Freed from overwhelming guilt
Series: Follow me | Bible text: Matthew 18:23–27
Being a follower of Jesus means living a life of constant forgiveness. The parable of a man in debt to the king teaches us the principles of forgiveness. In the person of the king, God does four things – he brings the hopelessly indebted man before him, but then takes pity on him, forgives his debt and sets him free. The king can only do this because he is prepared to take on the debt himself. God has done this impressively for all people in the person of Jesus Christ. The experience of this extraordinary love of God is the can opener for a changed life of love and generosity.
I read the following story in this week’s issue 38.2024 of the Christian weekly magazine IDEA: Ten months after a US street preacher was shot in the head, he publicly forgave the unknown perpetrator. Father-of-two Hans Schmidt (27) and his wife Zulya spoke to local TV station ABC15 […] According to Zulya Schmidt, a computerised tomography scan at the hospital showed that a bullet was lodged in her husband’s brain. She had begged God to spare her husband. Surprisingly, he began to speak again after a month and gradually recovered. […] The police have not yet been able to find the shooter. Schmidt explained that he harboured no grudge against him: «I think it’s important to forgive people. And I forgive him.»
This month in seetal chile we are looking at the topic of forgiveness. Being a follower of Jesus means living a life of constant forgiveness. In the Lord’s Prayer we ask: «And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us» (Matthew 6:12 LUT). It is the only theme of the prayer that Jesus then expands on: «If you forgive those who have done evil to you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive you either» (Matthew 6:14f NLB). Contrary to first impressions, Jesus is not saying that God’s forgiveness is based on or earned through our forgiveness of others. No, it is God’s forgiveness of us that provides the motivation and strength for our forgiveness of others.
The greatness of our guilt
The parable of the unreasonable debtor (Matthew 18:21–35) will form the framework for the next sermons. In this story, a king settles accounts with his servants. Among them is one who owes the king 10,000 talents. That is the equivalent of 3.48 billion dollars. The talent was the largest unit of currency in the empire, and ten thousand was the highest number for which there was a separate word in the Greek language. Jesus speaks of a boundless guilt that cannot be measured.
The usual way to deal with bankruptcy in ancient cultures was to make the debtor a slave, and so the king demands: «He, his wife, his children and everything he owned were to be sold to pay off his debt» (Matthew 18:25 NLB). Because of the servant’s request, something great happens: «But the man fell down before him and begged him: «Lord, be patient with me, I will pay everything. Then the king took pity on him, released him and cancelled his debt» (Matthew 18:26f NLB).
This highly indebted man represents a person like you and me. The king is God. The debtor does not represent a criminal individual case, but rather characterises the situation of all of us before God. Our guilt before God bursts the fabric of worldly realities. Hopeless. No chance of redemption. The towering heights of Mount Everest and the depths of the Pacific Ocean are very impressive for us who live on this planet. In the same way, we judge the culpability of different people; there are very virtuous and very vicious people. Seen from Mars, the huge differences in altitude are of no significance. The surface of the Earth is comparatively smoother than that of a billiard ball. The differences between us humans are just as insignificant. From the perspective of a holy and perfect God, we are all exactly the same: one hundred per cent dependent on his grace.
The difference between the shooter in the opening example and me as a pastor is not recognisable from the perspective of a holy God. Every person’s debt is huge and priceless. «For all men have sinned and lost their life in the glory of God» (Romans 3:23 NLB). The man in the parable asks for patience until he has paid everything back. That would take longer than 348,000 years. Many people are also on a repayment trip towards God. They think that if they make a moral effort, join the church and give alms, they can get right with God.
The price of forgiveness
«Then the king took pity on him, released him and cancelled his debts» (Matthew 18:27 NLB). The Greek word most often used for forgiveness in the New Testament is aphesis and means Decree. It can denote an amnesty or a tax remission. The concept of cancellation indicates that forgiveness always has a price. Cancelling someone’s debt means taking on the debt yourself. If a friend borrows our car, crashes it recklessly and is unable to pay for the damage, I can say: «I forgive you», but the price of injustice doesn’t disappear into thin air. I either find the money to buy a new car or I don’t have a car at all. Forgiveness is therefore a way of voluntarily accepting suffering instead of allowing the other person to suffer.
