Forgiveness - Matt 18:21-35

Peter doesn’t quite understand exactly what Jesus means when he says that we are to reconcile with others who have offended us. “The IM quotes Elder Bruce R. McConkie as teaching, “Rabbinism called upon the offender to initiate a course of reconciliation with his brother and specified that forgiveness should not be extended more than three times to any offender. His soul as yet not afire with the Holy Spirit, Peter asked a question that, as he must have supposed, assumed a far more liberal rule than that imposed by the rabbis.” Peter asks, “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?” This is a concept that is difficult to understand, even now in the world where we’ve had Christianity for over 2,000 year, forgiveness is so hard for us as people because when we are hurt, either physically or emotionally, we feel that by forgiving someone, we are saying that what they did was ok. What people don’t understand is that forgiveness isn’t saying that what they did was ok, it’s saying that you’re refusing to let it control you anymore, you’re letting God take over their punishment.

But Peter is trying to understand exactly what Jesus is saying, so instead of the offender only getting 3 chances at forgiveness, Jesus is saying that the offended should be the first to instigate, but how many times? Surely we all have those people in our lives who are wildly unhappy and do things to us that are painful all the time. I know that I’ve been that person to make others, and if we were still only allowed 3 times of forgiveness, then none of us would have any friends, we’d all be alone. Peter asks if 7 chances at forgiveness is adequate, I’m sure thinking that his suggestion is more than enough considering that it’s so much higher than the typical 3 times preached by the rabbis. And I think that the main thing that comes into play here is that we only remember the times we have been sinned against, we are always the victim and the hero in our own narrative. When Peter asks, “how many times do I have to forgive my brother?” he epitomizes all of us who hold grudges, but don’t remember all the times that we’ve been the brother who hurt someone else and needed forgiveness.

Jesus answers, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” If you do the math that’s 490 times that we need to forgive someone, but if you spend all your time keeping track of who you’ve forgiven and how much you’ve forgiven them, then you life is going to revolve around the infinite tally sheet, and then are you really forgiving someone if you just wait for them to screw up again so that you make a mark on your sheet? That’s not forgiveness, that’s score keeping, and it’s not productive. Elder McConkie says that Jesus’s statement means “there is no limit to the number of times men should forgive their brethren.”

Jesus continues the lesson by teaching a parable that has many interesting points to it. Jesus tells the story of a king who was taking an inventory of his servants and their stewardships. One of his servants owed him ten thousand talents. This is a difficult number for us to understand because we don’t use “talents” as a unit of measure. To put it into terms that we might understand the IM says, “During the first century A.D, it is estimated that 10,000 talents equaled 100,000,000 denarii. One denarius was a typical day’s wage for a common laborer. If that laborer worked three hundred days a year, it would take about 33 years for him to be able to purchase one talent. And it would take over 300,000 years to earn 10,000 talents, the sum of the servant’s debt.” Let’s do the math here, let’s say a guy is working for minimum wage, which I think is $8/hour at an 8 hour/day job, which equals $64/day. At 300 days/year working, that’s almost 6 days/week, and we only work 5 days per week here, but let’s pretend he picked up a second job that enabled him to work 300 days a year for $8/hour and 8 hours/day. That’s $64/day times 300 days a year which equals $19,200 annual salary. Let’s assume that he can give all his money to his creditor and doesn’t need any money for food or shelter because… who knows, let’s just assume that. At $19,200/year for 33 years to earn one talent, we can equate one talent to $633,600. Now let’s multiply $633,600 for one talent by the 10,000 talents that he owes, which is $6,336,000,000. That is six billion, three hundred thirty six million dollars, or let’s round down to $6.3 billion. That’s a lot of money, it’s possible I guess that he could invent something and make the money to pay his creditor back, but that’s in these days, back then most people were relegated to the station that they were born into and couldn’t escape it.

This begs the question, who would lend a servant this much money? JTC points out, “Ten thousand talents are specified as expressive of a sum so great as to put the debtor beyond all reasonable possibility of paying. We may regard the man as a trusted official, one of the king’s ministers, who had been charged with the custody of the royal revenues, or one of the chief treasurers of taxes; that he is called a servant introduces no inconsistency, as in an absolutely monarchy all but the sovereigns are subjects and servants.” The king didn’t lend him this money, it was mismanaged resources, which I think is fitting in our situation because Jesus doesn’t loan us trouble, he gives us stewardships which we ultimately mismanage, thus incurring our debts.

