Do We Forgive?
Heidelberg Catechism • Sermon • Submitted
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For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will 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-seven times.
“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Scripture Reading: Matthew 6:14-15; 18:21-35
Heidelberg Catechism: Lord’s Day 51 (Psalter 923)
Sermon Title: Do We Forgive?
Brothers and sisters in Christ, for the past couple of months and throughout this summer, I am working with three couples in premarital counseling. The program that we use is one that looks at a number of different areas in the marital relationship. Like most premarital courses, there is time for discussion, but then there also exercises we go through. These are things that a couple could practically do if they find themselves unsure about how to approach an issue, or come to a point when what they have always done is not satisfying or not working.
In our last round of sessions, we focused on two things that are at the center of marriage. If these two are not maintained or functioning, then the relationship is probably strained, if not tearing apart. We were looking at communication and conflict resolution. I’m guessing if we went around the sanctuary right now, many if not every person who has ever been married would probably say that is true, and likely also that each of us has experienced some trouble in those areas before. Even those of you who are single can likely say that you have seen that; that makes sense.
Under this topic in our sessions, we also then looked at forgiveness. In our relationships between husband and wife, forgiveness is entirely necessary if we are going to be happy, if we are going to be fruitful. If there is something we can put on the checklist of what to continually do throughout one’s marriage—it is forgiveness. Of course that’s not only true for husbands and wives, it’s true for siblings, for communities, for church members that don’t get along, for friends as well as enemies. We need to forgive one another, to actively practice that which our Scripture and our Catechism call us to.
The words we hear tonight, the instruction by Jesus to pray for forgiveness, and then to practice forgiveness ourselves are for all of our relationships. Forgiveness is practiced when someone has been wronged, when they have had evil done against them. It involves seeing that there is stress or a debt in a relationship. When I sin against my wife, by getting angry over some truly petty thing, I am in debt to her—I have not given her the compassion she deserves, I have taken advantage of her and the relationship needs to be restored.
The truth of the matter though is that when we sin against someone, when we wrong them, there is not a quick and easy fix. If I take $100 or $1000 from someone, I create a relationship where I am a debtor to that person. All I have to do though is give them that money back in good time. That’s easy and neat. But when there are matters of sin and wrongs done between two people, things are a bit messier. If I were to take $1000, promising to pay it back in 6 months or a year, but never talk to the person who loaned me that money again—there is not a nice fix for that. There is not a standard measure of do this and it’s guaranteed to repay the wrong, do this and trust will fully be revived. No, the debt that is created between individuals when they sin is not a simple system of repayment. So we are taught that forgiveness is the only answer.
I’ve been speaking generally so far about forgiveness among us as humans, and that’s the dominant instruction of our Scriptures, but I do want to follow our Catechism’s answer tonight. We will return to our forgiveness of one another, but let’s look at the first part of our prayer request. Forgive us our debts—Because of Christ’s blood, do not hold against us, poor sinners that we are, any of the sins we do or the evil that constantly clings to us.
When we teach a child and when we as more mature adults practice ourselves, asking the Lord to forgive us our sins, often we end that prayer, “For Jesus’s sake.” That’s a practice, an action rooted in instruction like what we are looking at tonight. If it’s hard to reconcile a human relationship in which both of us are broken, we are looking at a relationship between us and the holy, perfect God. If there’s no simple, standard measure for us repaying one another, then our debt before God is even greater. It becomes infinitely harder and more impossible for us to pay for that sin that we have done against him.
One of the commentaries I looked at on Matthew 18 talked about the financial end of things in this passage. The servant who is the main character is owed, we are told towards the end, 100 denarii. If a denarius was a day’s wage, then we are talking about three month’s wages. These were servants; they were not making a great amount of money. So in the realm of today, let’s say they make South Dakota minimum wage of $8.55 an hour, work full-time, for a 100 days—we would be talking an amount probably $5,000-$6,000 dollars. This commentary I was reading said then that this 10000 talent debt in comparison really is just an astronomical, unimaginable amount.
A talent is a measurement of weight, a Roman talent weighed a little over 70lbs. We are not told if the king was owed that much in silver or gold, but those are the most common uses. It really does not matter which precious stone it was though; because if it was gold, we are talking today’s value well over $13 trillion, about 10 years back it would have only been a bit over $3 trillion dollars, and yes that is trillion with a t. The U.S. national debt is $19 trillion, that’s really the only point of reference when you talk that much. If it was 10,000 talents of silver, again using today’s value, the servant still owes a bit over $179 million.
I don’t know what an individual could do to rack up that much debt, or what kind of interest this king was charging, or how much he had to be able to afford that kind of loan. But he had given that money to this servant, he had now sold off him, his family, and their possessions, and the servant says, “Be patient with me, and I will pay everything back.” What does the king do? He took pity and canceled the debt and let him go. This multi-million to multi-trillion-dollar debt was never going to be settled. There was no amount of payment that the servant could ever make back that would qualify under any definition of the word “just.” So the king forgave him the debt. He cut his losses, and assumedly let him go to his family to carry on with his life. This was no longer hanging over his head, literally waiting to crush down on him. It was done, it was finished.
Again, Because of Christ’s blood, do not hold against us, poor sinners that we are, any of the sins we do or the evil that constantly clings to us. The Catechism, and the Scriptures it points to, are not saying, “God, do not hold against us any of our sins and evil because we don’t deserve it. Do not hold these against us because they’re not really a big deal.” No, it admits we are poor sinners—we are debtors of the greatest amount; the apostle Paul said in 1 Timothy 1, “I am the worst [of sinners].” But we beseech God would not hold them against us because of Christ.
