Scripture: Matthew 18:21-35
In this sermon I want to make three points. Point Number One, “Oh to Grace How Great a Debtor.” Point Number Two, The “Big But,” as in B-U-T. And Point Number Three: A Change of Heart.
But first Point Number One, “Oh to grace how great a debtor”…
Every Sunday morning as I get ready and drive in to work, I listen to the “Ask N.T. Wright Anything” podcast, in which one of my favorite Bible scholars and pastors answers questions about Christianity and the Bible. And a listener wrote in, asking this question, “How many times will God keep forgiving my sins? I repent. I pray for forgiveness. I feel guilty. But then temptation comes, and I once again stumble and fall. When does God finally say, ‘I’ve had enough’?”
My ears perked up when Wright’s co-host read the question. Because as a pastor over the years, I’ve certainly been asked that question, too. Church people have asked me, does God reach a point where he says, “If you really meant it when you prayed for forgiveness, you wouldn’t keep messing up. So… no more forgiveness for you!”
How would you respond?
I was gratified that this distinguished New Testament scholar and retired bishop responded by citing the same scripture—and making the same argument—that I’ve made to my own flock over the years! He answered the question by citing Jesus’ words in verse 22 of today’s scripture, which is the preamble to this Parable of the Unmerciful Servant…
Peter asked how many times he must forgive his brother. “Should I forgive seven times?”
And Jesus said, “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.”
Or maybe even “seventy times seven times.” Could be either.
But it doesn’t matter, because Jesus’ point either way is, “There should be no limit to the number of times that you forgive someone.” Why?
“Because there’s no limit to the number of times that God forgives you!”
No limit!
After all, God’s Word tells us, in the famous “love chapter” of 1 Corinthians 13, that love “keeps no record of wrongs.”[1]
Are we Christians supposed to believe that even after we become adopted children of God—after all our sins, past, present, future, are wiped clean—loved by our Father every bit as much as he loves his only begotten Son Jesus… are we to believe that God actually does keep a record of wrongs! And each time we sin, God pulls out a scorecard. And when we reach some “magic number” of sins—maybe it’s 11,237 sins—bam… That’s it! God is finished with us!
As if God would say to us, “I forgave you 11,236 times… But 11,237 times? No way! That’s asking too much.”
I hope you can see how ridiculous this is…
Please hear this: our Father is not somehow less forgiving than his Son Jesus asks us to be in verse 22 of today’s scripture! If we’re not supposed to have a limit to the number of times we forgive others, why do we think God would have one?
As we’ll see that’s good news…
After all, how big is this first servant’s debt? Ten thousand talents. A talent equals about 20 years’ wages for an average laborer. So today, let’s say that a typical laborer makes $35,000 a year. So 20 times 35,000 times 10,000… That would amount to $7 billion. And that may be underestimating. It’s hard to calculate, but it’s at least billions. But to the disciples who heard this parable, it may as well have been a gazillion.
Remember the tearful ending of It’s a Wonderful Life? Even if this servant were as popular and beloved as, say, George Bailey, there’s no way all his fellow townspeople could come together and donate to a fund to repay the king and “rescue” this man from a life of slavery… Not even close!
All that to say, the debt that each one of us owes to God on account of our sins—at least apart from the atoning death of his Son Jesus on the cross and our corresponding faith in Christ—is unpayable.
Or maybe we disagree that our own personal debt is quite so large… Maybe we think, “I’m not that bad!”
If so, listen to the way one contemporary English pastor named Christopher Ash describes the enormity of our debt to God:
The God who made this world has given you—and when I say “you” I’m preaching to myself as well—he’s given you everything… That you were conceived in the first place was his gift. That you were born was his gift. Every breath you breathe is his gift. Every beat of your heart is his gift. Every food you eat, every water you drink is his gift. The clothes you wear is his gift. The talents you have are his gift. The roof over your head is his gift. Every human being who’s ever loved or cared for you is his gift. Every moment of pleasure or comfort or joy is his gift. . . .
Do you [in return] love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself? . . .
No, the point is… it is an outrage… It is an outrage that I, who owe my everything to the goodness of God, do not in every moment of my existence and with every ounce of my strength, love him and for his sake, love my neighbor as myself. It is an outrage!
And God has forgiven me that outrage in Christ.[2]
That’s good news! That’s “amazing grace”! When we sing “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and those words, “Oh to grace how great a debtor,” as we will a little later in the service, we are not exaggerating!
But… There is an important reason that this king’s display of amazing grace toward this first servant isn’t celebratedalongside Jesus’ other parables of amazing grace like the “Lost Sheep” or “The Prodigal Son.” And this is Point Number Two: There is a big but, by which I mean B-U-T, in today’s scripture that we cannot ignore!
