Forgiven So Much! Forgiving So Little?
Bible Passage: Matthew 18:21-35
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: September 13, 2026
In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,
Has the 5th Petition of the Lord’s Prayer ever made you uneasy? Here is the 5th Petition of the Lord’s Prayer, Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. The first part of that isn’t troubling. We like that! We like the thought of our Father in heaven forgiving us our huge debt of sin! It’s the second part that sort of makes us squirm. As we forgive those who sin against us. It kind of sounds like we are saying to God, “God, apply to me the standard of forgiveness I use with people who sin against me!” If that is the case, I am very, very uneasy!
Our text for today will help us understand this connection between God’s forgiveness and our forgiveness. Our text is occasioned by the question of Peter, who asks Jesus, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? (v. 21) Jesus’ answer is, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times! (v. 22) Oh, okay, but I’m going to have to get a little note book to keep track. That’s ridiculous! Who does that? That’s the point! Stop tracking and recording your neighbor’s sins! Jesus then tells the parable. The parable makes the point: Forgiven So Much! Forgiving So Little?
The kingdom of heaven is like… There is the standard parable beginning. What is the gracious rule and reign of God like? In this case, like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. (v. 23) Time to settle up with the king! A servant is brought in who owes ten-thousand talents. This would be equal to sixty-million days’ wages! How does a servant come to have that kind of debt? Not important! Here’s the important part: it’s unpayable!
The king commands that the servant, his family, and all his possessions be sold to pay for at least a part of the debt. The servant begs for more time. Be patient with me and I will pay back everything. (v. 26) What a joke! What a silly offer! But wait! What is this? The servant’s master had pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. (v. 27) What mercy! What grace! The king does not “refinance” the debt. He does not reduce the interest rate, or give the man 0% for 5 years. He does not reduce the principal! He CANCELS it! He FORGIVES it! The debt is gone!
The kingdom of heaven is like…this! There is a King. It is God. There are debtors. You and I. And there is debt. Sin. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to calculate my sin-debt to God. I suppose there is a real “hard” number of times up to this moment that I – and you – have broken God’s commandments. I don’t know that number; God could tell you. But it’s not even that we break each of the commandments, filtered into this “sin-debt” calculation must be the fact that we are born debtors! God says, Be perfect. I must exist as a perfect person! But I am born in sin. If the King should “call the note” and demand payment of our sin-debt, we are doomed. The correct theological word is not doomed, but damned.
But wait! The servant’s master had pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. (v. 27) Our King has pity on us. One only pities what is pitiful; and we are pitiful. Any offers we try to make to the King to “work off” our debt are pitiful. So the King cancels the debt. Funny thing about canceling debt. Canceling a debt just means someone else has paid it. For example, I may borrow money from the bank to buy a new car. If the bank “cancels” that debt, it’s not as though that debt just disappears. By canceling that debt for me, the bank paid for the car! Our King has canceled our debt. That doesn’t mean it just goes away or never existed, it means the debt was paid by someone else. Your enormous, unpayable debt was paid by the King’s Son, Jesus. With his own perfect obedience, with his own holy sweat and blood, he paid the debt you owe. At 3 o’clock on Good Friday afternoon, God “called the note.” Your account was settled. Jesus declared, It is finished! Paid in full! You are debt-free. You are set free! You are forgiven!
Jesus’ parable does not end here. Our forgiven friend goes and finds a fellow servant who owes him about a hundred days’ wages, about 600,000 times LESS than what he owed the king. He grabs his debtor-friend and puts a choke-hold on him! “Pay me what you owe!” His buddy pleads with him using the exact words he had used with the king! “Be patient with me and I will pay you back!” But he will have none of it. He has the man thrown into prison. The other servants see this take place and report back to the king. The king is furious! He calls the forgiven servant back. You wicked servant, I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? (v. 32-33) Now the man forfeited the forgiveness he had been offered; he is thrown into prison.
Do you at this moment have your fingers on someone’s throat? Are you withholding forgiveness from someone? What did they do to you? I bet it was bad, right? Maybe they hurt you, really hurt you, physically or emotionally. Maybe it was “one big hurt” inflicted by an enemy. Maybe, though, it is a thousand “little hurts” inflicted over time by someone very close to you. Sometimes these accumulated “little debts” are harder to forgive than the “one big hurt.” Do you at this moment have your fingers on someone’s throat? Let them go! Forgive them! “How can I?” you cry. Our text would have us ask, “How can I not?” Withholding forgiveness is sin. Our parable ends with the chilling words that the Father in heaven will throw such unforgiving servants into prison. The one who can find no forgiveness for others really has no appreciation for the forgiveness the King extends to them; they have contempt for it.
Your power and motive to forgive the one who “owes” you is this: I canceled all that debt of yours. (v. 32) Those are the words of the King. Those are the words of the King of kings to YOU. He spoke them to you in your baptism. He speaks them to you in the absolution. He feeds them to you in the Supper. And so we pray, Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. We are not asking God to pattern his forgiveness after ours; but we are pledging to pattern OUR forgiveness of others after HIS. For Jesus’ sake.
Amen.
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