²¹Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

      ²²Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

      ²³“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. ²⁵Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

      ²⁶“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ ²⁷The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

      ²⁸“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

      ²⁹“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

      ³⁰“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. ³¹When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

      ³²“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ ³⁴In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

      ³⁵“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (NIV11)

Dear Fellow Children of God:

We shouldn’t be quick to judge Peter for the question he asked in our Gospel. Jesus had just been talking about sin and how to deal with those who sin against you, and it was natural for him to wonder, “Well, if I forgive my brother and he does the same thing again, and again, then what? The rabbis say to forgive three, maybe four times, but no more, so … would seven be about right?”

Believers today ask the same kind of question. The child whose older brother is constantly teasing, insulting, and hitting him might ask when he can stop accepting the “I’m sorry” that is reluctantly offered when Mom finally intervenes. The grown woman whose mother fills their conversations with loveless criticism and belittles her choices but follows up with, “Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just that I worry about you!” will wonder whether she can still be a good Christian if she stops saying, “It’s OK”. The man whose friend borrows money and tools but never repays or returns them will think that there’s got to be a limit to how many times he has to eat the loss before he ends the friendship. And the wife whose life has been made miserable by her husband’s gaslighting, verbal abuse, and broken promises is just plain tired of his apologies — which, frankly, seem emptier every time.

So yes, it’s a natural thing to wonder, “How long do I put up with this?” and to ask, “How many times shall I forgive?” We can identify with Peter and his question. Still, it wasn’t, and isn’t, the right question to ask.

“I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times,” was Christ’s way of saying, “You’re looking at this the wrong way.” He wasn’t really correcting the number of times to forgive. Jesus was telling Peter, and us, that the whole premise of the question was wrong, because forgiving is not something to track or count. So he told a story, as he often did, to contrast God’s way of dealing with sin and our very human ways of dealing with it, and to show the consequences of having it your way.

Now, we’re not explicitly told what the unmerciful servant in the parable was thinking or how he justified his actions. But it’s not exactly a mystery to us, because we’re familiar with how that kind of behavior gets rationalized: Maybe he reasoned that he deserved mercy and his fellow servant didn’t; maybe he thought it was important to be seen as tough and strong after showing himself vulnerable and humble in front of the court; maybe he thought that he’d been given some kind of blank check to just do whatever he wanted. There are other rationalizations and wrong ideas about mercy and forgiveness that he might have had and that people today hold onto, which are rarely stated so frankly out loud, but all have one thing in common: they are presented as reasonable. They are “from the head” approaches to forgiveness.

But it is almost always really about the heart. If in your heart you don’t feel like forgiving someone who sinned against you, you can always find reasons not to.

And that’s what makes this parable Jesus told so powerful. We don’t need to know what the unmerciful servant is thinking or feeling, because we see what’s going on in his heart from what he does. It’s not good, and it’s not God’s way.

One of the first things that we see about God’s from-the-heart forgiveness is that it is undeniably simple, which is not how our human nature imagines it should be.  The king, who is the servant’s master, doesn’t demand a deposit or evidence of sincerity; he doesn’t set up a payment plan or look for some minimum amount of begging. When the servant makes his plea, “Be patient with me and I will pay back everything,” the master takes pity on him and cancels the debt. Entirely.

He felt compassion. He showed mercy. He forgave.

And that simple act is a potent picture of what God has done for us in Christ.

The 10,000 “bags of gold” that the servant owed and wasn’t able to pay? The Greek word there is “talent”. A talent was equal to 6000 denarii. A denarius was equal to one day’s wage. So his total debt was the equivalent of 60 million days’ wages. If we were to use eight hours of work at the US minimum wage as a reference, that would be $3.48 billion. We don’t have to speculate about how he might have incurred such a debt; Jesus just wanted to make it clear that it was an amount so huge that the man could never pay it back, no matter how patient his master might be with him.

It’s the same with our debt of sin to God. The sum total of our offenses against God’s holiness and our rebellions against his authority is beyond estimation, for each of us. Even if there were some way to settle our accounts with him — there isn’t — we could never have or do enough to make a dent in those debts. Because it’s not just “big” and seemingly rare sins like adultery, theft, and murder that add up; it’s also — and even more — our daily and hourly sins, when we’re impatient with our kids, when we snap at our spouse, when we disrespect our parents or those in authority, when we run to things we should be running from, when we apply double standards, when we act as though other people exist just to serve us and make us happy, when we start thinking that there’s something missing and our life can only be good if we have it, and all the myriad ways in which we selfishly and defiantly choose to go our own way instead of God’s.

