Forgiven to Forgive

  • David Fairchild
  • Aug 31, 2008
  • Series: Encountering Jesus

TEXT

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?'  22 Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.  23 Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.  24 When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.  25 And 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.  26 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything."  27 And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.  28 But 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." 29 So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you."  30 He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.  31 When 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.  32 Then his master summoned him and said to him, "You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.  33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?"  34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.  35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.'"

INTRODUCTION

This morning we're talking about the difficult and often misunderstood topic of forgiveness.  When we think about this subject we usually assume this is a private matter between us and God.  But this chapter, starting in v. 15, shows us that this is a communal problem and therefore must been seen as a communal practice.  In other words, the way we work out forgiveness with one another is in the context of community.  It must be seen as the responsibility and practice of an entire community that learns, applies, and therefore experiences forgiveness as the norm and not the exception.

I would even go so far as to say that one of the essential ways we experience mercy, love, tenderness, encouragement, and the forgiveness of Christ is through the body of believers, His family, that act as ministers of mercy towards one another.  Since Jesus is working through His church which acts as a representative for Him, we are given the incredible privilege of working out in our community what Christ has worked in us as individuals.

We typically understand that God's Word is a means of grace, a nourishment to our souls.  We may even understand that communion is a real way of being nourished, and so we come on Sunday to receive both.  But another way, a vital way, that God gives us nourishment is through His body, the church, in which He places not only His glory to dwell, but also He tangibly touches us and comforts us, cares for and corrects us through His body in which He acts as the head.  We work out God's word with one another in practical ways so that we in essence act as living letters to one another.  Paul goes so far as to say in 2 Cor. 3:3:

2 Corinthians 3:3: "And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."

This is why there is so much instruction on how we're to treat "one another."  The assumption is that we'll be with one another in community and that we are to live as the very body of Jesus for one another and for this world.  This is how we demonstrate our love towards one another and how we show each other and this world that Jesus' love is true and that we're His very own, sent by Him, and loved by Him.

How we treat one another in community is not only for our personal benefit, it is to show the world that what Jesus said is true.  This is why we can't separate word and deed ministry, because the deeds "amen" the word.  Without a profound love for one another, without a community that actively practices forgiveness towards one another, with a generous heart in sacrifice for one another, it makes what we say about how much Jesus loves us, forgives us, and sacrificed for us, a thing of words alone and not of real, life-changing and living power which can be seen by anyone observing.  This is why Jesus tells us in John:

John 13:34-35: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

John 15:11-12: "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.  12 This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." 
 
John 17:23: "I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me."

What a great comfort it is that Jesus loves to draw straight lines with crooked sticks.  I'm certainly happy that He works and changes lives and hearts in spite of our witness and testimony.  Yet I hope that we're challenged by His love for us to love one another.  In the same way, God calls us to forgive one another as we've been forgiven by Him.

Ephesians 4:31-32: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.  32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."

Colossians 3:12-13: "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,  13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive."

Let's look at the passage and discuss the problem of forgiveness, why forgiveness is not optional and how we're to apply the forgiveness of our King to one another.

STUDY

I.  The Problem of Forgiveness

Jesus teaches us in this parable how He sees the issue of forgiveness as it's worked out in relationships.  He brings us to a shocking sobriety on the subject by saying things that we would prefer to excuse away or quickly dismiss as Jesus just being outrageous for emphasis sake.

Let's look first at perhaps the most shocking of Jesus' comments at the end and we'll work our way back from there.

Verses 32-35: "Then his master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.  33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?'  34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.  35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."

Here we have someone who's been forgiven of a great debt and the servant, who's been forgiven of so much, leaves His king's presence.  He runs into a fellow servant who owed him considerably less and begins to choke him and demands he pay up.  The servant falls down on his knees to beg forgiveness but the man throws him in jail instead.  No mercy.  Jesus, teaching this, tells us that an unforgiving heart leads to eternal punishment.  There's no way around it.  This is what Jesus is saying.  We can't skirt the weight of His words.  But let's dig a little bit and learn what He means.

