Last week we listened in as Jesus explained to His disciples and to us how we are to love each other and live with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, as members of His family the Holy Christian Church. We are not to be judgmental nor intolerant, which means we are not to overlook sin and temptation and those things which work to draw us away from our fellowship with those who are tempted by the temptations and sinful behavior of this world, rather we are to call sin what it is, sin. We are to be intolerant of sin. We are to call our brothers and sisters to be accountable for their sins. The loving thing is not to let our brother or sister continue on in their sin lest they be lost from the Christian faith and be doomed to eternal death, rather the loving thing is to confront our brother or sister concerning their sin, or unbelief or false belief, so that there might be repentance and forgiveness.
Following this discussion, we move immediately to our text for today where Peter asks for some clarification. Leave it to Peter to be the one to ask for clarification. Well, if it were not Peter, I am sure one of the Pharisees or teachers of the law would have eventually asked the question, if nothing else, at least in an attempt to justify themselves. We begin at verse twenty-one, “Then Peter came up and said to him, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’” (v. 21). Now understand, Peter actually thinks he is being generous in asking if as many as seven times is okay to forgiven our brother. And I do not know about you, but I think after six times I would be annoyed enough to not want to forgive someone. But Jesus response is, “Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven’” (v. 22). Jesus’ response is that there truly is no limit to how often we are to forgive one another. Then, to help His disciples and to help us to understand exactly what He means, Jesus goes on to tell a parable.
“23Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt” (v. 23-27).
Perhaps Jesus is giving us a glimpse of Judgement Day with this parable, a reminder of how much we are indebted to Him, or perhaps not. In this parable we are told about a king who set out to settle his accounts. The people of his kingdom owed him money and he was going to try to get that money back. Maybe we are reminded, by this parable of Jesus, of the debts we owe. Some we might not even want to think about or admit. One debt we owe is the debt to our parents for raising us, for feeding, clothing and sheltering us and especially for bringing us to the Lord’s house, bringing us to the waters of Holy Baptism, bringing us to the Word of God through which we were given faith and through which we are strengthened in faith. And of course I am sure that many of us have financial debts, loans to pay for a house, a car, education and the like. Or maybe we do not have any debts now, but we have had some in the past. Anyway, we all understand indebtedness.
In our Old Testament Reading for today we see, really, how much Joseph’s brothers owed him after all they put him through, selling him into slavery which lead to more slavery until he became second to Pharaoh, yet Joseph understood that God worked through all the things that happened in his life for his own good and for the good of his family. In his letter to the Romans, Paul tells us that “very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die” (Rom. 5:7). Jesus tells us “greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Anytime we hear stories about someone risking their own life for another we understand that these are what we call stories of heroism and that the person who is the object of such risk, the one being saved, has a great debt toward the one who is taking the risk, the hero.
In our text, the debtor, fearing the wrath of the king, begged for mercy. The debtor owed, what in our world today would amount to millions of dollars. He knew that he could be thrown into jail for what he owed and so he did the only thing he knew he could do. He begged for mercy. Perhaps he was hoping to bargain with the king in order to work out a plan whereby he might be able to repay him for what he owed. He was not looking, nor was he asking for the king to forgive his debt. He simply wanted time in order to work out his own debt.
As we relate this parable to our own lives we understand that we are in debt. We are in debt, especially to God. We are conceived and born in sin. We daily sin much and add to our sinfulness. If you want to know how indebted we are, think about it this way, if we only sin three times a day, which means we are really pretty good, because we have kept seven of the ten commandments, which is a 70% and we might think a passing grade, if we only sin three times a day, times 365 days in a year, that amounts to over a 1000 sins in a year. Now multiply that 1000 times how old you are and you will get a round number which is more than likely considerably less than how sinfully we really are and how in debt to God we really are. If we were honest with ourselves and with God, I suppose we would have to admit that we sin more along the lines of thirty and more times a day and even here, I use this number for illustration purposes, because it makes the math easier. 30 times 365 days is over 10,000 times per year, times how old we are. Thus, for some our sins of indebtedness runs into the 500,000 or 600,000 and more.
