“Then came Peter and said to him, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven’ “ (RSV, Matthew 18: 21,22)

The Parable of the Unmerciful Debtor takes us behind the scenes of the court of an Eastern King. Over each of the provinces into which the Kingdom was divided there had been appointed a high official. His chief duty was to see that the King’s subjects duly paid their taxes and that the money so collected passed into the royal treasury. Such a position, involving each year a vast sum of money, furnished a dishonest governor with an opportunity for embezzlement on a grand scale.

One day the King decided to go into the provincial accounts, and discovered there a discrepancy too enormous to be concealed. The governor in question, who had evidently carried on in a wild and reckless fashion, was found to be the equivalent of some two million pounds short, a debt so colossal as to be utterly beyond his ability to pay. The King, who had his own way of dealing with such cases, ordered the man, his family and his property to be sold and the resulting proceeds to be paid into the Royal Treasury.

The unhappy governor, appalled at the prospect, fell on his knees and pleaded for time to pay. “Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything” (RSV, Matthew 18: 26). Whereupon the King, in whose hands alone rested the debtor’s fate, not only cancelled his order to sell the man and all that he had – which was what the man was pleading for – but went far beyond the debtor’s most frantic hopes. He actually cancelled the debt in its entirety and released him. And so the man, without any deserving at all on his part, found that he was now a free man who did not owe a penny.

Our Lord fixed the governor’s debt at the huge figure of two million pounds in order to emphasise how great and grievous is the debt of human sin to God. This may seem an exaggeration. It is not.

For once we catch a glimpse of the scorching holiness of God, dwelling in light unapproachable by sinful human beings, and grasp the fact that he created us so that we ourselves might achieve a character of sinless perfection – then it becomes glaringly obvious how far, how desperately far, we fall short of that; how enormous is the discrepancy in our account, and how powerless we are to make it good.

Like the debtor in the parable, we can only plead for forgiveness and throw ourselves upon the mercy of God; and when we do that, he, as always, gives us more than we ask for and inevitably more than we deserve: for to those who “truly repent and believe in him” (1) he not only forgives us all we have done amiss, he goes further: he welcomes us as his own sons and daughters.

The servant’s debt is forgiven, and we then take our place as members of his family – but it is always by grace and favour, never by right: never for our own merits but always through his manifold and great mercies.

That is what St Peter had failed to grasp when he asked Our Lord how many times he ought to forgive his brother. He took it for granted that he himself had a natural right to be forgiven by God times without number; but when it came to his own duty to forgive others, he wanted to limit that and suggested that seven times ought to meet the case.

We also often look at things the same way as St Peter did. We like to think that we can always have an effective claim on God’s immediate forgiveness for our many and deliberate acts of rebellion and omissions of duty; and yet, at the same time, do we not find ourselves slow and reluctant to forgive others for even one little word that displeases us? Peter wanted to limit his duty to seven times. Do we set our limit even lower?

So we pass to the second part of the parable. As the forgiven governor swung buoyantly out of the palace courtyard, he came face to face with some minor official from his own province who happened to owe him 100 denarii, the equivalent of 100 days’ pay.

Seizing the man by the throat and shaking him he demanded immediate payment. The wretched man fell to his knees and pleaded in the same words which the governor himself had been using so short a while before, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you” (NRSV, Matthew 18: 29).

This pointed reminder of his own recent forgiveness, however, failed to soften the governor’s heart, for, refusing even the request for time to pay (which was well within the official’s power), let alone cancelling the debt itself, he threw him into prison till all should be settled.

This pitiless ingratitude, when reported to the King, was punished by him in the same way. The governor was himself flung into prison until the impossible debt of two million pounds should be settled. In this way Our Lord drives home the truth that other people’s offences against us are trivial, when compared with our own against God. No wonder he altered the seven times, which St Peter had thought to be a fairly generous offer, to seventy times seven, meaning that you and I are to forgive other people times without number.

The alternative that awaits us was put by Our Blessed Lord in a few words which also sum up the whole parable, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (NRSV, Matthew 18: 35). “From your heart”: those are the significant words. A forgiveness that goes no deeper than words is no forgiveness at all if there remains bitterness in the heart.

Are we in doubt as to whether we have really forgiven those who have injured us? If so, we can very quickly make sure. If we have really forgiven them, then we shall find ourselves only too willing to forget the whole unhappy matter.

That is what happens when God forgives. In the words of Jeremiah, “…I will forgive their iniquity”, says the Lord, “and remember their sin no more” (31: 34).

It would, however, be foolish and unrealistic not to recognise that it is one thing to talk about forgiveness and quite another thing to practise it. When the root of bitterness goes deep down into the heart – and sometimes it can go very deep indeed – one can be, not so much reluctant to forgive as resolutely opposed to the very idea.

When we find ourselves in that sour and unhappy state; when in our own power we cannot forgive a wrong, then all we can do is to bring the whole thing to Our Blessed Lord and ask him to forgive the wrong through us. And the next thing we have to do – and this may require a great effort and a sacrifice of the unholy joy of harbouring hatred – the next thing we have to do is to pray daily, or at any rate regularly, for those who have injured us.

“Father, forgive them” were Our Lord’s first words from the Cross and they were echoed in St Stephen’s last words at his martyrdom, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (NRSV, Luke 23: 34; Acts 7: 60). There is our example, and it is one that we cannot refuse to follow without making a mockery of the very name of Christian.

But when we do follow it, we find ourselves sweetened by a forgiving spirit, for it is very difficult to harbour bitterness against anyone whom we regularly lift up to God in our prayers and in forgiving others we ourselves thereby become forgivable.

Let us therefore make the effort, when the effort is required, to be as ready and as quick to forgive others as God himself is to forgive us: so that we can always say that very uncomfortable petition in the Lord’s Prayer with well-founded confidence, “Forgive us our trespasses in the same way as we forgive those who trespass against us”.

Reference

1. Book of Common Prayer. The Order for the Visitation of the Sick. Quotation is from the words of Absolution.