The king insists that the servant and his wife and children be sold into slavery along with their house and all their possessions in order to repay the debt. Is this man and his family and possession worth the cost of the debt? Nope, can he ever replay this debt? Nope, and the law stipulates that if someone is unable to pay their debts, then they are to be sold into slavery to recoup some of the costs. So the justice part of our eternal debt is the default solution to our predicament, that’s why the king was going to sell the servant and his family into slavery. This would be like us paying for our own sins, that is a certain type of slavery, we aren’t free to make our own choices, we aren’t free to be happy, we must suffer. It’s also interesting to note, as JTC says, “The man was in arrears for debt. He did not come because his lord voluntarily but had to be brought. So in the affairs of our individual lives periodical reckonings are inevitable; and while some debtors report of their own accord, others have to be cited to appear. The messengers who serve the summons may be adversity, illness, the approach of death; but, whatever, whoever they are, they enforce a rendering of our accounts.” We like to think that we are escaping or keeping under the radar, but the time does come for us to be called for an account, and many times, the call comes quickly, without warning.

The servant instinctively fell to the ground and begged for mercy, begged for more time, “and I will pay thee all.” It’s probably pretty common, when dealing with someone you owe money to, to say, “I’ll get the money, I just need some more time.” Like when Han Solo tells Greedo that he has the money he owes Jabba, but “I don’t have it with me.” The outcome is either one of two things: 1. “ok you have another 3 days to get it to me or else…” or 2. “Too bad, I’m done waiting, you’ll have to pay. The end result is still that you have to pay the money in full. The king renders a most unexpected verdict, he “was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.” I’ve never heard any instances of a loan shark or drug dealer saying, “it’s ok, you don’t have to pay me back.” Even most family members don’t take that attitude towards each other. This king didn’t give the servant more time, he didn’t even reduce the amount owed to something more reasonable, he dismissed the whole debt. Because the servant asked for mercy, mercy was able to be granted. If he had been obstinate and said “fine sell us into slavery, but I’ll never beg,” then what could the king have done? He couldn’t have forgiven the debt in that instance because the servant didn’t want the debt forgiven, he wanted to pay the price for what he had done, he wanted justice.

The reasonable thing to do in this case would be to reduce the debt to something that the servant could have achieved, even if it was a fraction of the original amount, but that’s not what the king did. When we ask for forgiveness of our sins, Jesus doesn’t say, “ok I’ll forgive you, but you’re still going to have to pay a more reasonable amount.” One distinction that is important here is that the king never says that it was ok for the servant to squander his stewardship, what he did was not ok, but he is not required to pay the debt back at all. He doesn’t put stipulations on us at all, just like the king didn’t put any stipulations on the servant, he doesn’t require us to pay a certain amount or to give everything back to him for the rest of our lives. But what this servant failed to realize was that the forgiveness of his own debt was contingent on him forgiving the debts of others.

The servant leaves the king probably feeling like a new man, the weight of the debt that he’s owed for probably many years, has been forgiven, him and his family are safe, and he can now go on about his life. If that were you, what would be the first thing that you would do? I would go home and tell my family the good news and then smile at everyone while I walked around going about my business. This servant didn’t do that, he “went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest.” Just to get a little bit of perspective here, the footnotes indicate that 100 pence is “approximately three month’s wages of a poor working man.” Let’s go back to our example of the minimum wage earning man who works six days a week. That’s $64/day times 6 days a week which is $384/week times 12 weeks (3 months) which is $4,608. So it’s not nothing, it’s a fairly significant amount, at least I consider it enough to want back. I know just what the first servant is thinking too, “the king forgave me because he doesn’t need the money, but I don’t have as much money as the king so I need this money back, these are two very different situations.” And isn’t that like us too? I know that I’ve thought “sure it’s easy for Jesus to forgive, he doesn’t have to live with the guy who’s hurting me. He’s already dead and resurrected, forgiving doesn’t matter at all to him.” The point isn’t whether or not it’s easier for Jesus to forgive or for us, but who we become as we forgive is what the Savior is, he always forgives. And really, Jesus was the one who paid the price for us, he felt all of our pain, he’s the one who suffered for all, so if he can forgive despite all he’s been through, then it’s the least we can do as well.

President Gordon B. Hinckely is quoted in the IM as teaching, “The great Atonement was the supreme act of forgiveness. The magnitude of that Atonement is beyond our ability to completely understand. I know only that it happened, and that it was for me and for you. The suffering was so great, the agony so intense, that none of us can comprehend it when the Savior offered Himself as a ransom for the sins of all mankind. It was through Him that we gain forgiveness. It is through Him that there comes the certain promise that all mankind will be granted the blessings of salvation, with resurrection from the dead… May God help us to be a little kinder, showing forth greater forbearance, to be more forgiving, more willing to walk the second mile, to reach down and lift up those who may have sinned but have brought forth the fruits of repentance, to lay aside old grudges and nurture them no more.”

