Micah 6:6-8; Philippians 1:3-11; St Matthew 18:21-35
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Dear redeemed sinners of Christ, today you have set before you a splendid little sermon from our Lord Jesus on the Fifth Petition of the Our Father: And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. You have and believe God’s Word, you do and submit to His will, and are supported by His gifts and blessings, yet your life is still not sinless. You stumble daily and transgress because you live in the world as a sinner among sinners. Thus you are given to pray often and with ferventness this petition, pleading for forgiveness before your King and Lord.
St Peter, as a disciplined catechumen, evidences that he is beginning to understand the importance of forgiveness. The rabbis taught that one should forgive up to three times for sins committed against them. St Peter doubles that plus one! Yet even with his generosity, the Apostle does not fully grasp the limitless nature of God’s forgiveness and its implications for the community of disciples of Jesus.
Our Lord’s answer of seventy times seven cannot mean 77 or even 490 times. The point is that there are to be no limits to the willingness to forgive. The kingdom of heaven operates on forgiveness. And this is more than a one time event. The superabundance of the King’s continual generosity ought to overflow from the forgiven heart of the servant unto his fellow servants.
Therefore the reign of heaven may be likened to a King who wished to settle accounts with His slaves. He’s auditing His books and the debts are being called in. Catechumens of St Matthew’s Gospel are already familiar with the word “debt” as sin; back in chapter six you were taught to pray, Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors (Mt 6:12).
When He began to settle, one was brought to Him who owed Him ten thousand talents. Before we go any further, do this: put yourself in the role of this servant. That is how our Lord Jesus would have St Peter and His disciples understand this parable. This is how catechesis works: the proclamation of God’s Law and Gospel for the preaching of repentance and faith.
So you are the servant. You are hauled before your King and Master, our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom you owe an inconceivable sum: 10,000 talents, an amount equivalent to 200,000 years work. We’re talking tens of billions of dollars. This isn’t a mortgage payment, a car loan, or even student loans. This is you got in really bad, way over your head, racking up debt well beyond your ability to pay, even in a thousand lifetimes. This debt is on the backs of your great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren, and even then, its unpayable.
Now the very fact that the King allowed you to incur such debt is a testament to His mercy and compassion. He didn’t call this debt in when you owed one talent - about 20 years wages - or even 100 talents - 200 years wages! The King is patient and forbearing. He is long-suffering, as God is with us.
But now you are standing before your Maker and Judge, your outrageous debt is being called in. He’s going to sell your house, your goods, all your worldly possessions, even you and your family into slavery in order to reap some small amount of His money back. At such a prospect, what do you do? You do what the flesh always does - you plead more time! This is the answer of all evolutionists pushing their false theories and all papists defending purgatory - more time! Given enough time, they claim, anything is possible. Not this. You’ll never pay it back. Ever.
What does the prophet Micah ask? With what shall I come before the LORD and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of ram, with ten thousand of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Nothing will satisfy the debt you owe. Not your own life, let alone the lives of ten thousand calves and rams, or the life of your oldest son.
Nothing, that is, but the compassion and mercy of the King who is moved with pity to forgive all the debt. But understand this - the debt isn’t merely canceled or written off. A debt of this size must be eaten by someone. If the King goes around forgiving debts to all of His servants, His kingdom will soon go bankrupt! Someone must pay. You can’t do it, but someone has to. This King is not only merciful, but also just.
Here is where you catechumens ought to remember those words of the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.” Why? “So that I may be his own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness.”
What does this mean? This means that the King’s forgiveness of your debt as a slave is the foundation of this parable. You are no longer a slave, but a son. Fully and freely forgiven, owing nothing to anyone. And yet, as a son and heir of the King, you are a slave to all and servant to all, even as the King Himself transferred your debt to Himself. This is the paradoxical nature of the kingdom and being a Christian.
It is as St Paul writes to the Christians in Philippi: you are partners in the Gospel, having fellowship with him in Jesus Christ, who began a good work in you. Abounding in His love you approve what is excellent and are filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. This is what the prophet Micah means when he says, What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
So you leave the presence of your King and Master, having been relieved and forgiven of that inconceivable amount of debt, completely free. What do you do with that freedom? If you find a fellow servant and choke him out for the 100 denarii he owes you, you actually betray a heart that has not been forgiven. In his treatment on the Fifth Petition, Luther said in his Large Catechism,
“If you do not forgive, then do not think that God forgives you. But if you forgive then you have this comfort and assurance, that you are forgiven in heaven. This is not because of your forgiving. For God forgives freely and without condition, out of pure grace, because He has so promised, as the Gospel teaches. But God says this in order that He may establish forgiveness as our confirmation and assurance, as a sign alongside of the promise, which agrees with this prayer in Luke 6: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (LC III 95-96).
