Matthew 18:21-35 Sermon. September 27, 2020. Grace-Benson and Grace-Vail. Forgiveness - Second Chance; or Transformational Power? When Peter asked Jesus, “How many times should I forgive my brother? Up to seven times?,” Jesus knew he really didn’t understand the point of forgiveness. When you are wronged, and the person asks forgiveness, and you sigh, or get angry, or refuse; Jesus knows, you don’t really understand the point of forgiveness. What is forgiveness for? Option a: Forgiveness means giving someone a second chance so they can make up for what they did. Option b: Forgiveness is a transformative event in which the forgiven is so blown away by the graciousness of the forgiver that he cannot help but become a new kind of person. We often think and act as if option a were the point of forgiveness. We need to be retaught and retrained that option b is really what God is up to. Luckily, Jesus instructed Peter and illustrated powerfully what forgiveness is for, and we get to learn as Peter did. His question, “How many times should I forgive my brother?” actually came in a conversation about being great in the kingdom of heaven. The disciples were arguing about greatness in the kingdom, and Jesus taught them - greatness in the kingdom requires child-like humility; greatness in the kingdom means taking sin deadly seriously, both in yourself and in others; and then with this question and answer, kingdom greatness means a powerful and profound forgiveness captivates you and transforms you into a new kind of person who forgives in a new kind of way. Peter wasn’t there though. He thought, ok, take sin seriously, forgive your brother, but to a point. There has to be a forgiveness limit. Seven times seemed generous. Let’s give Peter a little credit. Seven times is hard. Have you ever been betrayed, once, twice, three times and forgiven? Seven times seems crazy. Have you been hurt, damaged, pained by another’s sin against you, and felt like “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me?” Seven times seems pretty generous. But Jesus was having none of it. He responded, “Not seven times, but seven times seventy.” The point is not the mathematical calculated number. The point is, there is no limit. To ask for the forgiveness limit shows that you are missing the entire point of forgiveness altogether. To set a limit assumes that the point of forgiveness is to give the person another chance to do better. To make up for their wrongs. To show their contrition by their correction of the hurt they caused. To forgive is to give a second chance. That’s how we think. Now, what’s wrong with that kind of thinking? This is where Jesus’ story is so engenius. He says, “There was a kingdom and a king who had a servant; and the servant owed 10,000 talents.” What is 10,000 talents, is that like $10,000? That would be a good amount, not easy for most of us to pay off. But actually the estimates I found on 10,000 talents this week, it’s a little tricky to nail down exactly, low estimate: 4 billion dollars. High side estimate: 1.14 trillion dollars. That’s what the servant owed, billions or even trillion of dollars. Now considering that’s the debt, what do you think of the servants words in v. 26? “Master, be patient with me, and I will pay you everything.” Do you think this servant had any chance of paying 4 billion to 1 trillion dollars back? Not in a lifetime. There are such a small minority of people who could pay back such a debt, and the didn’t get to where they are by racking up massive debt. It makes you wonder, how in the world did the servant manage to possibly accumulate so much debt? Only through persistent mismanagement and miscalculation, only through negligence and
wastefulness and presumption. If someone owed trillions in debt, you’d say, you deserve the trouble you’re in. I googled “most indebted person in the world” and came across the story of Jerome Kerviel, a french trader who is on the hook for 6.3 billion dollars of debt because of his shady trading practices combined with computer hacking skills. Now you tell me, if you’re his boss, or his judge, what would you say to Jerome Kerviel? See you later. Off to prison with you. The master in Jesus’ story said, not prison, but that the man and all he had, including his family was to be sold to pay off some of the debt. No way a whole household would sell for billions of trillions. But it would at least pay some of the debt. What else could the master do with someone so negligent and irresponsible? Now, we need to stop and remember that this story isn’t about real money debts. It’s about relationship debt, between God and people first, and then between people and people second. You and I have a hard time admitting that the debt we owe God is unpayable. Due to our rebellious attitudes, because of our insistence on taking what he has given us, the created world, our created bodies, and being persistently negligent and ruinous with them; because that is how we naturally live before God, our sin debt is absolutely unpayable. There is no way to pay what we owe. Psalm 47 says, “No man can give the price of a human life.” None of us can pay God back for the life we’re inclined to ruin, first the human life he’s given you personally, then all kinds of ways you ruin the other gifts and other people God has put in your path. And yet, we dare to come before God with an attitude that does like this, “Just be patient God, what are you so upset about? Just give me some time, I’ll get it right. I’ll pay you back. I just need a second chance. Don’t be so mean, God.” We act that way. We come with an unpayable debt and say, “I’ve got this. I can figure it out. Just let me have a chance.” How offensive. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have a servant so reprehensible in how he used your assets in the first place, but he can’t even admit that what he’s done is beyond repair. He won’t even admit it. That’s actually a picture of what every human heart does before God, you and I included. We need to realize the massive-ness of our debt before God. We need to admit that there is no chance in all eternity that we could ever pay him back what he is due. And in the first surprise of the story, the master does what any banker or investor listening to Jesus would have thought so foolish and crazy; the master had compassion on the man and not, second chance, not off to jail and pay off some; he forgave the debt. The enormous sum of money, the billions or trillions of loss he would absorb so that the servant could go free. It’s unthinkable for someone to be moved by compassion so much that they would go to such lengths at such damage to themselves to get another unworthy servant out of trouble. But that’s the heart of God on display. And remember, this isn’t a story about money debt. It’s a story of our relational debt to God. God forgives the debt of your offensive, presumptuous, wasteful, negligence of all the good gifts he’s given you. He doesn’t even say, “first you need to realize and admit you can’t pay it.” He forgives you first even while you are still a sinner. Even while you still think the problem is with him and not with you, even while you still think, “Ok God, just give me a second chance and I’ll do better,” and he knows you have no chance of ever doing enough to pay off the debt, he is moved by compassion and he forgives you. He sees you in your need, he sees you on your knees. If the servant did one thing
right in the story, it’s that. He was on his knees. And God sees you hopeless; and at great cost to himself, he absorbs the damages of your neglect, wastefulness, your ruination of his estate. God emptied heaven of its greatest treasure for you. There is no dollar equivalent to the value of his one and only son, the only perfect man who ever lived, God the Son for all eternity, given into a judgment way worse than debt court; he was given over to abandonment, the Father turned away from the perfect son while he died on the cross so that his compassion could extend to you. Not to give you a second chance, but just because: that’s the kind of master he is. That;s the kind of kingdom he runs. That’s how he does things. The foolishness of God on display, that he would let his greatest treasure go for the sake of malevolent servants who have done him wrong. Now, this is a hard lesson to get. This story shows; Peter’s question shows; we do not understand the depths of God’s compassion. That when we come to God as we frequently do with mixed or outright bad motives, he does not punish us for it. When you come to God wanting forgiveness, very often it’s because you think you just need a chance to pay him back for the wrong you’ve done. And you’re wrong. Yet he lets you go, he releases you from your debt. He puts it on Jesus, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Forgiveness is not a second chance, but a display of God’s compassion meant to transform you into a person thankful but not indebted. Grateful, but not transactional with God. He does all the giving, you simply receive compassion, pity even, from him. And that’s ok, because he says it’s ok. Because though he gave up his greatest treasure to death, the treasure of Jesus’ life came back to him. You don’t owe him, because the payment was re-claimed and the perfect Trinity lives harmonious again. Only now you are invited in. This is so hard for us. It’s so natural for us to be transactional with God. You help me out, I pay you back with my life. So, how do you know whether or not you view forgiveness “a” as second chance, or “b” as transformational event displaying the compassion of God which powerfully captivates you? One way, notice how you deal with your fellow servants. The servant went out and found a servant who owed him a few hundred denarii. How much is that? Best estimate I found, $10,000. Not a small amount. Not billions or trillions, but still, a large sum for most. Is it payable over time? Probably. If you worked with someone and collected slowly on a debt like that, you could probably get it all back. But what does the servant do? He grabbed him by the neck and started to squeeze the life-breath out of that servant demanding, “pay me what you owe.” The fellow servant did the same thing he had once done, fell to his knees, and begged him, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.” He probably could too. But the servant refused, and put him in prison until to pay him back. Now, what lessons can we learn? This is a scary insight into the mercilessness lurking inside each of us. Forgiven so huge a debt before our maker, we are all capable of such violence, such vengefulness, such wrath and anger against people when they cross us, when they sin against us, when they hurt and damage us, and our kingdoms, and they mess with our plans for life, or for the day, or even if they interrupt a moment of our time. I’m guessing you haven’t had your hands physically around any necks lately. But in your mind, you can do this. You can desire to strangle the life out of people when they cross your will. Your words can be a choke hold. You’re capable of creating prisons for people, where you will not say
a kind word to them, won’t let them off the hook at all until they pay you back what you think is yours. A few observations: Would the first servant have a better chance of getting the $10,000 when the second servant was inside or outside the jail? What happens when a person gets locked up, do they suddenly have more money earning opportunities or less? Does debt repaying get easier or harder from jail? It doesn’t make sense to lock him up if you really want the money. And in the same way, when someone hurts you and you are convinced they need to make it up to you, does choking them with your words actually make it easier or harder for them to make things right? Does creating a prison in your mind for them actually help you get the results you supposedly want, or not? Any relational repair gets way harder when you add your cruelty to their original wrong. It creates a tangled web of not only their sin against you, but your vengefulness against them, and makes it much more unlikely that the repayment will ever come to you. We, like the man in Jesus’ story, are prepared to excuse our own debts, but to be merciless with the debts of others. We claim a right which is not our own, to be able to say 7 times, but not 8, 7 times I’ll forgive, but number 8 I’m at your throat, ready to throw you in prison. In the context of what incredible debt canceling God has given to you, do you have any right to go to a spouse, a parent, a child, a friend, a co worker and demand vengeance? That’s the power of the sin inside of you, it’s the only thing capable of taking the great compassion of God and turning it into vengeance against the people around you. I have to speak this strongly because I see this in myself. So where’s the hope? First, we need to see the outcome of that kind of living for what it is. That attitude basically is stuck in the forgiveness is for second chances mindset. God forgave me so I could have a second chance, and I forgive others so they can pay me back, and if they can’t to the slammer with them. God says, for a person who views forgiveness that way, they are headed for a time when the forgiveness they think they’ve gotten from God is actually lost to them, they have cut themselves off from the forgiveness that could have been theirs. They will be locked into an eternal prison of always being in debt, always thinking they can pay it off, and never able to. Jesus said “The master was angry and put him in jail. That is what my heavenly father will do to you unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.” And not once, not twice, not seven times, but over and over and over again, no matter how much it hurts you, this is what you are called to. This is hard, when you try to do it on your human strength, it’s not only hard, it’s impossible. You need to operate on the strength of Jesus and his compassion. Jesus calls on you to change the way you interact with people from a balancing accounts formula, to a compassion based relationship. What will it cost you? The willingness to absorb debt rather than exact and demand repayment. What will it give you? A release from vengeance based relationships, that’s poison to your soul anyways. It will give you a closeness to Jesus and a newness to the forgiveness you receive from him. It will give you a relationship with others in which you are being Christ to them. You are operating on the same kind of compassion Jesus has put in you to work through you. Though he could rightly say to you, “Wicked, evil, ungrateful servant.” He instead says, “my compassion is yours, go, be released from your debt. I will absorb the cost. Be free. And be compassionate and forgiving toward others. Not because you’re paying me back in any way. But because that’s what my compassion does in you.”
So now, when your spouse sins against you for the 77th time. When your kids do the same negligent offensive thing for the 700th time: rather than choking them and demanding of them and throwing them in a prison, you can say; Hey, you’ve wronged me. I know how you feel. It’s not great needing to be on your knees begging for mercy, I’ve been there. And do you know what happened? I received such great mercy. My master released me, absorbed a huge painful costly debt, for me. All because he had compassion. And I can’t get over it. Every day I breathe air as a free man and not a prisoner, it’s his air I breathe. Every day I see my wife and kids it’s because he put his ability to see his wife and kids in danger for me. I can’t get over it, and I can’t help but think that you begging me for mercy is a chance for me to tell you about my master, and show you that actually, the debt you owe me is nothing compared to what you owe him. But he treats you the same way. We’re just fellow servants, $10,000? Don’t worry about it. If you pay me back, ok, if not, I can be ok with that to.I accept whatever you have to give me. If it's more debt, so be it, I will absorb rather than dish out, as much as possible. Why? Because that’s who my master has made me. That’s the life I’ve been called to. Not as a suffering and horrible life, but an invitation to be like him and with him, and in awe of him. I have no ill will against you, I have no demanding of you, I just want you to know the freedom I know, to know the wonder of having a master as great as that. So get up off your knees, and go see him yourself. He’s willing to forgive not 7 times, but 7 times 7 thousand times 7 million. Our master was willing to be ruined rather than to ruin us. To face the terrible consequences of our mismanagement and irresponsibility rather than to force those consequences on us. His patience and forgiving love knows no limitations, and that’s a good thing that we both have a master like that. So what is forgiveness for: second chances, or transformation? Should you forgive 7 times or 7 trillion times? Your answer not just in words, but in your actions, reveals a lot about who you think you are in relation to God. May you forgive 7 trillions times over, because the force of Jesus forgiveness is transforming you day by day. Amen.