Recall as well that God demands perfection from us, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). So we come as the debtor in our text, begging for our heavenly Father’s mercy. We come, not expecting Him to forgive all our sins, but asking if there is a way for us to work out our sins, to work out our salvation. That is how we approach God from our human nature. We want to bargain with God with an offer to pay back what we own Him. We think we can bargain with God, that we can somehow work off some of our sins. We do not realize their enormity nor do we realize our inability to do anything that would pay for our sins, the cost of which is our life.
And yet, the king does not hold the servant accountable for his debt, just as our Lord does not hold us accountable for our debt. The debt we owe God is blood, our life. The king, our Lord, tells us that our debt is forgiven. And please understand, when it comes to our sins, they do not just vanish. The cost, the price for our sins, which is blood and death, had to be paid and it was paid. It was paid by Jesus suffering and death on the cross. When the King, when our Father in heaven forgives us it is for Christ’s sake, it is because of Jesus suffering and death on the cross. But the parable is not over.
“28But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 31When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. 32Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. 35So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (v. 28-35).
In this second part of our text we come to find out that the servant, instead of rejoicing the in the king’s forgiveness, refuses that forgiveness. You see, the servant immediately left the kings presence and went out to find a fellow servant who owed him a few dollars, really what the other servant owed was nothing compared to what this servant had owed the king. Yet, how often does it happen in our own lives. We go to church. We confess our sins. We hear those most beautiful word, “Your sins are forgiven.” Then we go out and refuse to forgive our brother or sister who has sinned against us. Or, we pray the Lord’s prayer. We pray the fifth petition, “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And then we fail to forgive those who have sinned against us. That is gift refusal, that is refusal of forgiveness.
We have a debt we owe to God. That debt is a great debt. We owe Him our life. And we cannot and never will be able, in and of ourselves to pay Him back the debt we own. We also have debts to each other. We continually sin against each other, sometimes not on purpose, other times on purpose. We sin against each other and we try to get back at each other. We think that revenge is something that we must do. But if we compare our debts, if we compare what we owe to God, which is our life, to the debt with which we owe each other which is really nothing, there is no comparison or as in the parable in our text, the difference is between millions of dollars and a few dollars.
Or, perhaps we do forgive each other, but how often is our forgiveness a conditional forgiveness, “I will forgive, but I will never forget!” We have Jesus’ warning in our text that as we do to others, so His Heavenly Father will do to us, in other words, just as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, if we do not forgive others, we ask that He would not forgive us. This matter of forgiveness, as the matter of sin, has to be from the heart. Sin is not sin only if we do something, sin has its beginning in our heart and in our mind, in our thought and in our intent. So as we forgive, forgiveness has its beginning in our heart and in our mind. We forgive as we have been forgiven. If we refuse God’s forgiveness, then this is seen in that we are then not able to forgive others. But as we are given God’s forgiveness, then we are able to forgive others. Joseph was able to forgive his brothers because God forgave him and gave him the ability to forgive them. We forgive each other as God forgives us and as He gives us the ability to forgive each other.
Jesus’ words which we quoted earlier, again, “greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13), were really a foretelling of His great love for us. He is the one to whom we owe our very lives and yet that is not what He requires of us. Instead, what He did was to give what we owe. He was born in perfection and lived the perfect life demanded of us. He gave His life, He suffered and died, He shed His blood, in order to pay the price, the cost, the wage for our sins, which was eternal death and hell. He rose from the dead, defeating sin, death and the devil. And then He announces to us the most precious, the most beautiful words we need to hear, “Your sins are forgiven.” Every Sunday morning we come here and we confess our sins and we hear those most beautiful words, “Your sins are forgiven.” And, with His forgiveness, with His help, by the power of the Holy Spirit we, then, go out and we forgive those who have sinned against us. We love because He first loved us. In loving and forgiving others as He first loved us and forgives us, in so doing we give Him glory. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.
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