A Forgiven Sinner has a Forgiving Heart. - Matthew 18:21-35
How many times shall we forgive someone who sins against us? This is the question Peter asked Jesus, and it’s something I want all of us to think about this morning. How many times do we need to forgive?
If you were to ask the Rabbis at Jesus time, they would tell you that you must forgive your brother 3 times. No more and no less. That was the common teaching in Israel. The first time maybe it was an accident, the second time, Ok it happened again but I can forgive you, the third time, this was your last chance. It was a three strikes you’re out policy. Don’t do it again or else I’ll hold it against you. Following this plan makes some sense to us. After three times we should expect someone to know better right?
If you were to ask Peter, he was extra generous. He was willing to forgive his brother up to 7 times. He took the common practice, doubled it, and added one more just to make sure he had enough. He knew Jesus too well after spending so much time with him to think that Jesus was going to be happy with just 3 times. He wasn’t going to be like those Jewish teachers, no, Peter wanted to go above and beyond what was expected of him.
If I were to ask you? How many times do you think we should forgive someone? I think we are smart enough to know that 3 times isn’t enough. We know Jesus’ answer is going to blow Peter’s out of the water. But I’m sure you have a number. Maybe 10 times? 50 times? 100 times? How many times are you really willing to be hurt before you stop forgiving someone?
When Jesus was asked to answer this question, he told Peter, Not 7 times, but 77 times we are to offer forgiveness to our brother or sister who sins against us. That seems like a lot. Are we supposed to carry a notebook in our pocket full of tallies for each time that someone has sinned against us? Imagine if our God in heaven offered us forgiveness in this way. What sin do you think you’ve committed more than a couple times? I‘m sure that we all have an answer. Is God sitting there in heaven, pulling out a pitch counter and giving it a click every time we fail him? No! Jesus did not mean literally 77 times. He uses a parable to explain that God’s forgiveness is unlimited. When we offer a repentant heart, there is nothing we could ever do, any amount of times that God would not wash away. King David, after he stood convicted by Nathan for his sins with Bathsheba, wrote Psalm 51, a beautiful example of repentance. In verse 17 he writes, My sacrifice O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. David recognized, that while his sin was going to still have consequences, God does not ever turn his back to the heart of a repentant sinner. His forgiveness is absolutely unlimited when we confess our sins to him and ask for his mercy.
If God’s forgiveness is our measuring stick? How do we do? More often for us, it seems like even 7 times would be a lot of forgiveness to give out. Jesus tells us that we are supposed to forgive everyone, no matter how many times they hurt us. This means the people we love, the people we fight with, friends, family, enemies, everyone.
Have you ever seen a child whose parent tells them to go forgive their sibling? I mean this should be the easiest person to forgive, your own flesh and blood, but what does it look like? “I forgive you.” They force the words out of their mouth with as much reluctance as they can to make sure, the person who hurt them knows they’re only saying it because they have to. While we may get better at hiding this reluctance when we get older, these same feelings are often still present. We say I forgive you, but our hearts still hold on to the anger. We say I forgive you but inside of us in a place that only we can see we add a tally next to their name.
Like those children, the words that come from our lips are an empty fulfillment of the forgiveness God has told us to give. We hold a record of every small harm that has been done to us, but expect God to forgive us limitlessly. When we are brought back before God won’t he say as the king said, “You wicked servant. I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” Because God’s forgiveness towards us is unlimited he expects us to forgive others in this same way.
How often do we commit the same sins against God over, and over again? Each Sunday we come into this building and confess “I am sinful by nature, and have sinned against you in my thoughts, words, and actions. I have not loved you with my whole heart; I have not loved others as I should.” We recognize that we have let our God down again and again. If we had to question each time we said these words whether we had gotten past God’s limit of forgiveness we would be much less comfortable confessing our sin. But every time we confess, we are reminded that God has been merciful to us and he has forgiven all of our sins. Even for all of the times we fail to forgive those who sin against us. No matter how many times we fail him his forgiveness does not change. It is present for us whenever we beg for his mercy. When Paul is writing to the Christians of Colossae he tells them, “Therefore as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” We are sinners who have been forgiven limitlessly in the eyes of a Holy God. Our forgiveness must flow from our lips just as freely as the Lord God has forgiven us.
