Matthew 18:21-35 (The parable of the unforgiving servant)
A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. This article is a sermon given on Valentine’s Day, 1993. Rev. Wallace Whyte is the minister of Melville Presbyterian Church, in West Hill, Ontario.
This is about: God’s forgiveness of us, our forgiveness of ourselves, our forgiveness of others, and that these are inseparable. This is all about debt-paying and collecting. The story Jesus told of the unforgiving servant and his comments contains two major blows (a double whammy): 1) How could a person forgiven so much be so mean? 2) That awesome warning about failure to forgive others. This is like the story that Nathan the prophet told King David. There was a very wealthy farmer with flocks of sheep and cattle. In contrast there was a poor man with only one lamb, a treasured family pet. When the rich man had a feast for his friends, instead of taking from his own flocks for the dinner table, he took the poor man’s one and only lamb. David was very angry that any of his subjects could be so cruel. Such a man deserved death, if not that, he should at least restore four times more than he had taken. Nathan spoke up, “You are that man!” And he was. As king, he could have anything he wanted. But he had arranged to have one of his most loyal and courageous soldiers sent into a battle where he was sure to killed, and was, so that David could have his wife, Bathsheba. “You are the one!” So it is with forgiveness. It’s one thing to engage in detached conversation on who and what to forgive. It’s quite another when you are the one who has been deeply offended.
This parable Jesus told is typical of his teachings. It contains profound psychological truth. The writings of Paul Tournier, which I discovered more than thirty years ago, have left me with a lasting impression. Tournier is a Swiss psychiatrist and deeply committed Christian. He has demonstrated that the practice and teachings of Jesus as presented in the Scriptures are in complete accord with the generally accepted principles of modern psychology. This parable illustrates that Jesus knew the inner torment of guilt and resentment and the healing power of God’s grace. If you haven’t the grace to find it in your heart to forgive others, it’s likely that you haven’t grasped the real meaning of God’s forgiveness, and that you haven’t been able to forgive yourself.
The servant owed an enormous debt. It’s purposely exaggerated, because it is meant to represent what each one of us owes to God and to others. Truly it’s an amount beyond the possibility of repayment. Note that the servant didn’t ask for forgiveness, he only asked for time. The mercy he requested was just for patience. His only hope was to put off the final day of reckoning. That was the most he expected. The thought of forgiveness in the sense of debt cancellation hadn’t entered his mind. That sort of thing is just not normally part of human experience! When his master declared the outright forgiveness of his debt he didn’t recognize it as such. He saw it only as a respite, which was what he had asked. Grace in the sense of undeserved, unconditional and total forgiveness was a foreign concept for him. This in part is why he had no mercy of the other servant who owed him $20. It seemed to him that since it was so much less than what he owed, there was that much less reason for him to wait.
This is the context of that frightening statement of Jesus, “So will my Heavenly Father do to everyone of you, if you do not forgive your brother from the heart.” It sounds so extreme, so harsh. It sounds like retribution. It presents God as a stern debt collector. Is it a mistranslation? Is it an exaggeration like the amount of debt? No, it’s not retribution! It’s just a description of the way things are. It is the torment of the day-to-day experience of persons who don’t know the true meaning of forgiveness, being trapped in guilt – the impossible situation of some day and in some way having to pay for their transgressions. They are also tormented by feelings of resentment towards all those who have ever wronged them. Feelings of guilt, and lack of self-worth can be very destructive. There is the story of a man who had to give up football games because every time there was a huddle, he thought they were talking about him! We must not confuse forgiveness with being excused. Making excuses is common, but if an excuse will do, forgiveness is required!
He believed in the theory of God’s grace and preached it, but hadn’t truly experienced it. He felt unworthy and guilty, and therefore that he didn’t deserve a loving wife or a caring congregation.