The servant refuses to forgive and consigns his fellow-servant to the punishment of which he was spared. He is then hauled before the King again and in anger handed over to the jailers, that is condemned to everlasting death in Hell. May this not happen to you! But be warned, the Day of Judgment is real. St Paul calls it “The Day of Christ.” The books shall be opened and the balance due. It is real and it is imminent. This parable is for us, disciples of Jesus, a warning.
So if you, dear Christian, find yourself unwilling to forgive, if your heart stews on wrongs and seeks vengeance, return to the beginning of the parable and hear again the enormity of your debt. You deserve, just as you say, both temporal and eternal punishment, but the Lord is rich in mercy and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. He has canceled the record of debt that stood against you, nailing it to the Cross (Col 2:14). In short, “If God does not forgive without stopping, we are lost” (LC III 91).
But He has. He does and He will. If You, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with You there is forgiveness, that You may be feared (Ps 130:3-4). When you recognize the full magnitude of your sin, then, by His grace and Spirit, the depths of His compassion and mercy upon you become apparent. You freely receive forgiveness in Jesus Christ and so you freely forgive. This serves as an outward sign to confirm to your conscience that you are forgiven and cause them to rejoice. “It is especially given for this purpose, so that we may use and practice forgiveness every hour, as a thing that we have with us at all times.” (LC III 98).
We practice forgiveness, but never fully perfect it. We are in the world where we sin and are sinned against, always in need of forgiveness and constantly giving it. Such is the Christian life lived in the flesh under the Cross. A life of repentance and faith. A life lived in being forgiven and forgiving. A life lived by faith before God where you are entirely free and slave of none. A life lived in love toward the neighbor where you are bound and a servant of all.
And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the Day of Jesus Christ. In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Dear redeemed sinners of Christ, today you have set before you a splendid little sermon from our Lord Jesus on the Fifth Petition of the Our Father: And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. You have and believe God’s Word, you do and submit to His will, and are supported by His gifts and blessings, yet your life is still not sinless. You stumble daily and transgress because you live in the world as a sinner among sinners. Thus you are given to pray often and with ferventness this petition, pleading for forgiveness before your King and Lord.
St Peter, as a disciplined catechumen, evidences that he is beginning to understand the importance of forgiveness. The rabbis taught that one should forgive up to three times for sins committed against them. St Peter doubles that plus one! Yet even with his generosity, the Apostle does not fully grasp the limitless nature of God’s forgiveness and its implications for the community of disciples of Jesus.
Our Lord’s answer of seventy times seven cannot mean 77 or even 490 times. The point is that there are to be no limits to the willingness to forgive. The kingdom of heaven operates on forgiveness. And this is more than a one time event. The superabundance of the King’s continual generosity ought to overflow from the forgiven heart of the servant unto his fellow servants.
Therefore the reign of heaven may be likened to a King who wished to settle accounts with His slaves. He’s auditing His books and the debts are being called in. Catechumens of St Matthew’s Gospel are already familiar with the word “debt” as sin; back in chapter six you were taught to pray, Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors (Mt 6:12).
When He began to settle, one was brought to Him who owed Him ten thousand talents. Before we go any further, do this: put yourself in the role of this servant. That is how our Lord Jesus would have St Peter and His disciples understand this parable. This is how catechesis works: the proclamation of God’s Law and Gospel for the preaching of repentance and faith.
So you are the servant. You are hauled before your King and Master, our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom you owe an inconceivable sum: 10,000 talents, an amount equivalent to 200,000 years work. We’re talking tens of billions of dollars. This isn’t a mortgage payment, a car loan, or even student loans. This is you got in really bad, way over your head, racking up debt well beyond your ability to pay, even in a thousand lifetimes. This debt is on the backs of your great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren, and even then, its unpayable.
