Posted on 09/13/2008 9:49:16 PM PDT by Charles Henrickson
“Forgiveness Doesn’t Count” (Matthew 18:21-35)
“Forgiveness Doesn’t Count.” Oh, don’t get me wrong! I don’t mean that it’s not important. No, forgiveness counts for a lot in that respect. In fact, it’s everything. We’d be lost without it. But when I say, “Forgiveness Doesn’t Count,” I mean it in the way that Jesus teaches it, which is to say, forgiveness doesn’t keep score. Forgiveness doesn’t count--it doesn’t keep score or keep track of--how many times it has to forgive or how much sin it has to have mercy on.
That’s the way it is with God toward us, and that’s the way it is with us toward one another. God forgives us, freely and completely. Therefore we are to forgive one another in the same way, freely and completely, not counting or keeping score or keeping track. That’s the connection Jesus draws in the Holy Gospel for today, the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.
What sets it up is Peter coming to Jesus with a question. Jesus has been talking about life in his church that he’s going to establish, about how we are deal with a brother who sins against us, how we are to seek to gain the brother back. So that prompts a question from Peter: “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?”
Peter is trying to quantify forgiveness. He wants to keep score. He may think he’s sounding generous and magnanimous, suggesting what seems to him like a lot of times to have to show forgiveness. Seven times! Aren’t I being grand and merciful, Jesus? I’m willing to go up to seven whole times!
But Jesus ups the ante: “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Whoa, whip out your notepad, Peter! Seventy times seven! That comes to . . . let’s see, carry the four . . . 490 times I’ve got to forgive the guy who does me wrong! That’s a lot! I’m gonna need a bigger scorecard. But if I keep a careful record, and I keep track of every infraction, then I guess on the 491st time the bozo does me dirt, then I don’t have to forgive him! If only I can hold out that long. . . .
Well, no, that’s not how it goes. It’s not like: 488, forgive; 489, forgive; 490, forgive, but that’s it. . . . Ah, 491, now I can finally get my revenge! Bzzt! Wrong! Of course, we understand what Jesus is saying. By picking such a ridiculously high number, he’s saying, in effect, Don’t keep score at all! Not seventy times seven, not seventy-seven, not even seven. Don’t keep track of how often you forgive. Just forgive, whether it’s the first time or the 491st. Forgiveness doesn’t count.
And to drive home the point, Jesus goes on to tell what we commonly refer to as the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. You know the story. I’ll just paraphrase it here briefly. There’s a servant who owes his king a whole bunch of money--bazillions and bazillions of dollars. “Bazillions” was an ancient unit of measurement, by the way. This guy had a debt so big Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have pooled their resources and they still would not have been able to bail him out. I mean, this was a big debt. And now the king is going to foreclose and call in the debt. The servant is hauled in, called on the carpet before the king, and he’s told, “Pay up!” The guy is shaking in his boots, ’cause he knows he has no means whatsoever to pay off this enormous debt and he knows what the king could do to him.
But this king doesn’t do what he could do to the servant. He doesn’t toss the guy in the hoosegow and throw away the key, leaving him there to rot in debtors’ prison. No. He could have done that, by rights. But he chooses not to. Instead, he has pity on him. The master has mercy on his servant and forgives him his debt and releases him.
So now the servant is free and he’s learned a powerful lesson about mercy and forgiveness. Or has he? Apparently not, because the first thing he does with his freedom is to go out and find a fellow servant who owes him a little bit of money--an extremely small amount, in comparison to what he owed the king. I mean, we’re talking chump change. But this servant, who had been forgiven such a huge amount by his master, will not show even a small fraction of that mercy toward his fellow servant. He grabs him and starts to choke the poor fella. “Pay me what you owe me!” he demands. He shows no pity toward the man who owes him a measly few bucks and he has that guy thrown in prison. The unmerciful servant has obviously not learned how forgiveness works in this kingdom. He shows that he really does not want to operate on the basis of mercy but on the old way of accounting and scorekeeping and payback and revenge. Sadly, he has rejected the ways of his king.
The king finds out and says, If that’s how it’s going to be with you, so be it. Go to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200. And then Jesus puts the punch-line warning on the parable: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
My friends, the meaning is plain and clear: Forgiveness is the way it works in the kingdom of heaven. If you want to operate on some other basis, of scorekeeping and payback, you yourself would be in a whole heap of trouble. That’s not how your heavenly Father has dealt with you. So why act that way toward your fellow forgiven sinner? God has forgiven that other person, just as he has forgiven you. Then why would you act as though you’re greater than God? To not forgive is really to set yourself up as an idol. You think you’re greater than God. God forgave that person, but you think you ought not to have to. Who are you, O man, to not forgive someone whom God has already forgiven? Who are you, O sinner, to not forgive someone else when you yourself have had all your sins forgiven by God? You see, unforgiveness is a matter of idolatry and of ingratitude and of rejecting the ways of God’s kingdom.
For all our unforgiveness, forgive us, O Lord! Give us new and merciful hearts, reflecting the mercy you have shown toward us! Help us to realize that you have forgiven that other person who may very well have wronged us. But scorekeeping is not the way it is with you, O Lord. Help us to forgive, even as we have been forgiven.
