Hear

God

 Speaks

Eph 4:32

Forgive one another as God forgives you

Forgiveness

Matthew 18:21-35

 Why do some of God’s children have such a difficult time getting along with each other?  A poem I heard states the problem perfectly:

 To live above, with saints we love will certainly be glory;

To live below, with saints we know – Well, that’s another story!

With so much division and conflict among professing Christians these days, we desperately need what Matthew 18 has to teach.  Jesus rebuked His disciples for their pride and desire for worldly greatness, and He taught them humility, honesty and forgiveness as essentials for unity and harmony among God’s people.

When we start living in an atmosphere of humility and honesty, we must take some risks and expect some dangers. Unless humility and honesty result in forgiveness, relationships cannot be mended and strengthened.  Peter recognized the risks involved and asked Jesus how he should handle them in the future.

But Peter made some serious mistakes.  To begin with, he lacked humility himself.  He was sure that his brother would sin against him, but not he sinning against his brother!  Peter’s second mistake was in asking for limits and measures.  Where there is love, there can be no limits or dimensions. (Eph. 3:17-19).  Peter thought he was showing great faith and love when he offered to forgive at least seven times.  After all, the rabbis taught that three times was already sufficient.

Our Lord’s reply, “Until 70 times 7 (490 times) must have shocked Peter.  Who could keep count for that many offenses?  But that was exactly the point Jesus was making:  “Love keeps no record of wrongs”.  By the time we have forgiven a brother that many times, we are in the habit of forgiving.

But Jesus was not advising careless or shallow forgiveness.  Christian love is not blind.  The forgiveness Christ requires is on the basis of the instructions He gave in Matthew 18:15-20.  If a brother is guilty of a repeated sin, no doubt he would find strength and power to conquer that sin through the encouragement of his loving and forgiving brethren.  If we condemn a brother, we bring out the worst in him.  But if we create an atmosphere of love and forgiveness, we can help God bring out the best in him.

The parable illustrates the power of forgiveness.  It is important to note that this parable is not about salvation, for salvation is wholly of grace and is unconditionally given.   To make God’s forgiveness a temporary thing is to violate the very truth of the whole scripture.  The parable deals with forgiveness between brothers, not between the lost sinners and God.  The emphasis in this chapter is on brother forgiving another brother.

The main character in this parable went through three stages in his introduction to forgiveness.

He was a debtor (vv. 23-27).  This man had been stealing funds from the king and, when the books were audited, his crime was discovered. The total tax levy in Palestine was about 800 talents a year, so you can see how dishonest this man was. In terms of today’s buying power, this was probably equivalent to over $10 million.

But this man actually thought he could get out of the debt his own way.  He told the king that, given enough time, he could pay it back.  In the economy of that day, a man would have had to work twenty years to earn one talent.

Let’s try to visualize the size of the debt of the servant and the length of time needed to pay his debt.

We detect two sins here: pride and lack of sincere repentance.   The man was not ashamed because he stole the money; he was ashamed because he got caught.  And he actually thought he was big enough to earn the money to repay the king’s account.

His case was hopeless, except for one thing:  The king was a man of compassion. He assumed the loss and forgave the servant.  This meant that the man was free and that he and his family would not be thrown into a debtor’s prison.  The servant did not deserve this forgiveness; it was purely an act of love and mercy on the part of the master.

He was a creditor (vv. 28-30). The servant left the presence of the king and went and found a fellow servant who owed him 100 pence.  The average worker earned one penny a day, (1 penny = 50 pence) so this debt was insignificant compared to what the servant had owed the king. Instead of sharing with his friend the joy of his own release, the servant mistreated his friend and demanded that he pay the debt.  The debtor used the same approach as the servant: “Have patience with me and I will pay you all of it!”  But the unjust servant was unwilling to grant to others what he wanted others to grant him.

Perhaps he had the legal right to throw the man in prison, but he did not have the moral right.  He had been forgiven himself  -- should he not forgive his fellow servant?  He and his family had been spared the shame and suffering of prison.  Should he not spare his friend too?