After all, I just got through preaching that there’s no limit to God’s mercy, grace, and forgiveness! But…
But now, by Act Three of the parable, in verses 31 to 34—when the king revokes the man’s forgiveness—it seems like maybe there is one limit to God’s forgiveness. And that limit is this: God will continue to forgive our sins only so long aswe forgive other people their sins.
It doesn’t help when Jesus proceeds to apply the parable to his disciples in verse 35: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother [or sister] from your heart.”
Let me give you an idea just how potentially troubling this parable is… by trying to reconcile these words of Jesus with other scripture… Does Paul, for instance, in Ephesians 2:8-9, say, “For by grace you have been saved through faith—for the most part. And with one exception this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God”… that exception, of course, being your ability to forgive people who’ve mistreated you and done you wrong.
Or think about another great picture of God’s amazing grace: when Jesus turns to that criminal on the cross… and says, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise… provided that before you die in a couple of hours, you’re able to forgive from your heart people who have done you wrong.”
I mean, are we saved by grace or not?
To make matters even worse, we all know from experience that it’s often hard to forgive people who hurt us… even under normal circumstances… in everyday sorts of ways… In my head, after all, I’m still trying to win arguments with people who hurt me in 1992! Have I truly forgiven them from my heart? Why am I still thinking about it? Am I in trouble?
But it’s even worse than that… For instance, we can all imagine—because we read or hear about such things in the news every day… but we can all imagine perpetrators of violent crime, who cause great physical, mental, and emotional harm to their victims… to say nothing of the pain they cause their loved ones.
Is Jesus now saying that that these same evil perpetrators who already inflicted intense physical harm may now be able to inflict eternal harm?… Because, after all… if the victims of these crimes—and their many loved ones—are unable to turn around and forgive their victimizers, then… well… does Jesus’ warning of verse 35 apply?
Are they going to hell because they can’t forgive?
Do you see the problem? This is deadly serious!
And this isn’t the only place where Jesus says something like this: Remember the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6? “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Then immediately after giving his disciples this prayer, Jesus says, in Matthew 6:14 and 15, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
That’s a big B-U-T to the earlier picture of amazing grace… Are we in trouble?
And that’s Point Number Two… The Big “B-U-T.”
So… is there any hope for us? We’ll explore this question in Point Number Three… A Change of Heart…
We get a hint at the solution to the problem raised in Point Number Two from the last three words of verse 35. Here’s the verse: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother”—and here they are—“from your heart.”
You can’t fake what’s in your heart… This kind of forgiveness, therefore, isn’t something we can merely decide to do… If it’s “from the heart,” we can’t simply will ourselves to do it! One New Testament scholar, Dale Bruner, warned that if you’re tempted to say, “I forgive you… but I won’t forget”… Or if you say, “I’ll forgive you this time…” then chances are, you’re not really forgiving someone “from the heart.” The kind of forgiveness Jesus talks about comes from a place of compassion and love.
Compassion and love even for people who’ve really hurt us…
So maybe you hear me say these words, throw up your hands, and say, “This is impossible! I can’t forgive like that!”
If you respond that way, good news… You’re on the right track!
Because it is impossible. What Jesus asks of us—to forgive everyone “from the heart”—is impossible.
Just as it was impossible for that rich young ruler to give up all of his possessions and enter the kingdom of heaven. Remember, it was in that context that Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle! That’s impossible.
Just as it was impossible for a violent, stubborn, hard-headed man like Saul of Tarsus—hellbent on destroying the people who were following Jesus of Nazareth—to repent and believe in Jesus and become the greatest evangelist and missionary the world has ever seen. That’s impossible.
Just as it was impossible that Jesus could forgive and save a sinner like me! That’s impossible!
Except, as Jesus said about the rich young ruler, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”[3]
And that’s the difference I don’t want us to miss. Jesus isn’t saying, “Forgive other people well enough, and then I’ll forgive you.” He’s saying that when his grace truly takes hold of us, it begins to change us into people who forgive.
Not perfectly. Not immediately all at once. And sometimes not without an agonizing struggle.
But God’s amazing grace does change us.
Let’s put it like this… The grace that forgives an impossible debt also begins the impossible work of changing an unforgiving heart.
If we are Christians, that means we have been born again. That means that the Holy Spirit is working within us in a supernatural way to change us. The change is called “sanctification,” and this too is made possible by God’s grace.
I’ve heard it said that God’s grace is like one of those double-hinged doors—like you see in restaurant kitchens or those saloon doors in the old westerns. The door swings in both directions if it swings at all. It can’t “let something in” without also, at the same time, “letting something out.” So the same “door” by which we receive grace is the door by which we offer it to others… through forgiveness…
Forgiveness happens as we continue to trust in Jesus and “lean not on our own understanding.”[4] It happens as we continue to surrender more and more of our lives to him and his will, by his grace… It happens as we continue to find in Christ our greatest treasure.