What is the price of man’s guilt before God? He could simply take a sponge and erase the amount. Heinrich Heine was of this opinion: «God will forgive me, that’s his job.» But this is not the case, because God is holy. It would be cheap grace. Paul, on the other hand, describes costly grace: «For he has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. God has bought our freedom with his blood and forgiven us all our trespasses» (Colossians 1:13f NLB). Forgiveness always means that someone voluntarily takes on suffering in the place of the debtor. We humans are in danger of trivialising the greatness of our guilt before God. But when we look at Jesus on the cross, how he sweated blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, how they put the crown of thorns on his head, how they drove the nails through his hands and feet, how he died slowly with shortness of breath and loss of blood, then we see the greatness of our guilt. My guilt before God is so bad that he could only redeem it with his life. Jesus can offer us forgiveness because he voluntarily took suffering upon himself. Sören Kierkegaard aptly summarises the depth of forgiveness: «We are more lost than we want to admit, and we are more deeply redeemed than we dare to hope.»
Experience God’s forgiveness
In the person of the king, God does four things – he brings the man before him, but then takes pity on him, forgives his guilt and sets him free. The man is first brought before the king. Then the actual guilt is named. Forgiveness begins by telling the truth, by revealing your guilt instead of covering it up with excuses or half-truths. But then the king Pity with him (v.27). The word for compassion comes from the Hebrew word Rachamine (mercy, compassion), which is Rechem (womb). God’s compassion for us humans is compared to the love of a mother for her child. This incomprehensible compassion is the driving force behind God’s forgiveness. God feels for you as a mother feels for her child. And so it comes to debt cancellation and freedom for the ex-debtor. This means that the relationship between the man and the king is restored. The man is no longer a debtor who abuses the king’s trust, but a citizen and servant. Through repentance and faith, every person can experience forgiveness from God. This restores the relationship; he is given the right to become a child of God.
The experience of almost unbelievable forgiveness is at the origin of powerful effects. The following statement by Jesus proves this: «I tell you, her sins – and they are many – are forgiven; so she has shown me much love. But a person who has been forgiven little shows little love» (Luke 7:47 NLB). As has already been made clear, every person who has asked Jesus to forgive their sins has been forgiven many sins. If we lack this experience, we are less or not at all able to show generosity towards others or to grant forgiveness. It is therefore completely incomprehensible that at the next opportunity the free man grabs a colleague by the collar who only owes him 100 denarii. That is a factor of 600,000 less than his debt to the king. I can only explain this by the fact that the good man did not understand the king’s expensive favour in the slightest. If we only begin to understand how expensive God’s love for us is, it changes everything. The king also has this expectation: «Shouldn’t you take pity on this servant, just as I took pity on you?» (Matthew 18:33 NLB). The more we live out of the joy that we have been forgiven, the quicker we will be able to forgive others.
The experience of this extraordinary love of God is the can opener for a changed life of love and generosity. It is a resource and motivation to forgive other people who have been guilty against me. The costly love of Christ changes everything. That’s itwhat changes me. The brings tears to my eyes. The is astonishment. The is overflowing joy. The is electrifying. There is nothing that changes so much. There are no more inferiority complexes – because I am so loved. There are no more superiority complexes – because I am a sinner who has only been saved by grace. Understanding what happened on the cross is the key to personal transformation – and it is the great key to the work of human forgiveness and reconciliation. I know Hans Schmidt’s motivation for forgiving the shooter. But I would not be surprised if he had experienced the costly love of Jesus.
Possible questions for the small groups
Read the Bible text: Matthew 28:21–35
- How would you Forgiveness in your own words?
- In the parable of the king and the debtor, why does Jesus need such an unimaginably large amount of money that can never be paid off?
- Have you experienced forgiveness through King Jesus? What does the thought that your guilt cost him his life do to you?
- This forgiveness is based on the kind of mercy and love that a mother has for her child in the womb. To what extent are you aware of this fact?
- Do you also believe that the experience of such forgiveness is electrifying and the basis of all change in following Jesus? How do you experience this?
