(Nameun Cho)
Matthew 18:21-35 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?” 22Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
23“Therefore 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. 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.”
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Yesterday at our morning worship service, I had the privilege to preach through the preceding verses of Matthew 18. In those twenty verses, the ESV and other translations would delineate four different sections, and the parable today would be the fifth. Often taken in individual chunks, these five pericopes of Matthew 18 can each highlight a unique facet of Christian living vastly different from each other. But what if we were to read all of those chunks– including this parable– as one larger unit on reconciliation? How do we read Jesus’ words to cut off our hand if it causes us to sin (18:8) and leave behind the 99 for the one lost sheep (18:12) differently if housed under the umbrella of reconciliation with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ? We will use that framework as we explore this parable today.
At the onset of the passage, Peter prompts Jesus to give his insight on forgiveness, to which Jesus gives his well known response of forgiving our brother, not seven, but seventy seven times. What would have been a culturally acceptable standard of three instances of forgiveness (cf. Job 33:29; Amos 1:3), Peter thought he was being generous by offering an “over the top” figure of seven musterings of forgiveness. As Jesus had been known to do from time to time, he shatters Peter’s expectations– and likely all the other listeners in that moment– with an absurd and unfathomable number. Jesus’ suggestion is not meant to specify a numerical measure, but emphasize the deep grace needed to exhibit genuine forgiveness.
As we turn our focus to the parable, we’re met again with Jesus using hyperbolic numerical figures to make his point. The amount of a single talent of debt would have been the equivalent to 20 years worth of wages. So with a conservative computation using today’s federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour), a debt of 10,000 talents would be the equivalent of $2.9 billion in modern terms! Comparatively, the debt of the fellow servant that amounted to 100 denarii (or 100 days’ wages) would have been roughly $5,800. Not to diminish the significance of what the latter amount may mean to some of us in our respective contexts, but we have to remember that Jesus’ point is not to get lost in the numbers. The chasm that was the difference between the two debts is so vast, we’re meant to feel both the stingy nature of the servant and the immense generosity of the king.
In a gospel economy, the scope of genuine forgiveness is so wide that it defies all human logic. No amount of reasoning can make sense of just how generous God chose to be for his people. As a result, it is only those who know what it means to be forgiven who can show forgiveness to others. Only when we are shown the depths from which we have been saved– or the state of death from which we were given new life– can we appreciate the implications of our pardon.
We often get hung up on the “cost of forgiveness” to us if we let those who wronged us go free. From a pastoral perspective, again, I empathize with the wounds and scars from hurts committed against us and don’t minimize that pain at all. And in fact, it’s from parables like these that we get a framework on how to address those very griefs. The generosity of our Heavenly Father and King is affirmed for us in the utmost display of his generosity to send his only Son to bear the weight of sin and death on our behalf. The same source of mercy that relieved us from that debt is the very power that will restore all things to complete justice and glorification. Forgiveness of others is a rehearsal of the very forgiveness we have been shown in Jesus.
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An audio version of each devotion will be posted on our church podcast “Life Together at CRPC,” which is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.