Jesus teaches us the importance of forgiveness over and over again in the gospels. I guess it must have been important to him and he must have realized how slow of heart we are to “get it.” Mercy toward sinners, love toward one another--these are major themes in Jesus’ teaching to his disciples. This matter is so important, Jesus even put it into the prayer he would have us pray every day. In the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Every time we ask for God’s forgiveness--and we sin much daily--we are reminded that we extend that forgiveness also toward those who do us wrong.
Likewise, in the Apostles’ Creed, we say, “I believe in . . . the forgiveness of sins.” Well, do we or don’t we? If I believe in the forgiveness of sins, then that applies to everybody, not just to me. I’m not the only person God has forgiven. Christ died for that other person, too.
Well, see, now we’re getting at it, aren’t we? Forgiveness has to do--it has everything to do--with the death of Jesus Christ for sinners. He not only died for me and you, he also died for that brother who sinned against you, that person you don’t like because he did you wrong. But then sometimes I’m the jerk who does wrong to somebody else. Now magnify that offense by bazillions and bazillions and you might begin to come close to measuring the offense you and I have committed toward God, by thumbing our nose at the God who created us and loves us so much. So we’re all in the same boat. And we’d all be up a creek without a paddle, if it were not for the magnificent and unfathomable mercy our king and master has shown toward every one of us. Forgiveness is the way of the kingdom. There is no other way.
An analogy to help us understand the importance of forgiveness among Christian brothers and sisters: Knee cartilage. Yes, knee cartilage. As one who played a lot of basketball in his youth, I can attest to the value of cartilage, especially when you don’t have it. Walking can become painful. Worst case scenario, you get bone against bone, and that can be excruciating. Well, the church is the body of Christ, and we need to walk together in “joint” accord, if you will. And when you spend a lot of time together in close proximity, you need the cartilage of forgiveness, or else you’ll rub each other the wrong way and it can be pretty painful.
Same thing in a family, of course. Husbands and wives, parents and children, you know the importance of forgiveness, if the household is going to function harmoniously. The more time you spend together, the closer you are, the more opportunities there are to hurt one another, ironically enough. So we need to be able to forgive one another. Lord, help us to forgive as you have forgiven each one of us, fully and freely, for Christ’s sake.
Another illustration: Motor oil. Without motor oil, regularly refreshed, the engine will get dry and the friction will increase and things will get hot and rough in a hurry. Soon you’re looking at a breakdown. Forgiveness is the motor oil we need to keep things running smoothly.
Well, this would all be just moral exhortation without a basis or source, if it were not for the inexhaustible mercy God has shown us in Christ. If I want you to forgive your brothers and sisters here in this church or in your family at home, I’m not just going to lecture you on the importance of forgiveness. Just telling you what you ought to do will not enable you to do it. No, here again I want to point you to the cross of Christ. There see the great mercy God has shown to you, sending his only Son to take all of your sins--all of them, the whole enormous debt--and to die for them, to die in your place, paying the unpayable debt you owed with his holy blood of limitless value, for he is the holy Son of God. Here at the foot of the cross is the school where you will learn forgiveness. In Holy Baptism God washed away all your sins and made you his child, to reflect his character. In Holy Absolution, time and time again, God continues to forgive you. In the Holy Supper, you receive Christ’s body and blood for the forgiveness of sins.
Forgiveness is where it’s at. It’s standard operating procedure in the kingdom of God. And with this forgiveness, you also receive what it leads to: the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Dear ones, God does not count your trespasses against you. And therefore you will not be able to count the days you will spend, along with all your fellow redeemed in Christ, in the unending bliss of heaven.
I had a professor at the seminary who used to say, when speaking about the gospel, “No mathematics!” By that he meant, Don’t try to quantify how much God forgives, as though it’s only a limited amount. It’s not like that. Forgiveness, the gospel, is the whole lot and always more. “No mathematics!” when it comes to forgiveness. God forgives all our sins, all the time, every time. In the same way, then, we forgive one another, for we are God’s children.
Forgiveness doesn’t count. It doesn’t count or keep score or keep track of how many times it is used or how large or small the debt is that it’s forgiving. Forgiveness just . . . forgives. It’s like that with God toward us, isn’t it? Yes, it is! God has forgiven our mountain of debt, all of it, all because of Christ’s holy precious blood shed for us on the cross. And God keeps on forgiving us, time after time after time when we sin against him, as we do on a daily basis. My fellow forgiven in Christ, because of God’s immeasurable mercy and forgiveness, we are his children, his family. And in this family, forgiveness is a way of life--for each of us, and from each of us toward one another. “No mathematics!”
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?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.
"Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 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. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. 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.' So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 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. Then his master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."
I guess ‘Go and sin no more’ just lost meaning.
How so? What do you mean? I don't follow.
One says to stop sinning and the other says there is no limit.
And both are true, each in its own context. Jesus does not contradict himself.
Jesus also told us ‘till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law’
Have you stopped sinning?
Are you suggesting that we are told to do the impossible?
You can never know how much this post just ministered to me. I have been away from the church for a while. Thank you. if you have a ping list please add me.
The goodness of God leads us to repentance. What greater demonstration of His goodness is there than His forgiveness?
What if a person doesn’t ask for forgiveness and continues acting the same way?
I agree.
No, I just asked if you believed you had- on rare occasions I’ve run across people who think they stopped sinning after they were born again.
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