THE PERSON AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS
TEACHINGS ON HUMILITY The Necessity of Forgiving One Another
When you look at Matt. 18:12-35, you discover that these verses are all basically addressing the same issue, how to treat a Christian who strays. In verses 12-14 we saw that God searches for the Christian who has gone astray; in verses 15-20 we saw that Christians likewise are to try to restore the erring Christian. In this longest section of the three (18:21-35) we see the attitude that Christians are to adopt towards other Christians who have gone astray; they are to forgive the Christian who has strayed and come back to the fold.
What is interesting is that Jesus deals with this one issue more than He does with any other issue He has addressed so far. [The only issues which will receive more attention from Jesus will be His second coming (Matt. 24-25) and His condemnation of the religious leaders (Matt. 23).] Why does Jesus spend 24 verses on the topic of restoration and forgiveness? Because forgiveness is the heartbeat of the Christian faith. C. S. Lewis sums up Christianity like this:
We are told that Christ was killed for us,
that His death has washed out our sins,
and that by dying He disabled death itself.
That is the formula. That is Christianity.
That is what has to be believed.
(C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity, book 2, chapter 4, paragraph 5)
The fact is that we ARE sinners. We are sinners because sometimes we just mess up. The first beatitude declares: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." In other words, we are broken vessels and mess up; however, that is not the FULL story. The truth is that many times we are just rebels. We know what we should do and refuse to do it, or we know what we should not do and do it any way. Why? Because we are determined to assert ourselves and do our own thing. To deny that is to be living in total denial.
At this point many of us resort to making excuses for ourselves. That needs to stop NOW. If we don't own up to who we are and what we've done, then there is no hope for us. Salvation is for those who repent, not for those who excuse themselves. Those persons cannot be saved.
Notice the tense of the verb in the clause "we ARE sinners." This is a present tense verb. In other words, when Jesus saved us, we did not quit being sinners. The fact is that even after Jesus forgave us at the time of salvation, we continued to sin. Why? Because even though the Spirit of Jesus came to live within us, we still have our old natures within us which constantly try to pull us down spiritually. Our sin nature is like a magnet with Satan and the world likewise being magnets drawing us close to them. Until the day we die, we will have those old natures within us. Even though we have the Spirit of Jesus within us to give us victory over our old natures, the sad fact is that we will continue to sin and will continue to need Jesus to forgive us on a continual basis (1 John 1:5-2:2).
Now whereas we said that the heartbeat of Christianity is that Jesus forgave us and continues to forgive us, how then should we relate to one another? We're alright with Jesus forgiving other people, but it is a different matter for me to forgive that person, especially if he has wronged ME. That is the issue Jesus addresses in this section. Moreover, note that it is the longest section in this entire discourse (Matt. 18-20); moreover, the parable is one of the longest parables Jesus gives. Why? Because for Jesus this is a critical issue.
PETER'S QUESTION (18:21-22)
In light of all the discussion of restoring a fallen Christian (18:12-20), it was probably only natural that somebody would ask about the extent you should forgive somebody. When Jesus finished speaking about restoring the Christian, it would probably be only natural to assume that the Christian who sinned in verses 15-17 could naturally fall back into sin and repent again. At what point do you draw the line and say: "Enough is enough! I've been burned so many times that I can't forgive him any more!" Peter thinking he is being magnanimous suggests that we should forgive our brother up to 7 times. After all 7 is a divine number symbolizing fullness. (It is so easy to criticize Peter since we are looking at the event after the fact; however, before Jesus made His pronouncement, people would have thought that Peter was actually being very generous. The rabbis limited the number of times to forgive to 3! Peter was being much more magnanimous than the rabbis themselves.)
The only problem with Peter's suggestion is that it betrays evil motives. Although 7 is a big number, it is still a measurable number. In other words, I can keep track of a person's sin against me if I forgive him only up to 7 times. This shows that Peter is actually keeping track of the times a certain person sins against him. He is like an accountant with his ledger book writing down each instance of a person sinning against him.
Jesus picks up on this spirit and does give a definite number of times we should forgive our brother or sister--70 x 7 or, as some claim, 77 times. In either case the meaning is the same. You should forgive them times beyond number. No one is going to keep track of the 77 times or 490 times a person has wronged you. That's just not going to happen. It would be too wearying.
THE UNFORGIVING SLAVE (18:23-35)
Introduction
Why does Jesus give this parable? His last statement has been rather radical. No one forgave anybody 70 x 7 in Jesus' day. The rabbis encouraged their followers to forgive only 3x. The burden is upon Jesus to explain why any Christian would forgive another person an unlimited amount of times.
At this point Jesus has startled His listeners by pronouncing that we should forgive others 70 x 7, or even better 70 x 7 x 7 x 7 to infinity and beyond. Doesn't this pronouncement though seem unfair and rather unrealistic? The only problem with fairness is that we want God to be fair only when we've been wronged; however, whenever we've done the wrong, we don't want God to be fair, we want Him to be gracious. In other words, we want God to be fair whenever it benefits us, and we want God to be gracious whenever it benefits us. We've turned Him into our own personal God to benefit us. We want the guiding principle for God to be that He should do whatever benefits us. That's just not going to happen.