How do we forgive? Honestly, how do we take the hate and fear out of our hearts and replace it with God’s love? The answer, is that we don’t, Jesus is the one who has to do that for us. This begs the question, how do we get Jesus to work within our hearts? The answer is to draw closer to him, study his teachings, make covenants with him, keep his commandments, and as we do what he’s asked us to do, then he will heal us in the way that we need. It’s like different currency. We can’t heal ourselves, but he can, and he can’t force us to come to him, but we can. We do what we can, come to him, and then he does what he can, heal us. I know that Jesus has taken pain and hatred out of my heart and replaced it with peace. Did I do that to myself? Nope. Could I have done that for myself? Nope. How did he do it? I don’t know. How did I tell him that I was ready? I started studying the scriptures, I committed to going back to church, I committed to trying my best to keep the commandments, I started praying. Do I get it right all the time? Nope. He asks us to be kind, so I tried to be kind. Did it work? Sometimes. And that’s the process, as we try to do what He says, he works the poison out of our hearts, and it’s not overnight, but looking back, it seems to be.

The first servant handled this poor guy who owed him money roughly, he grabbed him by the neck and said, “pay me that thou owest.” I have been in situations before where I have gotten snippy with someone after someone had been nice to me and I tell myself “pay me that thou owest.” I’ve said that to myself quite frequently actually, “pay me that thou owest… let it go.” The other servant who owes 100 pence begged, “Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.” JTC points out “In his fellowservant’s plea for time in which to pay the hundred pence, the greater debtor should have been reminded of the dire straits from which he had just been relieved; the words, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all,’ were identical with those of his own prayer to the king.” I think another reason why this interaction doesn’t feel like it applies to us as people is because when we ask for forgiveness, we know that we ask a loving God who has our best interest at heart, and because we, as the offender, are the ones asking for forgiveness. In many cases, the people who has hurt us doesn’t come to us and ask for forgiveness, we have to forgive them without them really being sorry about it. But I guess if I think about it, Jesus atoned for all the sins, and there are a lot of people who don’t recognize that they have done something wrong, or they just don’t care and Jesus doesn’t hold judgment against them for that. He recognizes that forgiveness is our responsibility, and knows that eventually they will come around. Similarly, those who wrong us will eventually have to come to that knowledge as well, they will have to recognize that what they did was painful to us, and will either have to beg Jesus’ forgiveness or refuse and suffer for the sins themselves.

After the first servant had the second servant cast into prison for defaulting on his debts, the family of the second man was distressed and went to the king and told them all that had happened. The king called the first servant, the recipient of so much mercy, and said, “O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desirest me: Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee.” Interestingly, the king granted the first guy forgiveness simply because he wanted it, he didn’t earn it by performing some great task, he didn’t get it because of his status or wealth or because of who his family was, he got it because he asked. Likewise, we don’t have to “earn” the forgiveness Jesus bestows on us, he gives it to us because he loves us, not because we deserve it. The king had the first servant “delivered… to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.” How can someone repay a debt while they are in prison? They can’t, but Jesus is telling us what it will be like for those who will not be merciful to others, the tormentors will have their way, and that sounds terrifying. And I think it’s important to point out that the people who refuse to forgive others will only have to suffer until they are ready to accept the Lord’s help. It won’t be these people who are deeply hurt begging Jesus for help, and Jesus refusing because they aren’t perfectly forgiving in every way. I’m confident that it will be Jesus begging these people to let Him heal them, and them refusing.

The IM quotes Elder David E. Sorensen as teaching, “When someone has hurt us or those we care about, that pain can almost be overwhelming. It can feel as if the pain or the injustice is the most important thing in the world and that we have no choice but to seek vengeance. But Christ, the Prince of Peace, teaches us a better way. It can be very difficult to forgive someone the harm they’ve done it, but when we do, we open ourselves up to a better future. No longer does someone else’s wrongdoing control our course. When we forgive others, it frees us to choose how we will live our own lives. Forgiveness means that problems of the past no longer dictate our destinies, and we can focus on the future with God’s love in our hearts.” And finally, JTC finishes up saying, “Mercy is for the merciful. As a heavenly jewel it is to be received with thankfulness and used with sanctity, not to be cast into the mire of undeservedness. Justice may demand punishment: ‘With what measure ye meter, it shall be measured to you again.’ The conditions under which we may confidently implore pardon are set forth in the form of prayer prescribed by the Lord: ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’” Holding a grudge, or not forgiving someone is like telling Jesus that his judgment is not good enough, that the atonement is not good enough and that you demand more. Clearly we can see this as a flawed argument. Forgiveness is something that must be seen in the eternal perspective to make sense in this life. And I think that’s why Jesus mastered the concept so well, he knew that he was alive on the earth, but he knew who he was, he knew where he came from, and he knew where he was going.