He became a prisoner (vv. 31-34).   The king originally delivered him from prison, but the servant put himself back in.  The servant exercised justice and cast his friend into prison.  “So you want to live by justice?”  asked the king.  “Then you shall have justice! Throw the wicked servant in prison and torment him!  I will do to him as he has done to others.”

The world’s worst prison is the prison of an unforgiving heart.  If we refuse to forgive others,  then we are only imprisoning ourselves and causing our own torment.  Some of the most miserable people in the world are those who would not forgive others.  They lived only to imagine ways to punish these people who had wronged them. But they were really only punishing themselves.

What was wrong with this man? 

The  same thing that is wrong with many professing Christians:  They have received forgiveness, but they have not really experienced forgiveness deep in their hearts. Therefore, they are unable to share forgiveness with those who have wronged them.  If we live only according to justice, always seeking to get what is ours, we will put ourselves into prison.  But if we live according to forgiveness, sharing with others what God has shared with us, then we will enjoy freedom and joy.  Peter asked for a just measuring rod;  Jesus told him to practice forgiveness and forget the measuring rod.

Our Lord’s warning is serious.  He did not say that God saves only those who forgive others.  The theme of this parable is forgiveness between brothers, not salvation for lost sinners.  Jesus warned us that God cannot forgive us if we do not have humble and repentant hearts.  We reveal the true condition of our hearts by the way we treat others.  When our hearts are humble and repentant, we will gladly forgive our brothers.  But where there is pride and a desire for revenge, there can be no true repentance; and this means God cannot forgive.

In other words, it is not enough to receive God’s forgiveness, or even the forgiveness of others.  We must experience that forgiveness in our hearts so that it humbles us and makes us gentle and forgiving toward others.  The servant in the parable did not have a deep experience of forgiveness and humility.  He was simply glad to be “off the hook.”  He had never really repented.

Trampled Fragrance

A little boy, being asked what forgiveness is, gave the beautiful answer:  “It is the odor that flower breathe when they are trampled upon.”

John Selwyn’s Name-sake

John Selwyn, who became the Bishop of the South Pacific, was renowned for his boxing skills in his university days.  On a certain occasion he had to utter grave words of rebuke and warning to a professed convert.  The man, removed from savagery only by a generation or two, struck the Bishop a violent blow on the face with his clenched fist.

All Selwyn did in return was to fold his arms and look into his face.  With his powerful arm and massive fist he could have easily knocked him down, but instead he waited calmly for another blow.  It was too much for his assailant; he was ashamed and fled into the jungle. 

Years afterward the Bishop came home seriously ill.  One day the man who had struck him came to his successor to confess Christ in baptism.  Convinced of the genuineness of his conversion, he was asked what new name he desired to take as a Christian.  “Call me John Selwyn,” he replied, “for it was he who taught me what Jesus Christ is like.”

To forgive is an opportunity to demonstrate the love of Christ to the one who wronged us.

At home with son’s killer

During the Korean War, a South Korean Christian, a civilian, was arrested by the communists and ordered shot.  But when the young communist leader learned that the prisoner was in charge of an orphanage caring for small children, he decided to spare him and kill his son instead.  So they shot the 19 year old boy in the presence of his father.

Later the fortunes of war changed, and the young communist leader was captured by the UN forces, tried, and condemned to death.  But before the sentence could be carried out, the Christian whose boy had been killed pleaded for the life of the killer.  He declared that he was young, that he really did not know what he was doing.  “Give him to me.” said the father, “and I’ll train him.”

The UN forces granted the request, and that father took the murderer of his boy into his own home and cared for him.  Today the young communist leader is a Christian pastor.

Epigram

• The bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
• Speak well of your enemies; remember you made them.
• The greatest conqueror is he who overcomes the enemy without a blow

“And be you kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you”  Eph. 4:32 “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any:  even as Christ forgave you, so also do you.  (Col. 3:13)