Because Jesus lived a perfectly obedient life and rose, and because of that vivid image of what took place on a cross almost 2,000 years ago. When God in the flesh gave his life to death as a sacrifice for us, as an atonement for our sins. We are asking God to remember that, to maintain the covenant that guarantees that. Because he is the only thing we can cling to, because that is the only hope for us. When we seek and request God’s forgiveness and grace, we are owning that we are wretched and totally depraved; we need a Savior, a Redeemer, a Forgiver.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, friends in the Lord—he has forgiven you. The debt of our sin and sins, committed to this day and yet to be committed, may be an astronomical amount—there is no way you or anybody else could ever repay that. But that’s what Jesus has done, and offers to us by his grace through faith—that we are forgiven.
But let’s go back now to the Catechism, because there is unfinished business for us. The second half says, Forgive us just as we are fully determined, as evidence of your grace in us, to forgive our neighbors. We read Jesus speaking in Matthew 6, right after the Lord’s Prayer, For if you forgive when you are sinned against, then the Father will forgive you; if you do not then he will not. The parable followed a similar route. The debtor who owed less was not pardoned, but in verse 30 he was thrown into jail. But fellow servants went and told the master about what this man who had owed what may have been a multi-trillion-dollar debt had done. And the master, the king, called in the man he had pardoned, and says to him, “I canceled all your debt because you begged me to.” This man’s servant had done the exact same thing—he fell to his knees, he begged, “be patient and I will pay you back.” And the king asks, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”
“In anger,” says verse 34, “his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.” His torture, his repayment would never end. “This is how your heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.” Thinking through the process of forgiveness, the one who forgives first most definitely is Christ. What this is warning against then is thinking that we can call ourselves Christians without acting in accordance with the greatest action of Christ. If the evidence of grace is not present—then the question we have seen in past weeks in Corsica working through James is is our salvation really clear? If we have not been forgiving and have no desire to forgive others, have we been forgiven?
This isn’t a new teaching, and this is not being saved by works. This is along very similar lines to what Jesus preached about believers being a light in this world. Matthew 5 verse 16, “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” In forgiving others, we are shining the light that has been shined on us. We are displaying what we know Jesus has done. If there’s no evidence, is he really in us?
As I have been thinking about forgiveness as it relates to marriage, I have been thinking about it in terms too of being a young dad. Watching children who are just a little bit older than Addison, I get a glimpse of what parental discipline looks like when a child is old enough to know right and wrong. Quite often if one kid pushes another, a parent of the pusher will tell their child to say they are sorry. If a kid takes a toy forcefully and without asking from another child, they might be told to give it back and apologize. There are different ways which an apology can be responded to. Maybe a child responds by saying, “It’s okay.” Maybe they just go back to playing together, and their actions show that the apology is received. When we are children, I believe those kinds of responses are words and actions of forgiveness.
If those are what we have learned when we are young, I think we tend to carry those same responses into our maturing and adult years. Someone does something wrong or mistaken, and if they apologize, we say, “It’s okay.” If someone does something wrong, we might act in a way that fixes it or helps them to make just amends. But in our maturity, do we forgive? Maybe many of us do and so this isn’t completely necessary, but I think it’s easy to accept an apology without actually forgiving one another.
In the parable we read, again the master took pity, canceled the debt, and let him go. Earlier we identified that king with God and what the magnitude of the Father’s forgiveness really does. But now we are called to replicate that. To take pity, cancel the debt, let another person go. That’s not holding over someone’s head their past—regularly reminding them of the wrongs and hurts they have caused. Had the servant shown mercy to the fellow servant, the king would not have regularly come around and said, “You could still be living in the weight of that debt.” No, he would have let it go—it was clear and done. He had forgiven him; on the matter of his financial debt there was no payment expected and no need to communicate guilt anymore.
That’s what Jesus encourages us to do. As we have been justified and are being sanctified, that we would forgive. I want to encourage those of us here tonight to use these words, “I forgive you.” There is something powerful about using that language rather than just “it’s okay,” rather than just letting actions talk. Maybe it’s because we do not hear it often, maybe I’m being old-fashioned, but for you or I to go to another person, who has wronged us, and to say, “I forgive you,” changes things. Maybe they have fully apologized, maybe they have tried fixing things, maybe they are in a position where the wrong, the sin cannot and will not ever be adequately fixed, whatever the circumstances we are called to forgive them.
Saying those three words is not an easy thing. Maybe we do not speak them because it is easier to just assume, we’re all good, until we’ve been wrong again. I need this encouragement, this command, as much as anyone else. Saying these words and truly meaning it means putting our pride aside, putting aside our ability to hold something over someone else. Maybe someone has hurt us with words, with actions, with crimes against our family—we are called to forgive them. Maybe we look at circumstances and we see, no that’s not right—there’s things that are too big, too grave to be forgiven. I want you consider—if Jesus has been able and willing to forgive each and every person for the wrongs they have done against him, won’t we forgive an individual for what they have done wrong to us.
A Christian who does not forgive others will be called to account for that. But a Christian who knows what has been done for them, and extends genuine forgiveness has followed their heavenly Father. For some forgiveness is something that takes some time to deal with—to deal with wounds, with deep hurts, even destruction that has been caused in one’s life. I’m not saying it’s easy, I’m not saying it must always be quick. But when the time comes, and the love of Christ can be shown, this is the action we are called to participate in. Let us sincerely and wholeheartedly be willing to forgive those who are indebted to us. Amen.