Grace, Forgiveness and Ingratitude
Rev. Stephen E. Stults
St. Barnabas Anglican Church

Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, 2010


Matthew 18:23 "Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.”

How do you feel when you have done something for someone and it is rejected? Or, how do you feel when you have helped someone out, perhaps in a major way, and it is not appreciated? We all know that it is not a good feeling.

In today’s Gospel, we hear about all of this in an amazing story of grace, forgiveness and ingratitude in a brief parable from our Lord Jesus Christ. In it, Christ speaks to all of these topics, but focuses on one of the central themes in all of Christianity: forgiveness. Matthew relates how Peter came to Jesus and asked, in Matthew 18:21, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" What an interesting question!, Maybe some of us might wonder why Peter sought to quantify forgiveness, or even to number the amount of times a person might receive it from another. Perhaps one answer for this quandary on Peter’s part 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). Recall how he thundered in his prophecy, (Amos 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. In the same sense, some rabbinic teachers themselves also set a limit on the number of times one might be forgiven to three, in line with the prophecy, 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 prophetical and rabbinical limit. Yet, Christ, in line with His Divine Character, totally explodes the limited expectation of man by 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 carried a certain amount of resonance mainly 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 and perfects this principle by applying it not to vengeance, but to forgiveness. Thus, a Hebrew would understand this number as expressing a virtually unlimited amount.

Christ further expounds this principle in a parable, using one of his favorite teaching strategies, an analogy. Once again, 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 commentators saw this as the accounting due to a suzerain from his tax collectors. In this parable, the 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 the repressive 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 sets in deep relief the poor man’s predicament and reveals the character of the illustration. In this case, the debt was more than all the hard currency that existed in the whole country at the time!”

Even so, when the man falls downs and pleads for mercy, the 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 actually 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. Thus, 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? Surely 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.” Thus, even our forgiveness is conditional, as we forgive the sins of others. This is very telling and very solemn, especially if we should act like the ungrateful servant.

Yet, to the true penitent, God’s love and forgiveness is not limited. Just as the King forgave his debtor an impossibly heavy debt, so God forgives us our impossibly heavy load of sin and guilt. Without berating all of us with our known burden of sin, we know that the only price God would accept was the only one that God could pay. This, of course, was accomplished by God the Son. 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. What, thinks he, do I owe God? This thought may occur if the thought ever enters his head, which is probably unlikely. Not being negative or nasty, but St. Paul tells us in 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 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one”
The world thinks Christianity is foolishness, yet the Christian in his/her walk with God judges all things, rightly, with the mind of Christ.
While the natural or carnal man does not consider things that the Christian takes as items for great thanksgiving: things 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. Or, even man’s ability to offer love to his fellow man, which is merely a faint reflection of God’s love for us. To all of these things the Christian appreciates, while the carnal man may have some vague sense of gratitude to some impersonal force of nature for producing the good of the world. There is a world of difference between the Christian mindset and the natural man’s worldview.

Thus, we return to the question, “What do we owe God?” How are we debtors to Him? Aside from the common blessings that He pours on all men, we Christians do indeed owe a debt that we cannot pay. This debt incurred a payment that is both truly incalculable and truly universal. This payment allows us, who desire to be children of God, to escape our old nature and become something new. Not only in this life are we to demonstrate newness, both in our fresh and frank acceptance of the things of the Spirit and our conduct in the world, but also someday to be glorified and perfected so that we may see God.

The reason, of course, for our indebtedness to God is that He gave us the very, very, best that He had to redeem us, His Only, Holy and blessed Son. God redeemed us so that we could enjoy Him forever. That, my beloved brothers and sisters, is a payment worth more than anything in this world. That is why you and I are debtors to the extreme, in regards to 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 we risk the abrogation of God’s gracious forgiveness to us.

Even if that weren’t the case, we would still be guilty of the most heinous, the most callous, and the most extreme ingratitude of all.
When we acknowledge our transgressions and offer humble repentance, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, forgives us. Can not we, who have received this grace, do the same? Can not we return a bit of God’s grace to the one who sins against us? The answer to this is rhetorical, of course, and can only be answered in the quiet recesses of our own souls.

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 the hurt is too deep, maybe the trauma, physical or otherwise, is too extensive. Maybe, God forbid, we want to cherish our hurt a little while longer, denying the forgiveness we know that we should give. I was once told by a teacher that while children will usually forgive you quite readily, adults are usually different story.

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, from-the-heart forgiveness, something miraculous happens to us as well. God, in His mercy and grace, begins to heal us. The forgiveness we give to others is like a balm to the soul for ourselves. It is life-giving, health-affirming goodness that we accrue to ourselves as we give it away. In the incredible, wonderful superfluity of goodness that is God, when we do what we should, God rewards us with His Grace and God rewards us with Himself.

This is the miracle of forgiveness. This is what our God is all about.

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."