But it won’t happen perfectly or all at once.
Even authentic Christians will struggle to forgive…
Take Philippians 4:2-3, for instance… Paul names two saintly women—Euodia and Syntyche, who, he says, “have labored side by side with me in the gospel”—these are genuine believers in other words—whose relationship has been ruptured by some interpersonal conflict—he doesn’t say what happened… But this conflict—and the lack of forgivenessunderneath it—has been going on long enough, and is serious enough, that Paul addresses it in a letter to the whole church![5]
And he doesn’t warn that these two women are in danger of losing their salvation unless they forgive!
Or how about in Colossians 3. Paul urges the church to be compassionate, kind, humble, meek, and patient, before saying, in verse 13, “[bear] with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, [forgive] each other.”
And there are other examples, but my only point is that forgiveness is hard even for us Christians. Otherwise why do we keep being reminded to do it?
But if we’re struggling to forgive someone, we need to be honest with ourselves. We need to treat our inability to forgive as a deadly serious sin, but as we become aware of this sin, we confess it and repent—like any sin. And we pray that God will give us the power to change… and forgive.
I attended a conference in New York City last spring that included a presentation by an author who is on faculty at Yale Medical School. His name is James Kimmel, and he is an expert in what he calls the “science of revenge.” He and his colleagues have studied what happens in the brain when we feel aggrieved and want to take revenge. And he argues that our desire to take revenge against someone who’s hurt us—and acting on that desire—produces all the same chemical processes in the brain that happen to drug addicts when they get their “fix.”
Revenge, in other words, feels good… and we can become addicted to that feeling.
But of course revenge feels good, otherwise why is revenge the “happy ending” of so many Hollywood movies. No superhero forgives the villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe… And it’s not like Simba, in the Lion King, forgives Scar. No one feels sorry when Scar falls to his fiery doom. He killed Mufasa after all! He deserves it! It’s payback!
And it’s true in our personal lives. Revenge feels good… for a while.
But like any “addiction,” Kimmel says, it comes at a terrible human cost—to ourselves, to our personal health and wellbeing… and not to mention to others. In fact, he calls “revenge” the world’s deadliest addiction… and he’s got all the facts and figures to prove it. From Hitler to school shooters to business leaders to normal people like you and me, he says, “revenge addicts” cause harm. And we’re all susceptible to it.
By the way, revenge could be nothing “more” than gossiping about someone, or ostracizing someone, or secretly rooting for their downfall… even when we don’t want to bring it about ourselves.
When we take even “small” acts of revenge on people who’ve hurt us, we can be sure we haven’t “forgiven” them from our hearts!
Now let’s look at the frightening verse 34: “And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.” That’s a bit of a mild translation. Those “jailers” aren’t friendly people… Nearly every other English translation rightly describes them as “torturers.”
My point is, our Lord knows that our desire for revenge can have consequences not only in Final Judgment, but even now… In other words, even now, our desire for revenge—whether we act on it or not—tortures, imprisons, and harms us.
But there’s good news… Forgiveness from the heart… if only by God’s grace we’re able to do it… breaks that destructive cycle.
In fact, Kimmel calls forgiveness a “wonder drug.”[6]
Because… listen to what Kimmel says are some scientifically verifiable benefits:
[F]orgiveness reduces stress, anxiety, anger, regret, rumination, depression, cognitive impairment, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress—and improves cognitive resilience and overall sense of well-being.
Forgiveness is also associated with lower blood pressure; reduced rates of cardiovascular disease, mortality, and physical pain; and improved sleep, cardiovascular response to stress, immune system function, and even life satisfaction and health outcomes among people living with HIV infection.
That’s a lot of bang for your buck… And did I mention that forgiveness is free, available without a prescription, and can be manufactured and delivered inside your own brain 24/7, 365 days a year?[7]
Dear Lord, give us this kind of healing that comes only from forgiveness… forgiving those who’ve hurt us… forgiven them from the heart… Even when it seems impossible, with you, we know, all things are possible. Work that miracle within us! Amen.
[1] 1 Corinthians 13:5 NIV, NLT, NASB, CSB
[2] Christopher Ash, “Forgiveness,” 14 December 2008, thegospelcoalition.org. Accessed 27 June 2024.
[3] Mark 10:27
[4] Proverbs 3:5-7
[5] Philippians 4:2-3
[6] James Kimmel Jr., The Science of Revenge (New York: Harmony, 2025), 188.
[7] Ibid., 189.