The problem with grace is that either you are gracious or you're not gracious. You don't turn grace on or off. The person who does that is schizophrenic. God is not schizophrenic; He is whole ("Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is ONE.") He has determined to be gracious by giving grace consistently. If we don't receive grace from God, it is because we have rejected that grace. Ultimately we and not God send our own selves to hell.
So why should we be gracious? The primary reason though we are to be gracious is that God Himself is gracious. This parable illustrates the depth of God's grace towards us and our need then to show grace to others.
The Parable
Jesus says that this parable illustrates the principle of forgiveness in the kingdom of heaven. An oriental king has such a large empire that he has entrusted the care of major provinces in his kingdom to different officials, normally called satraps. (Jesus calls this official "a slave" because in an oriental kingdom everybody except the king was considered the king's slave. Moreover, since this parable applies specifically to you and me, Jesus is defining our relationship to God as that of king and servant/slave.) At an appointed time this king begins to hold his royal officials accountable for how they have governed their provinces financially. He discovers that one of the satraps has amassed a debt of 10,000 talents. Just how large was this amount? It was equivalent to anywhere between 150,000 to 200,000 years worth of wages. In 2006 this amount would equal between $7,500,000,000 and $10,000,000,000, a rather hefty sum. Upon further investigation the king realizes that the official cannot pay the amount. He orders the official to be sold along with his wife, children, and all his possessions so that he can recoup at least some of his losses. This will by no means cover all the loss; however, something is better than nothing in the mind of the king.
The royal official falls down and prostrates himself before the king. (The word "prostrate" actually means to bow the knee in worship, a fitting act before a god or God. This makes it easy to see that the king in the parable represents God.) He pleads with the king to give him more time so that he can raise the money to repay the king EVERYTHING he owes him. (The request was impractical because he could never pay back such a huge sum of money.)
The king is moved by the pleas of his official. The Greek word translated "moved with compassion" literally means "his bowels hurt." (It is used to describe the great compassion Jesus felt for the Jewish people who were like sheep without a shepherd.) In other words the king is really moved by the pitiable condition his slave is in. His response? Does he give him more time so that he can scrape up the money to pay off his debt? That might have been fair. No. Rather he forgives the debt completely, all 7.5 billion dollars of it.
What is the response of the slave? Does he leap with joy? Does he call together his friends and put on a feast to celebrate his forgiveness? No, rather the fact that he was called to account for an outstanding debt probably reminds him that one of his fellow slaves owes him some money; so he hunts down the slave and demands that his fellow-slave pay off his debt. (Now Jesus doesn't say that he accidentally ran into the slave; rather Jesus says that He went out and hunted for that slave.) He is such an evil person that he actually chokes his fellow slave. (I've not seen anybody choke somebody physically; however, I have seen them choke somebody emotionally. If that person thought he could have gotten away with it, he would have killed the person he was angry at. That is the way the first slave feels.)
The fellow slave basically duplicates the response of the first slave. He too falls to the ground and pleads with the first slave, saying the exact same words the first slave said to the king, leaving off only the word "everything": "Have patience with me and I will repay you."
The fact that the second slave repeated verbatim what the first slave said should have reminded the first slave of the way he felt whenever the king called him to account. He should have put himself in his fellow slave's shoes and then he would have been moved to compassion just like the king was moved to compassion; however, he doesn't. He's a small, petty, evil man. He wants payment NOW. The second slave asks for time, just like the first slave. Does the first slave forgive him his debt like he has been forgiven? No. He doesn't even give the slave more time. Rather he has him thrown into debtors prison immediately, trying to motivate him to come up with the cash as quickly as possible.
When the fellow slaves of the first slave see what has happened, they are deeply distressed. They report the matter to the king. The king is furious. He's not merely upset; he's furious. The word used to describe his anger is better translated "wrath." He is seriously ticked off.
He calls the slave to account this time, not for the debt but for the way he treated his fellow slave. The king rescinds his order of forgiveness. All bets are now off. The slave should have forgiven his fellow slave, not because it was right or fair, but because he himself had received so much grace, grace for a much greater debt.
This time the punishment is worse than it would have been if the king had punished him originally. This time the king orders the jailers to torture the slave. If the first slave thought that he wanted to raise the money to pay off the king before, he really wants to raise it now. The only problem is that he can't. He can probably pay off some of the debt; the only problem is that the king won't release him until he has paid off every last red cent, a virtual impossibility. He will be tortured in prison forever.
So the question becomes for us: "Where the heck do you get off not forgiving somebody else?" The sheer audacity of you, you of all people, not forgiving others no matter how great the wrong. You've lied, you've lusted, you've told half truths, you've sneered at other people, you've let people go to hell because you refused to share Jesus with them, you've brought filth into the minds of your children by allowing them to watch shows that would make Jesus blush, you've neglected your spouse and your children, you've used others, you've spent money on sheer foolishness when it could have been spent to spread the gospel throughout the world, you've been cruel to those beneath you, you've torn down people who are actually made in God's image. This doesn't even taken into account the sins of murder and adultery that many have committed. Jesus has forgiven you your multitude of sins, sins which at least number up to 10,000 talents, and yet we can't forgive somebody who has wronged us only up to 100 denarii? God will not accept that. Jesus is deadly serious about us forgiving others; we need to be deadly serious about it too. We have to love, and we have to forgive. Those are not optional.
For if you do not forgive others,
then your heavenly Father will also not forgive your transgressions (Matt. 6:14).
And you thought there was only ONE unforgivable sin.