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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Consider the following headlines from this past week related to debt. “America’s poor [are] deeper in debt than ever.” “Credit card debt up $28 billion in second quarter.” “Student debt over $50-thousand is on the rise [and] now outstrips credit‑card [and] auto‑loan debt in America.” Whether or not we have them, probably all of us can relate to debts of money, and the people in Jesus’s day were no different. In today’s Gospel Reading Jesus uses forgiving debts of money to illustrate forgiving debts of sin, and at the end of the Reading He explicitly states the need for us whom God forgives in turn from our hearts to forgive others. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme, “Forgiving Debts”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is essentially the second half of Jesus’s so-called “Fourth Discourse” in St. Matthew’s Gospel account. As I mentioned last week when we heard the first half, the Discourse as a whole seems to center on life in the Christian community, how Christians are to act toward one another. Last week we heard Jesus speak of God’s not wanting one “little one” who believes in Him to perish, and so we heard Jesus tell His followers how to reconcile with one another when a brother or sister in Christ sins against them (Matthew 18:1-20). This week we heard Peter ask Jesus how often believers are to forgive sins against them, and we heard Jesus answer seventy times seven and then tell the so-called “Parable of the Unforgiving Servant” in order to illustrate our need to forgive as we have been forgiven.
As is so often the case, the Divinely‑inspired St. Matthew does not tell us—and so we do not know for sure—precisely what Peter was thinking when he asked his question. Peter certainly seems to have understood at least the need to forgive, but, since he asks how often his brother will sin against him and he will forgive him, he also seems to think that there is a limit to his forgiving his brother. Old Testament examples might have suggested a limit of three times (see Amos 1:3; 2:6; Job 33:29-30), but Peter asks about seven times. Jesus answers not seven times but seventy times seven, and we all do the math and think 490 times (or we remember other versions of the Bible that translate “77 times” [for example, the KJV and NIV]). The precise number is really beside the point, as the following parable, unique to St. Matthew’s account, makes clear. In the parable, as the king had mercy on and forgave his servant’s debt, so that servant should have had mercy on and have forgiven his fellow servant’s debt. As God forgives our debts—the sins we commit against Him—so we should forgive the debts—the sins—our brothers and sisters in Christ commit against us.
How do we do with such “forgiving debts”? To begin with, do we have trouble believing that God actually forgives the debt of sins we commit against Him? Do we think that some sins we commit against Him are just too horrible for Him to forgive? Do we ask Him for patience thinking that, if we just have enough time, we ourselves can make everything up to Him? If we do not have trouble with those aspects of “forgiving debts”, do we have trouble forgiving our brothers and sisters in Christ? Do we think that some sins they commit against us are just too horrible for us to forgive? Do we refuse to answer their plea for patience the way that God has answered ours? To be sure, by nature and in deed we are all sinners in need of forgiveness, and our sinful nature with its desire to wipe out sins by our own efforts, clings to us throughout this life. Even we Christians struggle to forgive others, especially to forgive them of certain sins, such as those Jesus discusses next in St. Matthew’s account, those of the most‑intimate nature between husbands and wives (Matthew 19:3-12).
Today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 14:1-12), especially with its quotation from Isaiah (45:23), reminds us that each of us will give an account of ourselves to God—whether when we die or when Jesus returns, whichever comes first. Like the wicked servant in today’s Gospel Reading, our Lord and Master in His righteous wrath will deliver us to eternal torment, unless we repent. So, we turn in sorrow from our sin, we trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, and we want to do better than keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our doubting His forgiving us, and God forgives our failures to forgive one another. God forgives our sinful natures and all our sin, whatever our sin might be.
In a sense, today’s Gospel Reading does not tell us anything that Jesus had not already said back in the First Discourse St. Matthew records, the Sermon on the Mount. Then and there, in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus taught us to pray our Father in Heaven to “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”, and Jesus said that, if we forgive others their trespasses, our Heavenly Father will also forgive us, but if we do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will our Father forgive our trespasses (Matthew 6:12, 14-15). However, what today’s Gospel Reading makes especially clear is the magnitude of the debt God forgives us, especially as it relates to the magnitude of the debt we forgive others. Ten‑thousand talents and one‑hundred denarii are certainly foreign to us, and, while Bible commentators differ in the modern values that they give to those figures, we can at least understand both that the debt God forgives us is so great that we could never repay it and that the debt we forgive others pales in comparison—probably about one six‑hundred‑thousandth of what God forgives us. (For those of you who do not like fractions and prefer decimals, that is 0.0000016666.) The cause‑and‑effect relationship between God forgiving us and our forgiving others is not that our forgiving others causes God to forgive us, but rather God’s forgiving us causes us to forgive others. Through faith, God forgives us completely because of His compassion, mercy, and grace on account of the God‑man Jesus Christ’s death on the cross for us. Yet, our failing to forgive others certainly can cause God to revoke His forgiving us.
In the Gospel Reading, the first servant, having fallen was pleading with the king, his master. The Greek word used in verse 26 is one of the New Testament’s words for “worship”, and so today’s Gospel Reading like all of Scripture as a whole makes clear that we rightly worship God by seeking from Him the forgiveness of sins through His Word in all of its forms, including the Word with means in the Sacraments. In Holy Baptism, God not only forgives our sins, but He also replaces our hard hearts with a new Spirit that forgives others (see Ezekiel 11:19; 36:26). In individual Holy Absolution, God forgives the sins that individuals know and feel in their hearts and so privately confess to their pastor. Instead of Absolution’s exercise of the loosing key, an unrepentant or unforgiving sinner is cut off from the communion of the Church with the binding key, with the primary goal of leading them to repent and then be forgiven and restored to Church’s fellowship. Indeed, as Jesus also teaches in the Sermon on the Mount, before coming to the altar we all are reconciled with one another (Matthew 5:23-26). For, in Holy Communion, we are united not only with Him, but also, because we are united with Him, we are united with one another. At this rail, we receive from this altar, bread that is Christ’s body and wine that is Christ’s blood given and shed for us for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. With God’s Word and Sacraments, He through the Church forgives His people the enormity of the sins that they commit against Him; no other place or organization offers this great heavenly blessing of the forgiveness of sins.
As God forgives our debt to Him, so we forgive others’ debts to us. Today’s Old Testament Reading gives a great example of one’s forgiving others, as Joseph forgave his brothers the evil they did to him (Genesis 50:15-21). The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther reportedly called such forgiving of others “proof” that we have received the forgiveness of sin from God (Plass, #1586, p.527). As long as we live in this world, with our sinful nature still clinging to us, we will fail to forgive one another perfectly, but, if we are alive in Christ, we will at least be willing and try to forgive our brothers and sisters in Christ, even if our forgiveness is imperfect.
When I began this sermon, I mentioned several headlines from this past week related to debt. The articles accompanying those headlines indicate that some people’s debts are approaching levels where they cannot pay back the debt. Whether or not we have such debts of money, we all have such debts of sin. God willing, today’s Gospel Reading and our reflection on it have both helped us to appreciate the magnitude of God’s forgiving our debt of sin against Him and moved us to forgive others’ debts of sin against us. May God grant both, for Jesus’s sake.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +