternesses. It’s the reason churches are destroyed and split. It’s the reason there’s friction. Someone does something that hurts everyone. Instead of covering in love and forgiving, they just get bitter and that bitterness spreads. That’s what splits churches. That’s what devastates God’s family. That is very common. Maybe the disciples themselves in the beginning were in the midst of that fighting over who among them is greatest.
Do you see the lesson from this passage? It is a great sin before God. Compared with our sins against God, our sins against each other—our trifles—our debt is unpayable. The other debts we incur with people are easily payable. The greatest sins that a man commits against a man are nothing. They’re change, pocket change, compared to the sins committed against God. And God forgives them all. And who is man not to forgive a lesser amount? The whole point of the parable is the wickedness comes because he wouldn’t forgive.
And what gives the parable its power is that he was forgiven. That’s the strength of the argument. How can those truly forgiven not forgive? When God has forgiven an infinitely greater debt, how easily we forget. The point is when we have received forgiveness so vast, so far-reaching, so comprehensive, how can we be so small as not to forgive another?
We ought to get used to forgiving. Ephesians 4:32, summing up this whole lesson says, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” A great injunction to forgiveness, since God has forgiven us so much. Colossians 3:13 has the same thought in these words, “forgiving one another even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”
All the beautiful, lovable characters of the OT… what is so glorious about any good character, your heroes? Joseph, his forgiving his brothers, so beautiful. David forgiving Saul. Forgiveness is a glory of a man. It is the highest human virtue. You show me an honorable man, you show me a man with real character, and I’ll show you a man who can forgive. You show me a man who carries a bitterness deep down in his soul and I’ll show you a man without character.
Ryle: “Would we give proof that we are at peace with God, washed in Christ’s blood, born of the Spirit, and made God’s children by adoption and grace? Let us remember this passage. Like our Father in heaven, let us be forgiving. Has any man injured us? Let us this day forgive him. As Leighton says ‘we ought to forgive ourselves little, and others much.’“
3. The Consequences of Unforgiveness
Unforgiveness towards brothers can block your fellowship with God and God can chastise you for that.
What a serious thing! When you don’t forgive someone else, you don’t experience the full joy of your salvation. You will cut yourself off from that relational forgiveness with God that makes the communion sweet. Have you wondered why prayer or Bible reading is not sweet in life? And if you looked at your life and you see a lack of power, and you see a lack of depth in your spiritual life, you see a lack of hunger for God’s Word, a lack of love for the private place of prayer and communion, if you have not seen what you would like to see in your life of the richness of your relationship with God, it may be that you’ll never have that because there’s a blockage there, and the Lord isn’t giving you that forgiveness that brings sweet relationship with Him because you’ve got it blocked somewhere else with somebody else. And until you forgive that other one, the Lord isn’t going to open up the flow of communion with Him.
Would we grow in grace ourselves, and become more holy in all our ways, words, and works? Let us remember this passage. Nothing so grieves the Holy Spirit, and brings spiritual darkness over the soul, as giving way to a quarrelsome and unforgiving temper.
Would we have any influence on others, and make them see the beauty of true religion? Let us remember this passage. Men who care not for doctrines, can understand a forgiving temper.
Not only that, God may chastise us terribly for this wickedness. I believe the King handing over the man to tormentors, [or] scourges indicates chastising. You don’t believe God will torment us because of our unforgiveness. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 5 [says]: “Have you forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as unto sons?“—This is to children now of God, sons, believers, Christians—”My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked by him: for whom the Lord loves He chastens“—Now get this one—”and scourges every son whom He receives.” Every Christian feels the tormentors. Every Christian feels the scourging. Every Christian at some point in time is going to feel the inquisitors putting the pressure until we confess and repent. Right?
Last week in the Men’s meeting, we saw God sometimes gives up the Christian for chastisement for his sins in providence and terribly punishes. That terrible punishment comes because of this wicked sin of unforgiving. Because He doesn’t want you to continue to live in that sin where his fellowship is blocked. So the inquisitor sort of puts you under the stress, under the difficulty, under the pressure, under the chastening until you confess your sin, right?
If you’re not forgiving someone, the Lord will put you under chastening. This is not isolated truth. In the Lord’s Prayer, “if you bring [your] offering, don’t offer, go settle and then come.” Mark says that.
If you wonder why there’s trouble in your life, and you wonder why things aren’t going well, and you feel the inquisitors or the tormentors in your life, you feel the pressure being applied, and the chastening being applied, and you don’t have the liberty, and the joy, and the freedom that you think you ought to have as a child of God, maybe you ought to look around in your life and find some unforgiving spirit. And as long as it’s there and you’re not forgiving the way you were forgiven by God, magnanimously, and compassionately, and totally, you’re not going to experience relief from these inquisitors.
Forgiveness is the most liberating thing in life. Forgiveness is a shield from which all the fiery darts of the wicked one harmlessly rebound. Forgiveness brings heaven to earth and heaven’s peace into the sinful heart. Forgiveness is the image of God the forgiving Father and an advancement of Christ’s kingdom in the world. In fact, in Proverbs 19:11, it says, “It is a man’s glory to pass over a transgression.” In other words, if you want to see man at his best, he is at his best in his ability to forgive.
Somebody owes you something. They’ve done something to hurt you. They’ve done something to irritate you. They’ve offended you, said something about you that wasn’t true, said something about your wife that wasn’t true, or your husband, or your kids, or whatever, and they’ve done something to hurt you and offend you. And they’ve maybe done something to defraud you economically, or property-wise, or whatever, and you’re going to let the thing burn in you or you’re going to get your due. You make life hell for yourself.
Let’s allow the Holy Spirit to search our hearts concerning the sin of unforgiveness. And when He shows us that we are harboring bitterness toward someone that has asked for our forgiveness, let’s first run immediately to the Father and confess that we are “wicked servants”—as wicked as that man in the parable. Let’s seek His forgiveness without delay. And then, let’s confess our sin to that one whom we have refused to forgive, and forgive them as we have been forgiven.
Final Summary of Lessons
The lessons are:
- Positive: God has forgiven infinite debt for us, and the sins of our brothers are nothing before that.
- It is a great wicked sin not to forgive after experiencing God’s forgiveness.
- We have to forgive or else unforgiveness can block your fellowship with God and God can chastise you for that.
As believers, when we see unforgiveness among brothers, it should grieve us and make us pray.
Learn what the fellow servants did. When they saw this, they were grieved—a strong word, very distressed. The commonness of God’s forgiven people is that they are concerned to be forgivers. They are forgivers. When they don’t see that, they are grieved. How can someone claim that God has forgiven their infinite debt and still hold bitterness and anger against another who has sinned? We should probably take the steps of CD and talk to them personally.
What do you do when you’ve done all the steps of discipline and the person hasn’t responded? Then where do you go? You go to the Lord with a broken heart. If we are concerned about each other’s forgiving and living in loving relationship, oh, what a healing thing there would be in the fellowship. It should make us pray for those who are not in a right relationship.
“For when God commands us to wish well to our enemies,” wrote Calvin, “He does not therefore demand that we approve in them what He condemns, but only desires that our minds shall be purified from all hatred” [Calvin’s Commentaries, 364-365].
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 