We know that from each of these stories, Jesus labors to show us the incredible and liberating truth and power that we're not saved by what we do, our moral life or ethical standards, but by His life and death for us.  We're saved by grace, unmerited favor, through the sacrifice and substitute of Jesus in our place.  Living as we should have lived, dying the death we deserved, and rising from the dead to prove to the entire cosmos that what He said was true.  We know this.

How can Jesus be saying that if we fail to forgive we'll not be forgiven ourselves?  It seems to run contrary to everything else He's said up to this point.  What's He saying?

There is a parallel passage that is similar to this kind of statement in chapter 25.  Jesus teaches in this chapter that when He returns to finish what He's begun, He'll come back to judge the living and the dead.  In doing so, He'll look at one group and tell them that because they loved the broken, fed the hungry, cared for the sick, visited the imprisoned, and basically loved last and least of this world, they'll enter into His rest and come with Him.  But those who refused, those who didn't care for the broken, hungry, sick and imprisoned, will be cast away from Him into eternal punishment.  It looks the same; do this and be saved, don't do this and go to hell.

However, the key to that passage is when the King, Jesus the Lord, answers the question of those who are separated from Him who say, "Lord, what do you mean, when did we ever not care for you?"  And Jesus says, "When you failed to do this to them, you failed to do this with Me."  In other words, "When you closed your heart to them, you proved that your heart was closed to Me."

This is what Jesus is saying about this man in the parable who was unmerciful to his fellow servant.  Jesus is saying that when you failed to open your heart in forgiveness to him, you proved that your heart was closed to my forgiveness.  He's showing us that if we don't give grace and forgiveness to our brother, sister, friend, or neighbor, we show that our hearts have not yet softened to His grace and forgiveness.

Think of two trees side by side each other.  If, when the harvest time is at its fullest, one tree produces much fruit and the other produces nothing, we'd say that something is wrong with that other tree.  It's diseased, it's sick, something is wrong with it.  It's not the fruit that gives the tree life, but it's the fruit that reveals that there is life.  Jesus is saying that there is no better way to see whether or not we've come to life than how we forgive or don't forgive.  The forgiveness doesn't give us life; the forgiveness proves whether or not His forgiving life has taken root in us.

When we carry with us bitterness and a lack of forgiveness, what we're doing is showing that we're already in prison.  It's actually quite understandable that the king in this parable throws the man in prison; this is what happens to us when our hearts are hard and unforgiving.  We're already in prison.

When we hold this anger and it's not released by grace, we feel self-righteous and justified in our actions.  Our hearts harden more and more because they're not free.  We may run to choke another through our words or actions, but the truth is that we're choking ourselves and our on our way to eternal punishment, or at least we look like we are.  An author named Frederick Buechner says this:

    Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back -- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

If we've been forgiven of so much, and that we believe that God has forgiven us, our life should be marked by this forgiveness towards others.  When it's not, at the very least we're choking out the power of the gospel to work in our own lives, and at the very worst, we may be showing we haven't really understood or believe how incredible and beautiful the gospel truly is.  To not forgive someone is a matter of life and death.  Jesus is showing us the profound nature of forgiveness by this parable to wake us up.

If you're still angry at someone, even in your distant past, you're showing that they are the true masters of your heart.  If we can't and refuse to forgive, who has the real power over us?  They do. Why?  Because our hearts are held captive, in prison, to what they did.  We're not free, we're slaves to it.  But when Jesus comes to forgive us and rule our hearts, we're under His care.  He now holds us captive in such a way that we're truly liberated and free.  To not forgive is to give power to that person and allow them to be our jailer.

There is no better sign of the fruit of our heart than whether or not we're able to forgive.

II.  What is forgiveness?

This parable tells us through a story the different parts of forgiveness by the actions of the king.  It's a masterful way of teaching us what forgiveness is, what it looks like.

Verse 27: "And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt."

That's a great summary of what forgiveness is: taking pity on someone, releasing them, and cancelling their debt.

1) Have compassion (pity)

The first thing this story teaches us is to take pity on them.  This word "pity" has negative connotations in our time because we don't want others to feel pity for us.  We think it's a negative to do so.  But this word means something far different than what it does for us today.  This word was the mark of Jesus' entire ministry.  If you were to sum up Jesus' emotional life from what we see in the NT, the word that would come out most would be pity, compassion.  It means to have your heart go out to someone.  It's a weird word in the Greek it's "splanchnizomai."  It means for your stomach to yearn for someone, to have your guts go out for someone.  It's a very powerful and emotive word.  It means we identify with them by having our hearts go out to them and feel their pain. 

