The Absurdity of Unforgiveness
We are a nation drowning in debt. According to Forbes, Americans have accumulated $1.75 trillion in student loan debt. For many, paying off even $40,000 in student debt seems like an insurmountable task. Add in a car loan, a mortgage, and a few credit cards, and a person could easily find themselves well over six figures in total debt. Carrying such a load is like trying to deadlift the family minivan to make room for a game of pickup basketball.
These days, student loan forgiveness carries a mixed bag of emotions, and the implications are too complex to make a one-to-one comparison with the forgiveness of Christ. However, in general, debt forgiveness at the personal level is a very biblical concept. It is an illustration of a much deeper and lasting forgiveness. As we read Jesus’s parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:21–35, we are thrown into a jarring scenario illustrating both the lavish forgiveness of God and the absurdity of unforgiveness in the Christian life.
Seven Times?
Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” (Mat. 18:21). At first, we may be tempted to shun Peter for such a question. But after spending some time in the local church and among other redeemed sinners, it’s easy to understand how we, too, could be exasperated by the sinfulness of others. By asking this question, Peter appears to be earnestly seeking God’s expectations for bearing with the sins of our brothers and sisters in the Lord.
Jesus is a masterful teacher. He responds, “seventy-seven times.” In our modern days of smartphones, notebooks, and checklists, we can probably keep up with seventy-seven sins against us. Yet, if we consider how many friends and family members we have, we’d exhaust ourselves trying to keep count. Jesus is actually teaching us to avoid setting a limit on forgiveness in the Christian life. In the words of Leon Morris, “forgiveness is a way of life.” Lest forgiving someone seventy-seven times seems excessive to Peter, Jesus chooses to raise the stakes.
Opulent Forgiveness
He continues with a parable demonstrating what forgiveness looks like in the Kingdom of heaven. A servant owed the king ten thousand talents. We don’t deal in talents, so the debt may not seem like anything extraordinary. But Jesus’s original audience knew a talent was twenty years’ wages. In today’s currency, he would owe approximately 6.8 billion dollars for a general laborer. What an outlandish amount of money to consider paying back!
As the king looks to settles his accounts with the servant, the indebted man is desperate. He’s supposed to pay his due today, but it’s impossible. With no other option, he falls to his knees and implores the king for mercy, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything” (v. 26). This request is more ridiculous than the amount he actually owed the king. No amount of human patience could endure the time it would take for 2,500 lifetimes worth of debt to be paid off. This servant would need to work 200,000 years to pay everything off without interest.
The king responds “out of pity for him,” releases him, and forgives all of the debt (v. 27). Take a second to enter this scene and feel the immense weight lifted off the servant’s shoulders as he is forgiven billions of dollars in debt. The king’s wealth and generosity are evident in his ability to lend such a hefty sum, but his forgiveness is even more lavish. This sort of forgiveness changes people’s lives forever!
Extravagant Unforgiveness
Freed from the slavery of debt, the servant now gets to tell his wife, children, and fellow servants about the shackles being removed from his hands and feet (Prov. 22:7). He should be jumping and flipping and screaming like a madman because he has his life back. But he proves to be a madman instead.
Though he was emancipated from his debt, the chains still remained on his soul. At his first opportunity to display the forgiveness he so desperately pleaded for himself, he proved he had no clue what had just been done for him. He had no comprehension of the debt the king had just forgiven on his behalf.
His fellow servant owed him $13,600—a mere 100 denarii. This is a hefty sum for most people, and it’s certainly an amount of debt most of us would want paid back to us if we lent it out. His desire to receive the pay wasn’t the problem. It was his unforgiving response:
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 (Mat. 18:28–30).
Eternal Consequences
This scene probably jarred Jesus’s audience. The unforgiving servant went out and found his fellow servant. He didn’t stumble upon him; he was searching for him! Then he violently seized and choked him before a word was ever spoken. And when his fellow servant used nearly identical words to plead for patience to pay back the debt, he refused and threw the man in prison. For a man who just had his life handed back to him, his response should utterly appall us!
This is us every time we walk in unforgiveness. We’ve received a lifetime of forgiveness, but we struggle to walk away from three months’ wages. We preach the riches of God’s grace toward the prodigal son all while harboring the older brother’s sentiments in our own hearts.
The consequences for the servant in the story are devastating. The other servants reported his wicked actions to their master, and the unforgiving man was delivered to the jailers until he could pay back his debt. All 6.8 billion dollars. In full. He received a lifetime of suffering in exchange for three months of debt owed to him. He wasted his life because he failed to grasp the mercy that was shown to him first.
The implications of this are massive for every professing Christian. In talking to Peter, Jesus wastes no words in explaining the meaning of parable: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (Matt. 18:35). If we are unwilling and unable to forgive from our hearts, the evidence speaks for itself. If we can’t forgive others, we don’t have the forgiveness of God (Matt. 6:14–15).
This doesn’t mean we earn forgiveness by forgiving. It also doesn’t mean we lose salvation the moment we struggle to forgive others. Rather, this parable reminds us that whoever has been forgiven much, loves much (Luke 7:47). Jesus was calling Peter, and all who read this parable, to be forgiving people. Gospel people are forgiving people.
There is much more that could be said about forgiveness, reconciliation, consequences for sin, God’s justice, and so on. Jesus is not calling for us to take sin lightly or neglect the weightier matters of the law (Matt. 23:23). Yet, he is calling us to a lifestyle of forgiveness springing from the forgiveness found in him.
Who owes you three months’ wages? Will you forgive them?
Chrys Jones (@chrys_jones) is a husband and father of four. He is a pastoral resident at Grace Church in Danville, Kentucky, and he writes regularly at dwellwithchrist.com. Chrys is also a Christian Hip-Hop artist and producer for Christcentric.