Now the very fact that the King allowed you to incur such debt is a testament to His mercy and compassion. He didn’t call this debt in when you owed one talent - about 20 years wages - or even 100 talents - 200 years wages! The King is patient and forbearing. He is long-suffering, as God is with us.
But now you are standing before your Maker and Judge, your outrageous debt is being called in. He’s going to sell your house, your goods, all your worldly possessions, even you and your family into slavery in order to reap some small amount of His money back. At such a prospect, what do you do? You do what the flesh always does - you plead more time! This is the answer of all evolutionists pushing their false theories and all papists defending purgatory - more time! Given enough time, they claim, anything is possible. Not this. You’ll never pay it back. Ever.
What does the prophet Micah ask? With what shall I come before the LORD and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of ram, with ten thousand of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Nothing will satisfy the debt you owe. Not your own life, let alone the lives of ten thousand calves and rams, or the life of your oldest son.
Nothing, that is, but the compassion and mercy of the King who is moved with pity to forgive all the debt. But understand this - the debt isn’t merely canceled or written off. A debt of this size must be eaten by someone. If the King goes around forgiving debts to all of His servants, His kingdom will soon go bankrupt! Someone must pay. You can’t do it, but someone has to. This King is not only merciful, but also just.
Here is where you catechumens ought to remember those words of the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.” Why? “So that I may be his own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness.”
What does this mean? This means that the King’s forgiveness of your debt as a slave is the foundation of this parable. You are no longer a slave, but a son. Fully and freely forgiven, owing nothing to anyone. And yet, as a son and heir of the King, you are a slave to all and servant to all, even as the King Himself transferred your debt to Himself. This is the paradoxical nature of the kingdom and being a Christian.
It is as St Paul writes to the Christians in Philippi: you are partners in the Gospel, having fellowship with him in Jesus Christ, who began a good work in you. Abounding in His love you approve what is excellent and are filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. This is what the prophet Micah means when he says, What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
So you leave the presence of your King and Master, having been relieved and forgiven of that inconceivable amount of debt, completely free. What do you do with that freedom? If you find a fellow servant and choke him out for the 100 denarii he owes you, you actually betray a heart that has not been forgiven. In his treatment on the Fifth Petition, Luther said in his Large Catechism,
“If you do not forgive, then do not think that God forgives you. But if you forgive then you have this comfort and assurance, that you are forgiven in heaven. This is not because of your forgiving. For God forgives freely and without condition, out of pure grace, because He has so promised, as the Gospel teaches. But God says this in order that He may establish forgiveness as our confirmation and assurance, as a sign alongside of the promise, which agrees with this prayer in Luke 6: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (LC III 95-96).
The servant refuses to forgive and consigns his fellow-servant to the punishment of which he was spared. He is then hauled before the King again and in anger handed over to the jailers, that is condemned to everlasting death in Hell. May this not happen to you! But be warned, the Day of Judgment is real. St Paul calls it “The Day of Christ.” The books shall be opened and the balance due. It is real and it is imminent. This parable is for us, disciples of Jesus, a warning.
So if you, dear Christian, find yourself unwilling to forgive, if your heart stews on wrongs and seeks vengeance, return to the beginning of the parable and hear again the enormity of your debt. You deserve, just as you say, both temporal and eternal punishment, but the Lord is rich in mercy and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. He has canceled the record of debt that stood against you, nailing it to the Cross (Col 2:14). In short, “If God does not forgive without stopping, we are lost” (LC III 91).
But He has. He does and He will. If You, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with You there is forgiveness, that You may be feared (Ps 130:3-4). When you recognize the full magnitude of your sin, then, by His grace and Spirit, the depths of His compassion and mercy upon you become apparent. You freely receive forgiveness in Jesus Christ and so you freely forgive. This serves as an outward sign to confirm to your conscience that you are forgiven and cause them to rejoice. “It is especially given for this purpose, so that we may use and practice forgiveness every hour, as a thing that we have with us at all times.” (LC III 98).
We practice forgiveness, but never fully perfect it. We are in the world where we sin and are sinned against, always in need of forgiveness and constantly giving it. Such is the Christian life lived in the flesh under the Cross. A life of repentance and faith. A life lived in being forgiven and forgiving. A life lived by faith before God where you are entirely free and slave of none. A life lived in love toward the neighbor where you are bound and a servant of all.
And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the Day of Jesus Christ. In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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