 
We're told the pattern of how Jesus loved.  First he'd look, then He'd have compassion (his heart would go out, his stomach would yearn) and then He'd act.

If we can't do this, it's because we are enjoying making them a villain in our hearts and minds.  Instead of our hearts going out, we actually withdraw our hearts and harden them towards the person.  We have to do this to stay angry at them.

When we do this, we take their sin and fault and caricature them.  We make them into whatever their fault is.  If they lied to us, we make them out to be a liar.  We accentuate their sin and focus on it so that their identity is wrapped up in it.  They become their sin to us.  Now, when we sin, we don't do this do we?  When we lie we want to explain why, and how it was a mistake, or how there are reasons and we give all these excuses because we don't want others doing that to us, do we?

To have pity on them, to have compassion, we identify with them and we deliberately see that we're not different from them.  We don't see them as unique, but see them as the rest of humanity, broken, and in need of grace.  We identify with them and we admit that we've done it, we could do it, or are hearts certainly have entertained that same sin.  We are able to see them as ourselves, not as a caricature, like some sub-human cartoon.

2) Cancel the debt

If we want to begin to forgive and understand what Jesus is getting at, we have to be shocked by and grasp the enormity of the debt.  How much did the king forgive his servant of?  10,000 talents.  This amount would have been astronomical.  A denari is a day's wage and a talent is worth 5,000 denari.  This is billions of dollars.  How could a servant accrue so much debt?  He was probably a prefect or vice-regent in a region under the king.  They're called a satrap.  They would have been responsible for great sums of money, property, etc.  To have such an enormous debt was because he was either corrupt or mismanaged the king's money.

The king's ability to run his kingdom was jeopardized by this man's actions.  This debt could never be worked off in a lifetime.  He would have had to sell his home and everything he owned and still it wouldn't cover the debt.  There is nothing this servant could do to pay his way out.  The only thing was punishment or forgiveness of the debt.  That's it.  And at a great expense to himself, at a great pain to himself, the king's heart goes out to him and he cancels this man's debt.

Now, when the king forgave him it didn't mean that the debt went away.  Someone had to absorb the debt.  When there is a loss, either the person who's responsible pays, or the person who forgives pays.  When someone wrongs you, there is a loss of joy, a hurt, a debt that is accrued.  We feel like they owe us.  So we gossip or slander and make them pay. We speak to them with disrespect or we ignore them.  Or we hope they fail.  Our hearts are working to make them pay off that debt.

The only alternative is that you pay.  You identify with them, and at a great cost to yourself, you pay the freight of their sin.  In other words, instead of your heart hardening towards them, you don't allow your heart to pour gas onto the flame.  You grant forgiveness even before you feel it.  You decide in your heart that you're not going to make them pay, you take on that debt against you and cancel the debt against them.  You suffer, not them.  When you want to hurt them with words and you don't, it hurts.  When you want to entertain bad thoughts, you don't.

3) Release them

When the king sees this forgiven man go out and choke his fellow servant, he realizes that this man didn't actually get the forgiveness that was given to him.  He sees how hard this man's heart truly was and that his confession and cry for mercy wasn't genuine.  He didn't feel bad for the sin, he felt bad because he was caught.

You see, this man's heart wasn't really freed.  He didn't actually sense the beauty of forgiveness. But when you see the great sum that your king paid, your heart is freed to love and forgive others.  You're able to release them and let them go.  You're able to care for them and release them from the prison you've put them in.

III.  How do we forgive one another?

We have resources that help us forgive one another.  First, we have community.  We have a body of believers that help us keep our relationships glued together as they speak grace and truth to us.  We don't do this in isolation unless our hearts harden because of the deceitfulness of sin.  This is why we're called to one another in community:

Hebrews 3:13: "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."

Secondly, we have the true foundation for all of this.  We have the forgiveness of Christ towards us.

Luke 7:47: "Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven-for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little."

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