Forgiveness means freedom - Matthew 18:21-35
I have had reason to say sorry to a few people recently. Thankfully they all forgave me. It is humbling to realise you have done something wrong – you have to go through the process of making excuses and explaining your self – mainly to yourself. But it is a relief when you just grow up, say you are sorry and ask someone to forgive you.
Occasionally someone says sorry to me. When that happens I am usually in a rush to get through the embarrassment and say, “No, it’s ok, doesn’t matter”. Sometimes that’s true but usually it isn’t. Usually it did matter and harm was done, so it’s appropriate for someone to say sorry and for me to forgive them.
There are some serious things that take more processing – one of my siblings was abused as a child by a friend of the family. That is hard to forgive. Another person who used to work for me left my employment, took our trade material and sold it to another firm. That is hard to forgive. Many of you will have been on the receiving end of painful and wrongful acts. That is hard to forgive.
How do you feel when you have been on one side or other of the “I’m sorry, please forgive me” exchange?
Relief, weight off my shoulders, restoration of relationship, churning internal conversation can stop.
Forgiveness means freedom
The bible says that “no one is perfect, no not one”. We are all sinned against and we are all sinners. Only one person has ever walked the face of this earth without sinning and that is Jesus. He never had to say, “Sorry, please forgive me”.
And yet he was punished for sin – not his but mine, and yours.
This is the core of the gospel, the central point of Christianity – that we have all fallen short but that when we repent and say sorry, God forgives us because Jesus has taken the punishment for our sin. The bible says, repent and receive forgiveness. This brings freedom.
Walking humbly before God means that we recognise that we have no rights before him, we are hugely privileged to stand in his presence, to walk with him. His forgiveness means that we can, humbly, walk with our God.
Let’s look at Matthew 18:21-35 - a parable about forgiveness. It follows the parable about the lost sheep in which Jesus describes the lengths to which he goes to rescue the sinner. And it is immediately preceded by a discussion on a falling out within the community.
Matthew 18:21-35 in line commentary
21
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Jewish practice was to extend forgiveness 3 or 4 times. Peter, as ever, was trying to look good by extending it to seven times.
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22
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Jesus alludes to an Old Testament saying about someone promising vengeance, seventy times seven times (Genesis 4:24). He is turning it on its head – forgiveness to the nth degree.
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23
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Obvious allusion to God, comparing a middle eastern monarch of the time who would have had absolute power over his subjects. This probably refers to the annual collection of taxes from those servants who acted as agents.
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24
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10,000 talents compares with the 600 talents that the country would have paid in annual taxes to the Romans at the time. In other words it was a ridiculous amount – we would say “a billion pounds”. A foolish man to have got so far into debt and a foolish king to have allowed someone to owe him so much.
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25
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The value of the man and his family would have been, at the very maximum, one talent. In other words the king had no realistic hope of getting his money.
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26
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Just asking for patience was unrealistic. The promise to pay it back was just setting up yet another IOU.
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27
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“Tenderly” the king cancelled, released, him and forgave the debt. Freedom from the debt. Release. The loan written off, cancelled. Can you imagine the relief? No matter how big the debt, God is merciful and forgives it all. It’s huge. Incomprehensible.
Our sin is huge.
His mercy is huge.
Our freedom is huge.
And so we too are meant to be merciful.
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28
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It’s a caricature description. Someone owes him a fiver and he won’t forgive it. We have been mercifully forgiven from our lifetime’s rebellion against God and yet we hold back forgiveness for another. Can he in any way be aware of what happened to him when the king released him from his debt? Did he take that into his being at all?
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29
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The second servant uses exactly the same phrase – and he probably could have repaid the fiver.
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30
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But the flow of mercy stops. Despite the torrent of forgiveness flowing into the first servant, it goes no further.
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31
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Putting another servant in prison meant that they couldn’t collect their taxes and thus deprived the king and the community further.
When someone doesn’t forgive another, people notice. Unforgiveness between people brings disharmony all around. There is a cost to it.
Even if someone doesn’t articulate it, we know what it is like when they harbour unforgiveness. It is a tasty temptation to hold a grudge, to cherish bitterness. But it corrodes our character, our pain leaks out of us.
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32-34
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The king realises his mercy has bounced back. It hasn’t flowed through. The general amnesty he was declaring has not been passed on.
Jesus paints an extreme picture (the Jews didn’t allow torture) but he wants to make a point.
At the end of the Lord’s prayer Jesus puts it like this (Matthew 6:14) If you forgive others, God will forgive you, if you don’t neither will he.
This parable is preceded by instructions to deal with sin between people in the community.
Elsewhere he says that if you are going to worship and remember someone with whom you have to get straight, sort it out first.
The result is that the servant ends up in prison.
In not forgiving another person, he is the one that ends up in prison.
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35
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Jesus makes it quite clear that this dynamic is in place. This is the deal – you have been forgiven much, now you forgive.
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Forgiveness means freedom
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Forgiveness means freedom from the prison of an eternity without God - freedom forever
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Forgiveness means freedom from the prison of a life without God now – freedom for today
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Forgiveness means freedom from the grudge prison – freedom to love and be loved
1. Forgiveness means freedom forever
There comes a point when we each have a reckoning with God.
To some that comes as a warning and a threat. In a culture where we elevate tolerance above grace we have difficulty with the concept of being held accountable before God.
But for others it comes as a promise and a hope.
