Lessons on Forgiveness
Matthew 18:21-35
INTRODUCTION
One said, “Forgiveness is like the violet sending forth its pure fragrance on the heel of the boot of the one who crushed it.”
For three days a fierce winter storm had traveled 1500 miles across the North Pacific from Alaska, packing gale force winds and torrential winds. The snow was piling up in the Sierra Nevadas. In the foothills of the Sierras the streets were flooded and the power was off in some parts of the town of Grass Valley. The high winds beat against the windows with violence, as Father O’Malley had never heard before.
In his tiny bedroom, O’Malley was writing his Sunday’s sermon by candlelight. Suddenly, the phone in his office rang, shattering his concentration. As he picked up the phone, a voice asked, “Is this Father O’Malley?” “Yes,” he replied. “I’m calling from the hospital in Auburn. We have a terminally ill patient who is asking us to get someone to give him his last rites. Can you come quickly?” the female voice said. O’Malley told her he would try his best to get there. The trip was only 30 miles, but it would be hard going in the storm.
Finally in the distance he saw the lights of the small hospital. He slipped into his raincoat before stepping out into the wind-swept deluge. With his tattered Bible tucked deep inside his overcoat, he forced the car door open, stepped out and leaned into the wind. As he stepped inside the hospital door, the night nurse approached him. “I’m so glad you could get here,” she said. “The man I called you about is slipping fast, but he is still coherent. He’s been an alcoholic for years, and his liver has finally given out. He’s been here a couple of weeks this time and hasn’t had one single visitor. He lives up in the woods and no one around here knows much about him.”
O’Malley asked what the patient’s name was. She said, “The hospital staff has just been calling him Tom.” As he entered the room, O’Malley saw a man with a thin sallow countenance who looked ghostlike behind a scraggly beard. He introduced himself and told him he would like to talk a little before he went to sleep.
“Don’t give me any of that garbage,” Tom replied. “You didn’t just stop by at 3:30 in the morning. I asked that dumb night nurse to call someone to give me my last rites because I know my deal is done and it’s my turn to go. Now get on with it.”
Father O’Malley began to say the prayer of the last rites. After he finished, Tom perked up a little and appeared as if he wanted to talk. O’Malley asked him if he wanted to make a confession. He told him no, but he said he would like to talk a little.
Tom and Father O’Malley talked about the Korean War, the fierce storm outside and the knee-high grass and summer blossoms that would soon appear. Occasionally, O’Malley would ask him if he wanted to make a confession.
Finally Tom replied, “Father, when I was young, I did something that was so bad that I’ve never told anyone about it. It was so bad that I haven’t spent a single day without thinking about it and reliving the horror.” O’Malley encouraged him to share what it was.
Believing his life would soon end, Tom decided to share with the priest what he had never told anyone. He told him how 32 years ago he was working as a switchman on the railroad, a job he had held all his life. It was a stormy night just like the present one. It was two nights before Christmas and to push away the gloom of the storm the entire crew drank all through the swing shift. Since Tom was so drunk, he volunteered to go out into the storm and push the switch for the northbound 8:30 freight.
Tom confessed, “I guess I was more drunk than I thought I was because I pushed that switch in the wrong direction. At 45 miles an hour that freight train slammed into a passenger car at the next crossing and killed a young man, his wife and their two daughters. I have had to live with my being the cause of their deaths every day since then.”
There was a long pause as Tom’s confession hung in the air. After what seemed like an eternity, Father O’Malley gently put his hand on Tom’s shoulder and said, “If I can forgive you, God can forgive you, because in that car were my mother, my father and my two older sisters.”
In the story we have read about the unforgiving debtor, Jesus teaches us some lessons about forgiveness. In the verses that directly precede these verses, Jesus taught about relationships between fellow believers when they wrong one another. In response to that teaching, Peter proposes the question of how many times we should forgive those who wrong us. You see Peter was aware of human nature and its tendency not to forgive but to hold grudges and harbor resentment.
Peter offered the number seven in conjunction with how many times we should forgive those who sin against us, receive our forgiveness and then wrong us again. Seven times seemed pretty generous. But Peter was still thinking like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and like those who have not received a new nature from Christ.
Jesus’ answer must have shocked him. Jesus said seventy times seven. Jesus hardly meant that we were to keep count of how often we forgive a fellow believer or that at 490 times we should stop forgiving. Christians are not to keep a record, just as God doesn’t keep a record of how many times we sin against him. The number that Jesus offers represents one that is beyond counting.
Commenting on the scarcity of such grace among believers, John Wesley said, “If this be Christianity, where do Christians live?”
The concise teaching of this parable is this: if we have received pardon from God, we have an obligation to forgive and pardon other believers when they wrong us or sin against us.
THE NATURE OF HUMAN DEBT IS UNPAYABLE
The amount that Jesus says this first servant owed the king is not meant to be taken literally. It represents a limitless amount of money. Not only was it incalculable but it was also unpayable. It represents the debt of sin that each of us owes God. What we owe him because of our sin is beyond our comprehension and certainly beyond our ability to pay.
At this point, the servant represents people in their unsaved state, before they come to know Christ as their Savior. However, the servant shortly represents the one who decides to trust Christ as their Savior. The forgiveness of the king represents what Jesus does for us when we beg him to forgive our debt of sin.
The punishment that the king originally ascribes for the servant is what we deserve. Hell. No one deserves God’s grace, just as the servant did not deserve the grace of the king. It is only because of the grace of God that anyone is forgiven. We all deserve hell, but in his grace, God reaches down and offers forgiveness instead.