When we understand that God is willing to forgive all of our failures, the question now becomes how do we gain this forgiveness? Yes, it’s unlimited but surely there are some conditions we must meet to be forgiven. In the parable the servant fell on his knees before the king and begged, “Be patient with me, and I will pay back everything”, He wanted more time. To be forgiven, he thought it was going to be under the condition that he pay back all of his debt. Let’s try and understand better how much debt this was. The text says ten thousand bags of gold. It is impossible to quantify exactly how much this would have been worth because depending on the exact time and place, their money had different values. Some of the estimates I saw put it around 600,000 times larger than the debt that was owed to him by the other servant which was only 100 days wages. That would make the debt of the first servant 60 million days wages or, if the average worker is making 100 dollars a day, 6 billion dollars. This wasn’t just some debt that you could pay back with a couple weeks extension, this was an amount that would take the average worker over 100,000 years to pay off.
Even if all he did was put every cent he earned towards the debt, he was never going to be able to pay it off. But when he falls before the king and begs for his mercy, he tells him that he will pay back everything. What a foolish statement. Even if there was a condition, this man was never going to be able to meet it, and neither could we. Anyone who thinks that repayment of their debt is possible, either overestimates their abilities, or drastically underestimates the price of their debt. Our debt against God is infinite. Our chance of repayment is impossible, just like this servant before his king.
But God does not take our foolish repayment plan into account. Instead, God’s response is the same as the king. It says he, “took pity on him, cancelled the debt, and let him go.” God’s forgiveness does not expect repayment. He does not say, “I will forgive you, but only if you never make the same mistake.” He does not say, “I will forgive you, but only if you make it up to me by being extra good from now on.” No, he tells us that we are forgiven, period. God’s forgiveness for us is completely unconditional. He does not expect anything from us in return, and he knows that if he did, we would never be able to pay back all that we owe. The devil tempts us into believing that there are some conditions we must meet in order to earn our forgiveness, but God has given it to us freely, just because we ask for it.
So when we forgive others, what do we expect back from them? Our forgiveness often only comes when we have already received a promise from the person that they will never do this again and a plan for how they are going to make it up to us. We go out and find the person who hurt us so that we can shake them down and demand that they repay what they owe us. We seek revenge so that we can get even before we have to give out forgiveness. When the wicked servant treated forgiveness this way “his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.” This is how God says he will treat us if we turn our back on his forgiveness and fail to recognize the debt that has been paid for us. In failing to forgive others we are showing our ungratefulness for the forgiveness that has been given to us.
We have already been forgiven unconditionally, and while the sinner in us still might struggle, the saint inside us wants to share this forgiveness with those who hurt us. When Jesus taught us to pray, he said, “forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” In this sentence, he shows that forgiveness is something that he just assumes is going to flow from the heart of someone who has been forgiven of a debt so great. We have seen the example of God’s unconditional forgiveness to us, so we are able to forgive unconditionally those who sin against us. Christians do not forgive if… Christians forgive because. Christians forgive because God has forgiven us unconditionally and paid for all of our debt. Jesus’ sacrifice has left nothing for us to do to make up for our sins against God.
God has promised the repentant sinner unlimited and unconditional forgiveness. So how many times shall we forgive someone who has sinned against us? Jesus doesn’t give us a number, he gives us a reason. There is not a certain number of times that we have to forgive before we are allowed to stop. There is not a certain condition that Jesus says has to be met to earn our forgiveness. The reason Jesus gives us for forgiving others, is because God’s forgiveness is unlimited, and unconditional. This is the kind of forgiveness he expects from us, because this is the kind of forgiveness he has given us. Amen
