Forgiveness

Text:  Matthew 18:21-45

Pastor Phil Hughes at American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah

October 6, 2024

An article I read two years ago in a secular publication entitled “Everyone Wants Forgiveness But No One Is Being Forgiven,” began this way:

“The state of modern outrage is a cycle: We wake up mad, we go to bed mad, and in between, the only thing that might change is what’s making us angry. The one gesture that could offer substantive change, or at least provide a way forward — forgiveness — seems perpetually beyond our reach.”[1]

Forgiving someone who has made us angry can be one of the hardest things for us to do.

It was C.S. Lewis who said, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely word, until they have something to forgive.”

We all want forgiveness.  We want to be forgiven by God.  We want to be forgiven by others.  We want to be told we are good and that others have nothing against us.  And yet, it is so hard to show that same forgiveness to people who hurt us.

When someone wrongs you and you are told that you need to forgive, does that word “forgive” ring like music in your ears? Man, it can be hard.

When Jesus tells this parable he has been talking about relationships in the community of those who belong to him.  And one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter, wants to know how many times he has to forgive someone.  Would up to seven times be a reasonable amount of forgiveness? When we forgive someone, and then it happens again, and we forgive and it happens again, how long do we keep forgiving? That’s what Peter wants to know.

Jesus answers don’t forgive the person just seven times but seventy-seven times.  Actually, that can also be translated “seventy times seven” which is 490 times if you are doing the math.  But really Jesus is saying that forgiveness is not about arithmetic but is a matter of the heart.  Forgiveness comes from a heart that knows how it has been treated by God and is overflowing with the mercy that God shows us toward others. And that cannot be calculated.

In the Bible, the number seven is a symbolic way of saying the perfect amount. But there is more significance to the numbers seven and seventy-seven here.  Way back in Genesis there is a man named Lamech. He is one of the sons of Cain. You might remember that Cain killed his brother Abel. Well, Cain’s son Lamech is wounded by a man and kills him in revenge.  The cycle of violence and anger continued. And Lamech says, “If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech is avenged seventy-seven times.”[2]

So in using the number seventy-seven, Jesus is picking up that event and is speaking to the spirit of revenge that Lamech had.

The problem of revenge is that it is always rooted in anger.  We all get angry and sometimes with good reason.  But if anger is not dealt with it will eat away at us and make us bitter, harsh people. And we become unloving, ungracious, and miserable.  I have imagined what I might do to get back at someone but there is no freedom in revenge.

Jesus takes the number 77 the number of Lamech, who wanted to get revenge, and counters the spirit of revenge by showing a different way – the way of the kingdom, the way of Jesus, the way of forgiveness.  When he tells Peter that he must forgive seventy times seven he is saying we must forgive as much as Lamech wanted revenge.

Then Jesus tells this parable. It is about a king who wants to square accounts with his servants, and he brings in one man who owes him ten thousand talents.  How much is this?  Herod the Great’s income was 900 talents a year.  Ten thousand talents is millions and millions of dollars.  It is an outrageous amount of money and could not be repaid even with a lifetime of work.  This servant is in over his head and more.  His life is over. The king orders he and his wife and children to be sold into slavery.

The poor guy throws himself at the feet of the king and begs him to be given the chance to pay it all back.  The king has mercy and compassion upon him.  He goes beyond what the servant asks for.  He doesn’t give him the chance to repay the debt.  He cancels the debt.  The servant is off scot-free, totally off the hook.  He is forgiven an amount he could never repay. He receives beyond what he asked.

But then the man leaves and runs into someone who owes him a hundred denarii, which in Bible money is a few dollars. And the person who owes him begs in the same way he had begged before the king.  But the forgiven servant refuses to forgive his debtor. He refuses to show the same forgiveness that was shown to him for a much lesser amount.

The king hears about it, calls the man back and points out that he forgave his entire debt when he begged for mercy.  And should he have not shown the same mercy and forgiveness to the man who owed him ridiculously less?    So the king has him thrown into prison until he pays back all he owed.

That’s the parable.  Here is Jesus’ application and the point of the parable: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother (or sister) from your heart.”

Here’s the first truth of the parable:  We are in debt to God.  We are that first servant who owes ten-thousand talents.  Our sin is more than we can bear and it will drag us away from God all the way to hell.  We can’t do enough good things to make up for our wrong.  We don’t have what it takes to pay our debt.

The Bible teacher Dale Bruner said, “The revival of a knowledge of the free mercy of God, for which the whole church longs, will not occur without a simultaneous revival of the knowledge of the judgment of God.”[3] For mercy to have any meaning there has to be judgment.  No judgment, no need for mercy.

Forgiveness means nothing unless there is a real offense to forgive.  We cannot payoff the judgment of God.

But here is the second truth: God in his mercy doesn’t ask us to repay what we owe him, but out of his great mercy cancels our debt.  That happened when his Son, Jesus, took upon him all our sins and failures on the cross.  Everyone who believes that gets a stamp upon their record that says “debt cancelled.”  And we have peace with God.

I turn to Ephesians 2 periodically to remind myself of this.  You might want to mark it in your Bibles. It says this:

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved…it is the gift of God”[4]

We are forgiven.  All of it.

That first servant got more than he asked for.  He didn’t ask for full forgiveness of his debt.  He asked for the chance to pay it off.  But the king, like the father with the rebellious youngest son who returns home, doesn’t give him that chance.  Our relationship with God will not come by work.  It comes by the gracious compassion of a loving Father.

The forgiveness of our sins is good news.  We often stop right there and say “glory to God.”  But there’s more. With forgiveness from God comes the responsibility to forgive others.  This is the subversive edge of the parable that Jesus’ teaches.  Forgiveness isn’t just about what you and I can get and do get.  It is about what you and I must also give.