The servant first requests that the king be patient with him until he could repay his debt. He had a good attitude, but his understanding was flawed because his debt was unpayable. Our debt is the same. People more often than we know try to pay off what they owe God by good deeds. It can’t be done. We owe him an unpayable debt. It is not moral reforms that we need, but the grace of God. Only God’s grace can take care of the debt we owe him.
THE NATURE OF DIVINE FORGIVENESS IS MERCIFUL AND JUST
Jesus tells of a king who decides to bring his accounts up to date with his servants who had borrowed money from him. The word servant or slave is used here in a broad sense to refer to those who were subjected to a sovereign. The king had life and death power over these subjects. It was normal for a king to appoint governors or satraps over the provinces of his kingdom to collect taxes from the people.
In this process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He could not pay, so the king ordered that he, his wife, his children and everything he had be sold to pay off the debt. Well the servant fell down before the king and begged for patience until he could pay the debt. Then Jesus says, “The king was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.”
While this is a picture of what Jesus does for us when we come to him and ask forgiveness, we must remember that Jesus is telling this parable to show the need of forgiveness among believers. What we must understand is that forgiveness is not common or indigenous to people. The feeling of King Louis XII of France would articulate the feelings of many when they have been wronged: “Nothing smells so sweet as the dead body of your enemy.”
And yet because of the new nature Christians have been given, we need to learn to forgive those who wrong us because a part of Christ’s nature-which we have been given, is to forgive. Forgiveness reflects the character of God, so forgiveness among Christians is the highest human virtue we can possess. Because we need forgiveness from God and from others, we need to learn to forgive also. Forgiveness is the key to unity in churches. Just think of how many problems in churches could be solved if we could learn to forgive one another. Think how much is stirred up because of unforgiveness. Forgiveness tears down the barriers that sin erects between God’s people.
The most striking example of forgiveness is seen in the life of Jesus as he hung on the cross. He did not deserve to die but chose to pay for our sins. He died at the hands of evil people but instead of cursing them he prayed that God would forgive them because they did not know what they were doing.
Forgiveness is also seen in the life of Stephen. As he was being stoned for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, he also said, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
Then there is the example of Joseph in the Old Testament. He was hated by his brothers and sold into slavery. But in the end, as they appeared before him in Egypt to get food so they would not starve, he forgave the wrongs they had committed against him.
There is also the Old Testament example of King Saul and how he repeatedly tried to kill David. Even though David had the opportunity, he refused to harm him or even harbor any hatred against him.
Because it is the nature of God to forgive and to show his mercy through this forgiveness, we who have received his nature by placing our faith in Christ must forgive also.
THE TENDENCY OF HUMAN NATURE IS NOT TO FORGIVE
As soon as this forgiven servant left the king’s presence, he found a fellow servant that owed him far less than he owed the king. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. This servant fell down before him, as he had previously done before the king, and begged for a little more time to settle his account. But this servant would not wait or forgive as the king had done for him. He had the servant arrested and jailed until his debt could be paid.
Some of his fellow servants observed his actions and were very upset. They went to the king and told him what had happened. The king called in the man he had forgiven and said, “You evil servant! I forgave you all that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?” Then the king sent the man to prison until he could pay the original debt he owed.
Jesus then concludes, “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters in your heart.”
Since the other servant is referred to as a fellow servant, Jesus is probably saying he represents a fellow believer. So the teaching is about believer’s treatment of one another. The refusal of the first servant to forgive a fellow servant shows how common and easy it is for believers to refuse to forgive each other. It is also a reminder of the power of the flesh that can control our lives if we allow it, a power that can also destroy our testimony and effectiveness for God. This unforgiving attitude has and continues to cause damage to many churches. When Christians reflect such an attitude, it is a reminder that we have forgotten how much God has forgiven us, and it also reflects a misunderstanding on our part concerning what the Bible teaches about forgiveness.
The apostle Paul wrote, “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven.” (Ephesians 4:32)
Notice that the servant who refused to forgive wound up in prison, and when we live with an unforgiving attitude, we will place ourselves in prison, and it will be a miserable existence. An unforgiving attitude can lead a person deeper into sin. It will cause dissension and division in God’s churches. It will damage the testimony of the individual Christian and the church. Most of all, it will grieve Christ.
Just as the other servants were grieved when this servant would not forgive, so believers should be grieved when other believers have an unforgiving attitude. We should pray for them and lovingly remind them of the teachings of God’s Word about forgiveness.
One has so aptly said, “He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.”
Another said, “Revenge, indeed, seems often sweet to men; but, oh, it is only sugared poison, only sweetened gall…. Forgiving, enduring love alone is sweet and blissful; it enjoys peace and the consciousness of God’s favor.”
CONCLUSION
As a Christian, God has forgiven a huge debt, and God wants to do this for all people. It is our debt of sin that must be forgiven if we are to have a relationship with him. Because we have experienced this forgiveness, it is our responsibility to extend this same forgiveness to all people and especially fellow believers.
The story is told of a traveler crossing a river in Burma. After crossing, he noticed that his body was covered with leeches. His first impulse was to pull them off, but his servant warned him that if he did part of the leech would remain in his skin and serious infection would set in. The native prepared a warm bath, adding certain herbs that would irritate the leeches but not kill them. One by one they voluntarily dropped off. Relating this to forgiveness, William Arnot says, “Mere human determination to have done with it will not cast the evil thing away. You must bathe your whole being in God’s pardoning mercy; and those venomous creatures will instantly let go their hold.”