What we deserve for all that, since we cannot pay our debt of sin, is death and damnation, which is much and eternally worse than being sold into slavery. But before we ever even had the thought of begging God to be patient or cut us a break, he provided the way out from under it all. His Son, Jesus Christ, took all our guilt upon himself and took it all to the cross. There he suffered and died, pouring out his innocent lifeblood, to satisfy God’s wrath and judgment. He paid the price himself, in our place, so that every sin of every sinner would be canceled out — forgiven forever.

Because when he saw our sorry state, he felt compassion. He showed mercy. He forgave us, from the heart.

Mercy—getting what is good instead of what we deserve—is what we need, and it’s what we want when we are brought face to face with the reality and enormity of our debt of sin. We like the idea that we gain heaven and eternal life.

But what about other people? Do we want them to escape punishment? What do we do with what’s been done for us?

That’s the key question here, and what the parable lays before us in a striking and vivid way. 

The servant who had his impossible-to-repay debt canceled went out and found a fellow servant who owed him a small amount — just a hundred days’ wages — and violently demanded repayment. When he didn’t get it, and despite the man making almost exactly the same plea for patience that he had made earlier, he had the man thrown in prison until he could pay the debt. This revealed what was in his heart — and it bore no resemblance to what was in his master’s.

Now, you or I might easily say that we would never do such a thing, but what that unmerciful servant did is different only in degree from what we do when we leave church each week and … assume the worst of and shout at the guy who cuts us off in traffic, when we lose our cool with the kids after telling them to be quiet for the umpteenth time, when we become short-tempered and harsh with a friend who seems to always be taking more than giving, when we keep records of wrongs, or when we nurture and treasure our grudges. 

You and I have received immeasurable mercy from God, who forgave all our sins for Christ’s sake; when we refuse to show mercy to other people — when we’re impatient and unforgiving — we’re not just being mean or unpleasant. We’re demanding justice or satisfaction from them, when that’s the last thing we want God to exact from us. 

But if that’s the way we want the world to work, God will respect that. That’s the consequence the parable shows: the master calls the unforgiving servant “Wicked” when he finds out what he has done, and he condemns him: “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” The consequences are severe:  “In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed” — which was never going to happen.  In essence, the king was telling him: “If that’s the way you think it should be—that every debt that is owed be repaid on demand—then that’s the way it will be for you. You disagree with my way and my mercy, so have it your way.”

Tragically, but truly, that’s also what we can expect from God when we let ego, arrogance, self-centeredness, impatience, and even self-pity rule in our hearts when it comes to those who sin against us — or even just annoy us. The Lord says, “If that’s the way you think things should be, then so be it.” That’s what Jesus meant when he gave the moral of the parable: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

This is serious. It’s not just a cautionary tale that other people need to pay attention to. It’s a warning for each and every one of us who has been blessed by, received, and embraced God’s grace and mercy. It’s not just about whether or how readily we forgive other people, because choosing not to match his mercy in our dealings with others is a rejection of how he wills the world to work — which means a rejection of the only way that we are saved from our sins, escape death and hell, and gain eternal life in heaven. Saying, “I demand justice!” means that, yes, you get what’s coming to you. It’s not what God wants to give you, but he will when you insist on it — and you’ll have eternity to regret it.

So, yeah, don’t do that. What you have been given by him — freely, generously, lovingly — give to others. Match God’s mercy. Today’s reading from Ephesians 4 & 5 makes that point even more broadly: being a Christian is a whole way of being and living. We tame our tongues so that they only speak what builds people up; we get rid of our negativity toward others; just like Jesus, we are kind and compassionate; and we forgive, as in Christ God forgave us. We follow God’s example. We walk in the way of love. We match his mercy.

We see what this kind of living looks like in the story of Joseph, in our reading from Genesis. It’s not just that he forgives his brothers for having sold him into slavery. It’s especially the confidence that he shows, the faith he held onto through all those years of suffering after what they did to him: He didn’t demand satisfaction or dream of vengeance; instead, he trusted that the Lord would work everything out for the good.  Which is exactly what God did — and in an infinitely better and more important way than anything Joseph could have imagined.

And this is why and how you and I can live and forgive like this.  We’re not just following God’s example when we match his mercy; we’re embracing everything about his way of dealing with sin and sinners. We’re trusting his love, his grace, his salvation, his plan, his promises — all of it — with the sure knowledge that he will always come through for us, just as he did by sending Jesus to be our Savior. We gain everything and lose nothing by letting him do things his way for, in, and through us. It’s his power and purpose in us.

The forgiveness that is for you and me to have is also for you and me to give, and nothing is better. This is the way we love to live and live to love. We match God’s mercy. Amen.