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. [Matthew 18:32-35 (ESV)]
At first, it seems that the “Parable of the Unforgiving Servant” should be called the “Parable of the Forgiven Servant.” After all, the king forgave his servant’s debt of 10,000 talents—the equivalent of billions of dollars. While the first part of the parable illustrates the value and extravagance of God’s forgiveness, it takes a dark turn in the second part when illustrating the reciprocal nature of His forgiveness—something the servant learned the hard way!
After leaving the king, the forgiven servant went to a fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii and demanded payment. Representing 100 days’ wages, this was a sizeable sum. Nevertheless, unlike the first servant’s massive debt to the king, it feasibly could be repaid in time. Just as his creditor had done with the king, this servant begged for patience and promised repayment. That the debtor was a fellow servant and an equal didn’t matter to his creditor. Moreover, the money he’d loaned hadn’t even been his—it had been money taken from the king! Unlike the king, however, this unforgiving servant had no mercy and put his debtor in prison until the debt was fully paid!
Wickedly, the unforgiving servant wrongly demanded more from his fellow worker than the king had asked of him. By throwing his debtor into jail, he acted as if he were more worthy of justice and repayment than was the king. Distressed at the man’s hard-heartedness, the other servants reported his behavior to the king. Enraged that his servant had not appreciated the gift of mercy he’d received by forgiving another servant in the way he’d been forgiven, the king sent the unforgiving man to prison to be tortured until his debt was paid.
Before trying too hard to read extra meaning into this parable, let’s put it in context. Peter had just asked Jesus how often he should forgive someone who sinned against him. While Jewish tradition valued forgiveness, the rabbis held that someone would be forgiven for the same transgression only three times. So, when Peter suggested forgiving seven times, the disciple probably thought he was being generous. When Jesus replied that he was to forgive seventy times seven, He wasn’t suggesting keeping count to 490 before quitting. His point was not to keep count at all! After all, if God stopped forgiving us at the 491st time we disrespected our parents, gossiped, lost patience with our children, lied, cursed, or failed to honor His name, we’d be goners! God is holding us to His standard and it was to illustrate the reciprocal nature of forgiveness that Jesus told this story.
If we take a good look at the king’s servant, we see that he never fully understood or appreciated the king’s mercy. When he promised the king that, with patience, he would repay the debt, he was delusional. The debt represented over 164 years of labor without a break! Although repayment was an impossibility, the servant never admitted his inability to pay such an enormous sum. His refusal to release a fellow servant’s debt shows that he neither understood nor appreciated his own forgiveness. The unforgiving man’s punishment makes it clear such unforgiveness is not what our King wants from His servants! He calls us to forgive with a heart of gratitude for the forgiveness that has been given to us. A person who sees the enormity of their own sins and appreciates the largess and forgiveness of his Savior will, in turn, be magnanimous and generous in bestowing forgiveness upon others.
The second servant’s debt was one six-hundred-thousandth of the amount owed by the unforgiving servant. Just as his debt to his co-worker pales in comparison to the unforgiving servant’s debt to the king, whatever wrongs (real or imagined) we have suffered from our fellow servants pale in comparison to the countless ways we sin against our King every day of our lives! Jesus taught the disciples to pray, “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,” and this parable tells us we are to forgive our debtors as our King has forgiven us!
Jesus told several parables about the Kingdom of Heaven and, in Matthew 18, He compared it to a king who wanted to bring his accounts up to date with the servants who owed him money. The parable is pretty straight-forward; the king symbolizes God, the servant each one of us, and the debt our sins. One servant owed the king ten thousand talents but was unable to pay. There were serious consequences for not paying debts so the king ordered that the servant’s home and possessions be sold off and that the man and his family be sold into slavery until the debt was paid.
The book of Leviticus outlined several things that could make someone ceremonially or ritually unclean. These things included bodily discharges, touching a corpse, and skin infections, as well as contact with any unclean person or thing. By Jesus’ day, even entering a Gentile’s home made someone unclean. Anything and anyone an unclean person touched became unclean and, anyone who touched them or what they touched also became unclean.
In Mark 5, we find three stories of miraculous healings: the demoniac living among the graves in the Gerasenes, the woman who bled for twelve years, and the daughter of Jairus who was brought back to life. These are beautiful stories, but what about all the other people in 2,000 years for whom there has been no healing? Like the woman with the blood disorder, my friend has suffered for more than twelve years, tried every remedy, and gotten no relief. This man of deep faith prays for healing as do all his family and friends. His faith is as strong as that of the nameless woman and yet he’s had no relief.
When the woman joined our group at the table in the school gym, she said, “I got a late start so I was speeding to get here. If a cop stopped me, I was going to tell him I was doing the Lord’s work and, since God will forgive me, he should too.” She insisted that speeding for a godly purpose was a justifiable offense and, since God offers forgiveness, so should the police. Granted, we were doing God’s work by packing meals for the needy but, as the Blues brothers learned when they saved the orphanage, a mission from God is not a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.
Devotions of the Heart 