Prayer of the Week
O God, without you we are not able to please you: mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Matthew 18: 21-35
We owe a very great deal to the fact that Peter had a quick tongue. Again and again he rushed into speech in such a way that his impetuosity drew from Jesus teaching which is immortal. On this occasion Peter thought he was being very generous. He asked Jesus how often he ought to forgive his brother, and then answered his own question by suggesting that he should be forgiven seven times.
Peter was not without authority for this suggestion. It was the teaching of the Rabbis that a man must forgive his brother three times. The Biblical proof that this was correct was taken from the book of the Prophet Amos. In the opening chapters of Amos there is a series of condemnations on the various nations for three transgressions and for four. From this it was deduced that God’s forgiveness extends to three offences and that he visits the sinner with punishment at the fourth. It was not to be thought that one could be more gracious than god, so forgiveness was limited to three times.
Peter thought he was going very far, for he takes the Rabbinic three times, multiplies it by two for good measure, adds one, and suggests with eager self-satisfaction, that it will be enough if he forgives seven times. Peter expected to be warmly commended; but Jesus’ answer was that the Christian must forgive seventy times seven. In other words there is no reckonable limit to forgiveness.
Jesus then told the story of the servant forgiven a great debt who went out and dealt mercilessly with a fellow servant who owed him a debt that was a tiny fraction of what he himself owed; and who for his mercilessness was utterly condemned. This parable teaches certain lessons which Jesus never tired of teaching.
(a) It teaches that lesson which runs through the New Testament – one must forgive in order to be forgiven. The person who will not forgive cannot hope that God will forgive that person.
(b) Why should this be so? One of the great points in this parable is the contrast between the two debts. the first servant owed his master 10,000 talents; a talent was the equivalent of $500; therefore the debt was $5,000,000, an incredible amount. It was more than the total budget of an ordinary province. The total revenue of a wealthy province like Galilee was only 300 talents. Here was a debt that was greater than a king’s ransom. It was this that the servant was forgiven.
The debt which a fellow-servant owed him was a trifling thing; it was 100 denarii; a denarius was worth about ten cents in value; and therefore the total debt was $10. It was approximately one five-hundred-thousandth of his own debt. The contrast between the debts is staggering.
The point of the story is that nothing people can do to us can in any way compare with what we have done to God; and if God has forgiven us the debt we owe to him, we must forgive our human companions the debts they owe us. Nothing that we have to forgive can even faintly or remotely compare with what we have been forgiven.
We have been forgiven a debt which is beyond all paying – for the sin of people brought about the death of God’s own son. We must forgive others as God has forgiven us, or we can hope to find no mercy.