One of the background issues in this parable is that there is a God who will one day take account. This is a huge relief and sustenance for the oppressed and abused of this world. When you are powerless and someone is inflicting pain on you:
- being abused by your father
- being exploited by an employer
- being beaten up by a bully
- as one of the multitude who live in hunger and poverty because of corrupt politicians and power crazy soldiers
- when you are unjustly imprisoned in some distant gaol
- when your spouse cheats on you
Then you cry out for a day of justice. God, are you there? When will you put right what is wrong? When will someone pay a price for this?
If that is you then … it is good to know that there comes a time when all will have a reckoning with God.
Up until that point we are in the prison of living without hope, without relationship with our creator God, without knowing him as our loving heavenly father. Fearful of a righteous judge. The bars of our sin keeping us securely locked away. Our debt is too great to repay.
One day we stand before him knowing this. He is too good and too holy and we are not.
And we repent.
Many of us in this room have been at that point – and we have repented – and we have heard those gentle words, “I am releasing you from your debt to me, I am letting you go”. God can do this because the price has been paid through the death of Jesus on the cross.
That is the core promise of salvation – just like Peter said in Acts 2, “Repent and be baptised, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”.
At that point our eternity is transformed, we receive forgiveness and a new life, full of his Holy Spirit. A cosmic exchange, we are saved.
Forgiveness means freedom from the prison of an eternity without God - freedom forever
2. Forgiveness means freedom today
Having got straight with God in an eternal perspective we still have to live out our daily lives. And this side of heaven that means we will still sin from time to time and people will sin against us. But we don’t have to live a life in the imprisonment of our daily wanderings.
We go to him every day, saying we are sorry, seeking forgiveness. Having been saved we have experienced forgiveness. We remember it - particularly through communion.
Even as followers of Jesus it is very easy to distance ourselves from him, to allow things, actions, words, thoughts to form a dark cloud over us, blocking off the sunlight of his gracious mercy. And we have to, again and again, repent, come back to the cross and say, “Father, I am sorry, have mercy on me”. And every time, seventy times seven, for always, he is gracious and with tenderness pours out his mercy and forgives us every time.
Keeping short accounts with God, being forgiven and being transformed day by day; we can live in his presence.
Forgiveness means freedom from the prison of a life without God now – freedom today
3. Forgiveness means freedom to love and be loved
The first two freedoms are gained by God’s gracious mercy to us. But what do we do with that mercy?
We are all sinned against:
- you get cut up in traffic - and spend the next mile trying to get back at them
- a colleague cheats you out of a position at work - and you start to pay office politics
- someone is rude to you in public - so you dream up a brilliant riposte
- your home is burgled, special possessions are stolen - so you think up arcane traps for the next burglar
- your husband or wife treats you badly - and you wonder about putting laxatives in their food
- you are falsely accused and, powerless to protest, it eats away at you
- or worse…
What do we do? Do we hold a grudge? Do we cherish bitterness?
The thrust of this passage, and many others in Jesus’ teaching, not least the Lord’s prayer, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us”, is that receiving forgiveness is in some way dependent upon - giving - forgiveness.
Does that mean salvation is conditional upon us forgiving another? No I don’t think so.
I believe that forgiveness from Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf is there. The deed has been done, the price has been paid, the cheque has been written, the gift is presented on an open hand. And we repent and receive it. We are saved.
But as we live out our lives, forgiveness needs to be continually received, accepted, taken. If you don’t take it, you won’t have it.
It’s not like the air you breathe, sort of unconsciously being taken into your lungs as you go about your business. It is more like the oxygen mask when there is an emergency on the plane. It drops down from above and you just need to place it over your face. You don’t have to negotiate for it or pay for it, it is given, just take it.
However, one of the things that can stop you from experiencing his mercy is the crippling effect of not forgiving another person when you have yourself have first received forgiveness. When we cherish bitterness we lose the ability to give and receive love. Our life gradually becomes tainted by a harsh unforgiveness.
In the parable, the servant who does not forgive ends up back in prison. That’s what happens to us when we don’t forgive, we put ourselves back in prison.
Do you need to stop right now and acknowledge that you have done wrong to another, caused pain in some way? Will you undertake to say sorry, very soon? What you need to do is, depending upon the situation, talk to them and say, “I know I caused you pain, hurt you. No excuses, I am sorry, please forgive me”.
Do you need to stop right now and think about that situation, that person who has hurt you? It may not be appropriate for you to speak to them (you may have been down that road many times), but you can forgive them now, you can pray for them and God will hear your words of forgiveness as you release them from their debt and he will set you off to walk free yourself.
Earlier I described the torrent of mercy coming toward the servant and stopping with him. I think forgiveness makes a deep and transforming effect in our lives when we become a conduit of mercy, a channel of forgiveness.
“Freely you have received” said Jesus, “so freely give”. When it flows through us we get the benefit, when it stops with us, the flow to us stops. We can’t receive it.
When we forgive someone else, we open up the floodgates for God’s mercy to flow into us and through us.
Forgiveness means freedom from the grudge prison – freedom to love and be loved
Forgiveness means freedom - forever, for today, to love and be loved
So I am giving you some wonderful news today, no charge, no emotional manipulation – simply this:
- I offer you the opportunity to repent of living your life without him, experience his mercy and receive freedom from the prison of an eternity without God - you can have freedom forever.
- I offer you the privilege of walking humbly with God, every day coming to him and enjoying freedom from the prison of a life without God now – you can have freedom for today.
- I offer you freedom from the grudge prison – being set free to love and be loved.
David Flowers, 22/01/2012