The problem of that first servant was that he was unwilling to give to another what he had freely received, even though what he was owed paled in comparison to what he had been forgiven.

Isn’t that the way it is?  We tend to be very aware and keep count of the wrongs done to us while not being very aware of the wrongs we have done to others and God.

The crux of this parable is that the grace we have been shown should make us more forgiving of others.  John Chrysostum, the premier preacher of the fourth century (everyone downloaded his sermons onto their phones) said that the person who considers his or her own sins is more indulgent to other people.

We need to remember how God deals with us in our rebellion. What, we don’t think our offense to God is as great as that person’s offense against us? We need to appreciate the cross and the cost paid for our sins. When we stand under the cross, and when we see others in light of the cross, we realize we are all guilty before God.

Remember that this parable is being told by someone trying to prevent judgment and separation from God.  It is being told by the one who took all our deepest and deserved judgment upon himself on the cross and loves us and tells us of God’s love for the whole world.[5]

Mercy should breed mercy in our lives.  Forgiveness should breed forgiveness for those who live in the kingdom of God. God has a problem with receiving forgiveness and not giving forgiveness.

Forgiveness is big on Jesus’ radar.  It is essential to the kingdom of heaven.  It is at the heart of the gospel.

Consider that Jesus taught his disciples to pray this, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors”[6].  Jesus followed this up by emphasizing that if we forgive others when they sin against us our heavenly Father will also forgive us.  But if you do not forgive others their sins, our Father will not forgive our sins.

Consider that Jesus said, “when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”[7]

Consider that after rising from the dead and before he left this earth, Jesus told his followers to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all nations.[8]  Forgiveness was at the very core of Jesus’ message.

Consider when Paul writes, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”[9]

And consider Jesus on the cross, praying this as he is dying a torturous death: “Father, forgive them…”[10]

The whole point of God’s coming in Christ and the cross was to bring forgiveness, model forgiveness and make it real.  Forgiveness is the way of Jesus.  Wherever forgiveness happens that is where the kingdom of God is found.

I have not been able to find a way out of forgiving those who have hurt and offend me.  I can’t find an exception or a loophole.  There is nothing in the fine print that allows me to be unforgiving. Unless I forgive the person who has offended me from my heart, my Father will not forgive me.  Key phrase: “from the heart”.  That’s what Jesus said.  That’s where it needs to happen.  Forgiveness is heart work.  It is not just a matter of the mind.  It is about the heart.

No one ever says forgiveness is easy.  It isn’t.  It is especially hard if you have suffered something horrific.  You were abused.  Someone you loved was murdered.  Someone you loved took their own life.  You were betrayed.  Or any number of other things that are really, really damaging. I can’t tell you how this can happen other than it will take time, maybe lots of time.  It will take prayer, counsel, the help of others, and a deep encounter with Jesus.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean the hurt is not real or that you will ever forget. I think the Lord full well knows when we find forgiveness a hard task in those cases of deep, horrific hurt. But this parable is really focused toward those who are owed just a few dollars by others; when the offense is the ordinary, everyday type of stuff.

Holding a grudge when angry words were said, or an action hurt, or you were disappointed – those things that come our way all the time -  does not hold up in the eyes of our Father.  Yes, it hurts.  But that does not mean we get to enjoy God’s mercy while withholding it from someone else.

Unless the gospel – the knowledge of what Jesus has done for us on the cross – transforms our inner-selves, that deepest part of us, unless it hits our hearts, we will act just like that first servant.  We will not show mercy to those who hurt us.

James writes, “…judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.  Mercy triumphs over judgment.”[11] God gives this forgiveness to us freely and fully so that we can also give it away to others.

There was an article some years back in The Christian Century entitled New Math, and it said our psychologizing of guilt and shame in the past 100 years has messed us up on what forgiveness really is.

“You say you forgive someone, but you keep in your heart a bill of particulars ready to be whipped out at the next infraction – this is not forgiveness from the heart.  The church has quit talking about sin and forgiveness, and ‘plays’ at community without getting to the depths of the heart where the forgiveness must start.”

The writer comes from the Lutheran tradition of the Christian faith where they share the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. I would take Communion everyday if I could. Hand it to our Lutheran brothers and sisters for doing this every week. (Any Lutherans in the house?)

The writer talks about how people used to dread coming to the Lord’s Table when they knew they were harboring sinful thoughts and resentments against their brothers and sisters.  They worried that they were not repentant enough.

People really believed that something dangerous happened in communion.  God was here, and the power of the Holy Spirit was at work here.  How one stood with God was ultimate.  And no one dared take the bread or the cup without making amends with others.

And so the article goes on to say how this language of forgiveness is strange to us because, “We have mainlined grace so cheaply that we no longer understand the disconnect in our own spiritual lives….The Lord’s Supper has degenerated – it cannot be a rite of community without true forgiveness.  We should not be taking the cup until we have made things right with our neighbors.”[12]

That first servant mainlined cheap grace. And the king says to him, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” Take out “your fellow servant” and put in the name of the person you need to forgive.    Put in the name of your ex, the jerk at work, your persecutor, whoever you resent, whoever owes you. Shouldn’t we have mercy on them just as God has on us?

The table is before us. Remember God has forgiven us. Let’s give it to others.

[1] Vox.com, March 22, 2020, Aja Romano

[2] Genesis 4:24

[3] The Churchbook, Matthew vol. 2, pp. 657-58

[4] Ephesians 2:4,5,8

[5] Bruner, p. 662

[6] Matthew 6:12

[7] Mark 11:25

[8] Luke 24:47

[9] Colossians 3:13

[10] Luke 23:34

[11] James 2:13

[12] http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2607 New Math, Gracia Grindal,  The Christian Century, August 28-September 10, 2002, pp. 18-19.