Costly forgiveness
Readings: Matthew 18. 21-35
Having thought last week about how we are to be accountable for one another’s growth in holiness, responsible for gently challenging one another when we sin our Gospel this week becomes more personal. How are we to respond when those who have sinned, and sinned against us at that, seek forgiveness?
Peter comes to Jesus, having heard how those who have fallen are to be restored when they repent and asks the obvious question; how many times should we forgive them? Now in fairness to Peter he understands the need to forgive. The Rabbi’s taught that someone should be forgiven 3 times and on the fourth have their sins held against them. Peter has even understood that perhaps it needs to be more expansive so goes for 7 times, a good number, but surely there must be a limit, surely forgiveness needs to stop somewhere otherwise it becomes a mockery.
And in response Jesus says that you should forgive 77 times, or 70×7 times, the Greek is a little unclear. But the lack of clarity doesn’t matter because what Jesus is saying isn’t to meticulously keep score, to add each offense to a log book and wait for them to break the limit. His point is that forgiveness should be unlimited. And to demonstrate this he tells a story of a King settling accounts. It may help to have the passage open in front of you.
As the story begins we encounter a slave and a king. We are this first slave and God is the King. We owe God a great debt. Our sins are like negative amounts on our balance sheet and we are far in the red. 10,000 talents in this parable. A talent is worth around 20 years wages. This slave owes 10,000. 10,000 is the largest number that Greek has a term for. The debt is vast, our debt is vast, impossibly so. We know don’t we that there is simply no way to make up for all we’ve done, no way to balance the books ourselves. We try to do good but every sin, every fault, just pushes us deeper and deeper into this debt. Everything we’ve ever done wrong in any way shape or form has been against God, an act of rebellion against his perfect ways.
And when we come into God’s presence we recognise our fault don’t we, in his presence we recognise the great heap of our sins and the great debt we owe, the punishment we cannot possibly bear. And so we fall to our knees asking for mercy, offering to make it up to him, saying we’ll make it right, even though we know we never possibly could.
And what do we find?
God turns to us and forgives us. The King of the Universe sees our penitence, our sorrow for our sins, our pleading for mercy, and his compassion overflows to us and he forgives us. He doesn’t tell us to make it up to him, doesn’t demand some action to prove ourselves. When we truly turn to him and ask for his mercy, he pours it out on us in abundance. He forgives us every sin, every stain, every blot on our record. Why? Because he loves us. He loves us so much that he comes to die for us in the person of Jesus so that we can have that forgiveness, so that we can be restored to him.
And yet what do we so often do? Having heard the assurance of God’s forgiveness, we turn to the person next to us who has wronged us, or we bounce out of church and find them and hold their sins over them, withhold our forgiveness from them because they deserve what’s coming to them.
Now this aspect of the parable has often been interpreted in a rather unhelpful way. It’s held that because we have been forgiven we should blanket forgive everyone else, no matter the scale of wrongdoing, no matter the state of the person, blanket forgiveness wherever we go. That’s how I’ve often heard this parable interpreted. But that cheapens forgiveness and downplays wrongdoing.
It cheapens forgiveness because forgiveness should involve restoration, a rebuilding of relationship which is often overlooked in this way of looking at it. And it downplays wrongdoing because it doesn’t need the person to ever admit their wrongdoing, we’re meant to let them off regardless.
But this isn’t how God forgives us is it. God doesn’t offer blanket forgiveness that everyone in the world is forgiven the moment they do something wrong. No, it’s when we turn to him, when we recognise our guilt, when we turn away from those sins and towards Jesus that we find his forgiveness. When we come into his presence and realise the scale of our guilt and ask for his mercy that he forgives. Like the slaves in the story, they recognise their debt and ask for mercy.
That is how we are to forgive. So when our brother or sister sins against us, and we gently pull them up on it and they apologise and say they’ll do better next time we’re to forgive them. And when they mess up again and they apologise and promise to do better next time we’re to forgive them. How many times? 7? 77? 490? No, always.
The knowledge of how much we have been forgiven by God. That every offence, every sin we’ve committed we’ve committed against him and yet when we repented he forgave us, that he forgave us all that debt that should change our hearts such that when someone sins against you and repents you can forgive them. You too can release them from the debt they owe you. Truly. And be restored to one another.
We are called to forgive, truly forgive, those who have wronged us when they repent. And until they do we are called to love them.
Why does God make forgiveness and reconciliation between us and him possible? Because he loves us, even when we were his enemies, pursuing rebellion and sin. And so too Jesus calls us to love our enemies, to will the good of those who persecute and hurt us. And that’s hard, that’s challenging, in many ways I think it’s harder than forgiving them. Because people wrong us in all sorts of ways, hurt us in all sorts of ways, some small, some small but feel huge, some that are actually huge. The debt of that second slave in the parable, 100 denarii, was a third of a years wages, that’s a big deal, that’s a big debt. And yet we’re to love them, to long for their good.
And what does that look like? Longing that they too discover Jesus, or turn back to Jesus, and find healing and forgiveness in him. It doesn’t mean that our relationship with them needs to be great, it may be damaged by the sin, it may be best for that relationship to end. But we’re still to love them, to long for their good.
We need to be loving them such that should they come to us in sorrow and guilt, knowing the wrong they have done and asking to make it right we are able to release them, forgive them. Loving them means loving them even in their sin, truly desiring that they come to the knowledge of what they have done, and being ready to forgive them when they turn back, when they repent.
That slave who instantly went looking for the one who owed him and grabbed him by the throat wasn’t loving him, there’s no way, that’s not what love looks like. He wasn’t ready to forgive this fellow slave, he wanted what was owed. That is not to be us, we’re to love and, should the opportunity arise, forgive.
The way of forgiveness is costly though isn’t it. Often that sense of debt is the sense of a life spoiled in some way, some good, whether big or small that has been lost. A life that would have looked different. And yet we have the assurance that in Christ all of that is absorbed into the perfection of eternity. That God is a God of perfect justice and so all that pain, all that’s done against us will be cleansed and all that was lost restored in abundance in eternity. Trusting in God for that restoration enables us to forgive.
And in knowing God as that perfect judge we know that justice will be done in the end. Often a sense of injustice is accompanied by the sense of a need for vengeance, for recompense. In an interesting parallel to this passage Lamech in Genesis 4 states that ‘If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.’ But we’re not to avenge ourselves. Even should we not have the opportunity to forgive we are not to allow ourselves to be consumed by the debt, the need to settle the score. Instead we are to release it to God. Knowing that, should they in the end be found in Christ they will receive that same healing and forgiveness that we have received, made possible through Christ’s bearing of our punishment, and should they not that God will hold them to account, far better than we ever could.
So, my brothers and sisters, recognising how much we have been forgiven, let that knowledge soften and change our hearts such that we can forgive others when they come to us in sorrow for their sins. Let the great love of God for us, who loved us even when we were his enemies, change our hearts such that we can love those who have wronged us. And let the knowledge of God’s perfect justice allow us to release their debt to him, that we would not seek to avenge ourselves but instead trust in his grace that whatever was lost will be restored.
Amen.