Dear Friends in Christ,
Someone forcing you to do something is never pleasant. This is true especially if you have to keep doing it repeatedly. If you are older, you may remember a teacher in school making you write on the blackboard, “I will not talk in class,” like 50 times. Or, your pastor making you review and recite Bible passages over and over to commit them to memory.
What a sense of freedom there is to repeat something because you want to. No one has to force us to kiss our spouse good-bye when we leave the house. I love closing each worship service by putting the Lord’s benediction on you to take home for the week ahead.
Where does forgiveness fit in these scenarios? Is forgiving someone who has sinned against me something God has forced on me, or is it a matter of the freedom of have in Christ’s forgiveness of me? What about the frequency for forgiveness?
The Holy Spirit will answer our questions under the theme, O God, How Great Our Debt to You. God’s grace has cancelled our great debt. God’s grace makes bitterness against our neighbor depart.
Jesus had been teaching his disciples about forgiveness. He had entrusted them with the ministry of the keys that included forgiving sins. Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant is his response to Peter’s direct question, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?” The apostle suggested a number, “Up to seven times?”
There are two ways to interpret Peter’s question. First, it could suggest that Peter looked at forgiveness as law, and therefore came with a predetermined limit. If he had to forgive someone, surely there came an end point. If that were the case, Peter likely thought he was being generous by going all the way to seven times.
Instead, we will follow Luther’s advice to put the best construction on our neighbor’s words. Peter’s question may well have been an honest inquiry into not only the nature of forgiveness but also its duration so that he would know. He understood forgiveness as gospel and wanted to use the keys properly.
Either way, immediately, Jesus tells one of my favorite extended similes, which is what his parables are. “I tell you not seven times, but seventy-seven times. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.”
The number Jesus suggests means “unlimited.” Before he told the parable, Jesus told Peter there is no limit to the number of times I am to forgive someone who sins against me.
A king called his servant before him to settle his account. The amount the servant owed with very high, and in fact, unrepayable. For no other reason than the king’s compassion, his concern for the man right down to his guts which the ancients believed were the seat of emotion, the king cancelled the man’s great debt. He set the man free from his debt. It was now as if the debt never existed. “The master took pity on the man, canceled the debt and let him go.”
Do you feel the king’s grace in those words? You should. O God, how great our debt to you. We owe you a great unpayable debt of holiness. We owe you an unpayable debt of perfect love for you and for our neighbors. Yet, by your compassion, you will not cast us into the prison of outer darkness in hell because we cannot pay.
O God, your grace has cancelled our great debt. Our Savior was holy in our place and offered his holiness under our punishment. You have cancelled our great debt to you not by setting your Word aside but by putting our sins on your eternal Son who became one of us.
God is the king. Forgiveness in Christ is the cancellation of our debt. Our life in Christ is our freedom as we go through life. In that life, we will run into people who owe us a debt of love. What is our reaction to be; not just once, or twice, or seven times, or seventy-seven times, or 490 times but always and without compulsion of the law? God’s grace makes bitterness against our neighbor depart.
The forgiven servant ran into a neighbor who owed him a debt. Rather than have the compassion for his neighbor that the king had for him, he had his fellow servant thrown into prison. The unmerciful servant had only bitterness toward the one who owed him.
Bitterness is a good definition for the opposite of forgiveness. When someone has hurt us in word or deed, our natural reaction is bitterness. We want to savor that bitterness or repay it hurt for hurt. It is an accurate description of bitterness that it will hurt us more than it will hurt others. That is, unless we lash out at our neighbor and harm them.
Such bitterness is impenitence and unbelief. It is the rejection of the forgiveness in Christ God has given us. God’s grace makes bitterness toward our neighbor depart. It is not that God will forgive me if I forgive the one who sins against me. It is that I will forgive the one who sins against me because God has forgiven me. I will not demand the debt of love from others because God has set me free from my great debt to him. If I do hold a grudge, or give bitterness a home in my heart, then God’s forgiveness of my sins really means nothing to me.
Then, my fate is the same as the unmerciful servant in Jesus’ parable. The king will throw us into the prison of outer darkness of hell; not because he did not cancel my debt but because I despised his compassion. “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your neighbor from your heart.”
“From your heart” is not the law’s compulsion like the teacher or pastor demanding repetition. It is the compulsion of God’s grace in Christ that causes forgiveness to flow freely and without limit. Amen. <SDG>