Like the servant in the parable, many people cannot grasp the extent of God’s grace and his unconditional forgiveness. We pray “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” On the surface this implies that God’s forgiveness of us depends on ours of others. If that’s the way it is, our situation is impossible, because we often haven’t got what it takes to forgive others and we are left then with the fear that God hasn’t forgiven us. The good news which Jesus brings to you and me is that whoever acknowledges and seeks forgiveness for sins, is forgiven. As Paul wrote, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!” You have been forgiven, once and for all! So you can forgive yourself! The Holy Spirit then grants us the gift of grace to forgive others. That petition of the Lord’s prayer is saying the same as the teaching of Jesus in this parable. God’s forgiveness and your forgiveness are impossible to separate, and the inability to forgive is a clear sign that you need God’s forgiveness.
Dr. David Seamands of Asbury Theological Seminary writes, “the two major causes of most emotional problems among committed Christians are: 1.) Failure to understand and receive God’s unconditional grace and forgiveness; and 2.) Failure to give unconditional grace and forgiveness to others. As an example, he tells the story of a student minister who came to him for help. He was having trouble getting along with both his wife and the congregation which he served. He acknowledged that his wife was an attractive and affectionate person, supportive of his ministry. But he constantly criticized her. It seemed that everything she did was wrong. He spoke to her with sarcasm and blamed her for the conflicts which he had caused. He knew their marriage was in trouble. It was the same with the people of his congregation. His sermons were critical, harsh and judgmental. In discussion with his counsellor, this was traced to a time years before when he had been a soldier in Korea. During a short leave in Tokyo, in his loneliness and anxiety, he had behaved quite contrary to his character, including visits with prostitutes. At the end of his tour of duty he came home and resumed his life plan. He married the woman who had been waiting for him and began studies for the ministry. He had asked for God’s forgiveness and believed that he had received it, but only in his head. He believed in the theory of God’s grace and preached it, but hadn’t truly experienced it. He felt unworthy and guilty, and therefore that he didn’t deserve a loving wife or a caring congregation. By rejecting them he was punishing himself and trying to atone for his sins. It was only as he gained an insight into all this that he finally linked the theory of God’s unconditional grace with the reality of his own situation. Yes, God had accepted him just as he was! All his sins of the past had been tossed into the sea of God’s forgetfulness and a “No Fishing” sign posted on the shore! That’s the meaning of “justification by faith, just-as-if-I’d-never-sinned.” When the student minister grasped this, he could finally forgive himself. He and the people close to him were freed from the torment of his self-destructiveness.
It is estimated that the emotional strain of guilt and resentment may be at the root of as much as 75% of physical illness, in addition to all the related personal conflicts.
Debt-paying and debt-collecting is built into our thought system and language. We think of the reverence and obedience we owe to God and when we fail, we are in debt to God. It’s the same in human relations. If we fail to measure up to the expectations of others, we feel indebted to them. When a person commits a crime, it’s said that he must pay his debt to society. When offended, we say that the offender owes us an apology. The anxiety associated with paying debts and collecting debts is a major cause of emotional dis-ease. The cross of Jesus cuts right across this kind of mental commerce. On the cross Jesus paid the debt of a sin which was not his that we may receive the gift of forgiveness. Or as the Scriptures also describe it, “God was in Christ suffering the hurt of our sin, rather than requiring us to suffer the hurt.” As Paul wrote, it’s an insult to God to try to pay a debt which he has already paid in full at the cost of the cross. The wonder of God’s sovereign grace is that he turned the worst tragedy in human history, the death of Jesus, into the best of all gifts. The same grace is illustrated in the story of Joseph. Having been sold as a slave by his jealous brothers, he rose to an office equivalent to that of prime minister of Egypt. When his brothers, without knowing who he was, came before him for food in the time of their famine, he didn’t worry about debt-collecting. When it was revealed who he was and they were in a panic, he put them at ease by stating that God had fitted their crime into his own grand design. He said, “You meant it for evil, God planned it for good.”
As Christians, God meant us to be debt-free persons. He meant the church to be a debt-free community. We love because we are loved. We accept because we have been accepted. We forgive, because we have been forgiven. We free others from their debts to us, because God has freed us from our debt to him. Thus the words of Jesus, “Freely you have received, freely give.” This sentence used the root word for gift four times. “Giftwise you have been given, giftwise give!”