Grace, Forgiveness and Ingratitude
Rev. Stephen E. Stults
St. Paul’s Anglican Church
Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, 2016
Matthew 18:23 "Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts
with his servants.”
In today’s Gospel, our Lord Jesus Christ tells us an amazing story of grace, forgiveness and ingratitude.
Christ speaks to all of these topics, but focuses on one of the central themes in Christianity: forgiveness.
Peter came to Jesus and asked, (Matthew 18:21) “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I
forgive him? Up to seven times?" Some of us might wonder why Peter sought to quantify forgiveness.
Perhaps one answer lies in the fact that the Prophet Amos set forgiveness to three times, and gives a
warning that God may not withhold punishment for the fourth trespass (Amos 1:3-13; 2:1-6). “Thus saith
the LORD; For three transgressions of Gaza, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof;
because…” and here he gave various reasons why the fourth offense was unforgiveable. Rabbinic
teachers also set a limit on the number of times one might be forgiven to three, perhaps because they
thought that repentance on the offender’s part might not be genuine.
Thus, when Peter says, “how many times shall I forgive my brother, up to seven times?” he may have
actually thought he was doing well in our Lord’s eyes because he was going beyond the legal limit. Yet,
Christ, in line with His Divine Character, explodes the limited expectation of man to an almost unthinkable
degree. He says, Matthew 18:22 “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.”
To the Hebraic mind, this would have resonated, because of the principle of vengeance being carried out
seventy times seven as was first stated in the Book of Genesis, chapter 4. Here Jesus characteristically
fulfills this principle by applying it not to vengeance, but to forgiveness.
A Hebrew would understand this number as expressing a virtually unlimited amount.
Christ further expounds this principle using an analogy. He makes the profound simple and transmits great
truth through this device. He tells us of a great king who was settling accounts with his servants. Some
king is settling up with his debtors. One man owes ten thousand talents, an impossibly huge amount.
Putting this into perspective, one must realize the combined annual tribute of Galilee and Perea just after
the death of Herod the Great came to only two hundred talents and entire tribute of Judea, Samaria and
Idumea came to six hundred talents, as told to us by Josephus. . This fact reveals the poor man’s
predicament and the character of the illustration. The debt was more than all the hard currency that
existed in the whole country at the time!”
Even so, the man falls downs and pleads for mercy. Yhe King is moved and grants him not just a reprieve
in terms of time, but actually forgives him the entire debt. This is incredible. The man is free.
Then, in a gross example of ingratitude, this same servant goes out from the presence of the King and
finds a fellow servant, who owed him a very little amount of money, 100 pence. Now, a pence was worth
about 14 cents, so the contrast to the amount the original servant owed to the amount is immense and
quite ludicrous.
The end of the story is just; his fellow servants inform the Lord of his outrageous behavior and he is
delivered to the tormentors until he can pay the debt, which, as we’ve seen, is not very likely. The man’s
fate is sealed.
Christ closes this parable with a solemn statement: so our Heavenly Father will deal with us if we do not
forgive, from the heart, those who sin against us. Where is this same thought echoed? It is in the great
prayer that Christ gave us, the Our Father. In that prayer, we say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we
forgive those who trepass against us.” Even our forgiveness is conditional, as we forgive the sins of
others. This is very telling and very solemn.
Yet, to the true penitent, God’s love and forgiveness is not limited. Just as the King forgave the debtor his
impossibly heavy debt, so God forgives us our impossibly heavy load of sin and guilt. Without berating all
for our burden of sin, God exacted a price that only God could pay. This, of course, was accomplished
by Jesus on the Cross. Yet, despite this, one might be tempted to say, “How do I owe God anything?”
To the unspiritual man, this is indeed an excellent question. This thought may occur if it even enters his
head, which is highly unlikely. Not being negative or nasty, but St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:14-15:
“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor
can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The world thinks Christianity is foolishness,
yet the Christian judges all things rightly with the mind of Christ.
The carnal man does not consider things for which the Christian gives thanks; such as common grace,
which actually restrains us from being as bad as we could be, or God’s wonderful sunshine and water
that produce the fruits of the earth The Christian appreciates all of these things. The carnal man may
have some vague sense of gratitude to some impersonal force of nature for producing the good of the
world.
So, we ask, “What do we owe God?” We Christians do indeed owe a debt that we cannot pay. This
debt incurred a payment that is truly incalculable. This payment allows us escape our old nature and
become something new. We are we to demonstrate newness, in our fresh and frank acceptance of the
things of the Spirit and our conduct in the world. We also expect to be glorified and perfected so that we
may see God.
The point is this: we, who have been given everything by Him who forgives us completely through the
sacrifice of His Son, cannot afford to withhold forgiveness from others. We have been forgiven; thus we
must forgive others their trespasses, or risk the abrogation of God’s gracious forgiveness to us.
We could still be guilty of the most heinous ingratitude of all. When we acknowledge our transgressions
and offer humble repentance, our Heavenly Father, forgives us. Can we not do the same? Can we not
return a bit of God’s grace to the one who sins against us?
We recognize that forgiveness is difficult; forgiveness is hard. Sometimes, it is the hardest thing to do,
simply because we do not want to do it. Maybe, God forbid, we want to cherish our hurt a little while
longer, denying the forgiveness we know that we should give.
Yet, in the miracle of the grace of God, forgiveness is exactly what we must do in order to be healed.
When we offer true forgiveness, God begins to heal us. The forgiveness we give to others is a balm to
the soul for ourselves. It is life-giving, health-affirming goodness that we accrue to ourselves as we give it
away. When we forgive, in the wonderful goodness of God, , God rewards us with His Grace and
Himself.
Matthew 18:35 - 19:1 "So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not
forgive his brother his trespasses."