Jesus continues teaching His disciples this as we look at this wonderful chapter. The theme of humility continues to thread its way through Jesus’ teaching. After Jesus gave hope to the wayward, He gives instructions on how the church should operate in helping people remove sin from their lives. This led Peter to ask a very important question!
HOW OFTEN SHALL I FORGIVE?
Matthew 18:21 – Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”
Peter is asking a great question! But even still we see some pride still present in the question. Peter believes he’s getting Jesus’ message and thinks the number “seven” is very generous. He believes his offer of seven times to forgive shows his benevolent gracious spirit. But Jesus ups the bar significantly!
Matthew 18:22 – Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven”.
Jesus puts a multiplier on Peter’s number. 70 x 7 is 490 times. But the number isn’t really the big point here. The point is that you forgive others as often as they seek repentance and forgiveness! Jesus gives a number because Peter did. Then, to fully illustrate His point, Jesus gives a wonderful parable that should truly convict and challenge each one of us.
PARABLE OF THE WICKED SERVANT
In this parable, Jesus tells His disciples that the scene is a king who wishes to settle accounts with all of his servants. When he comes to one person, his debt is enormous!
Matthew 18:24-25 – When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made.
A “talent” was a unit of money that represented an average annual wage. So, take the median annual income in their day and multiply it by 10,000 years. That is what this man’s debt was to the king. It’s a parable, but just for fun, let’s see what this debt would be in the context of current life. According to the U.S Census bureau, the median income in America in 2021 was $70,784. So, using that number, this servant’s debt was $707,840,000. In other words, it was an unpayable debt.
In that time, if you owed a debt that you could not pay, you could sell yourself into a form of slavery that would pay off your debt. Depending on how big that debt was, one could work their debt off and regain their freedom. But in this case the debt was so big that it wasn’t possible to pay it off. So, the king says that not only will he be sold, so will his wife and children to try to pay off the debt. A truly hopeless situation.
Matthew 18:26-27 – So, the servant fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ And the lord of that servant felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.
What other reaction could someone have than to fall on the ground and beg for mercy in the situation this slave found himself. Not only was his life no longer his own, but his entire family and their future was over. He asks for more time to pay off this impossible debt, but the king knows he’ll never be able to do it. So, the king feels great compassion and simply forgives him for the entire debt and lets him return to his family. Can you imagine being forgiven such a massive debt!?
In this parable, the king is God, the servant is each one of us. We all have an unpayable debt to God for our sin. One we can never work or do enough “good” to pay off. But God sent His son Jesus to die to make it possible to forgive this massive debt just like the king in the parable. We have received that much mercy. So how did the servant respond to this great gift he’d been given? Sadly, there is more to this parable.
Matthew 18:28 – But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe.’
This servant goes out from the king and finds a contemporary, a fellow servant who owes him money. In this case, a significantly smaller sum than what he owed and had just been forgiven by the king, 100 Denarii. The denarius was an average day’s wage at that time. So again, using today’s financial figures that would be around $260 a day. So, this debt was more like $26,000. Certainly not a small amount by any means, but also nowhere near the 700 plus million that was owed by him to the king. But it gets worse.
Matthew 18:29-30 – So his fellow servant fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed.
The forgiven servant showed zero mercy. In this parable, the two servants represent us and others in our lives who may sin against us in some way. In the parable, the Lord doesn’t discount that we sin against each other in significant ways. The amount owed in the parable confirms the significance of the sin against him. But it does draw a distinction between the offenses against one another and the offenses of us against God. And the other servants around them see the massive injustice.
Matthew 18:31 – So when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened.
They report back to the king this great injustice they have seen. They know that the debt that had been forgiven was an unpayable debt, and they witnessed how the forgiven party then treated his contemporary despite the mercy he’d been shown. The king then burns in anger toward the forgiven slave.
Matthew 18:32-35 – Then summoning him, his lord said to him, ‘You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow servant in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.
The king’s expectation was that his servant would go out and show the same mercy to others that he’d been shown by the king. His unwillingness to do this cost him his life in the end. In this parable, Jesus is clearly showing that any sin committed against us pales in comparison to sin committed against Him. When one of his children receives His mercy, that should produce the fruit of mercy in us towards one another.
Matthew 18:35 – “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.”
CONCLUSION
Peter asked a question about forgiving someone who has sinned with his own magnanimous qualifier, “shall I forgive 7 times?” Jesus responds with a very direct answer, and I paraphrase with what you’ve been forgiven for, you should always extend mercy in forgiving others.
This was no doubt challenging to hear for the disciples as it is for us to hear today. But so great is the mercy of God on us, how can we not bear with one another in the same mercy. But this is more than just a gentle encouragement, it comes with a command and a warning. In other words, it’s something we should take very seriously. But in order to see this parable properly, we must first view our own transgressions against God properly. For if we don’t, we miss the magnitude of His mercy in our own life. If we miss that, we’ll have no problem acting in the same way as the wicked servant.