The greatest sins that a man commits against a man are nothing. They're pocket change compared to the sins committed against God. And God forgives them all.
And who is man? Not to forgive lesser. How can we be so small as not to forgive another? Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. In the book, The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal tells the story of when he was a prisoner in the Nazi death camp. He was taken to speak to a dying Nazi soldier because the soldier wanted a Jew's forgiveness for the crimes he had committed as a member of the dreaded Nazi secret police. And that scenario raises the question, are there limits to what we should forgive or can forgive? That's the point John MacArthur addresses today on Grace to You. He's continuing a hard-hitting study on a theme that may be new to many people. It's the issue of Christian discipline and restoring a sinning brother or sister. He's titled his study, My Brother's Keeper.
And now with today's lesson, here's John MacArthur. Now there is a key verse that you perhaps ought to write in the margin of your Bible right at the point of Matthew 18 verses 21 and following. And that verse is Ephesians 4, 32 because that one verse sums up the intent of this passage. It says, And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. A great injunction to forgiveness since God has forgiven us so much. Now our Lord is going to help us to understand the importance of forgiveness.
It shouldn't split churches. There should never be the kind of unforgiveness in a church that shatters relationships and families and church unity. And we're going to find out the instruction of our Lord in that regard as we look again at this important passage. And so we saw the inquiry about forgiveness and we saw the extent of forgiveness. And then we also discussed the effect of forgiveness. And we looked at Matthew chapter 6 verses 12 to 15 where the Lord says that if you don't forgive each other, He won't forgive you.
So we saw the inquiry about forgiveness, the extent of forgiveness, the effect of forgiveness. And then we came to the example of forgiveness beginning in verse 23. And the example of forgiveness is a parable and a masterful parable loaded with great truth. It is spoken to the disciples and it warns them and us of the sin of unforgiveness. Look at verse 23 and let me remind you of how the parable begins. Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king who would take account of his servants.
The kingdom of heaven, the sphere of God's rule, the kingdom of grace. In the kingdom of grace where God is the ruler, He calls men to account. He calls men to show Him where they stand with the privileges that they have been given by Him. And we saw that this king is God and this servant is a man who has been given privilege. He would be in the terms of the time of our Lord a satrap, a provincial governor.
And he was given a whole territory of responsibility in which he collected taxes which then were to be given to the king for the operation of the kingdom. And periodically the king takes an accounting of those who have been given this responsibility. And he is illustrative of every man who has been given divine privilege, who has from God life and breath, who has from God all of his faculties, who has from God truth in his heart and truth around him.
Every man in a sense then is a steward of what God has bestowed upon him. And every man will be drawn at a time and times before God to give an account of that stewardship. And we pointed out that this is a time of conviction.
It's not the time of the great white throne judgment or something. It's the time when God calls men to give an account of their life. It would be very much parallel to Romans 7, 7 to 13 as Paul was brought face to face with the reality of the law of God and convicted of his falling short and drawn then to the Savior. It is the time of conviction. It is the time of John 16 when the spirit convicts of sin and righteousness and judgment. And so God the King then calls men into account. He brings them before him by conviction through the preaching of the word, the reading of the Bible, the testimony of Christians or a combination of any or all of those. Men are brought to face the reality of the fact that they have a debt they owe to God.
They are brought to conviction. Now verse 24 tells us about one particular individual. And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought to him who owed him myriad talents. And the term here is to speak of an uncountable sum, an unpayable amount.
We talked about that amount last time and I won't go back into it again. Suffice it to say it is a myriad and that is the highest term in the Greek language to speak of numeration. I suggested at the time we studied that verse that it would be like saying a zillion talents. It's an unlimited amount, beyond expression, beyond paying. Here is a man brought before God convicted of a debt. And by the way the debt is sin and it is unpayable, uncountable. And verse 25 says for as much as he had nothing with which to pay.
That is man before God facing his sin and knowing he has no resource to pay it. It is an unpayable sum to begin with and he hasn't got anything to even begin to pay. And so it says that the king said he was to be sold, his wife sold, his children sold, all that he possessed sold and payment to be made. The total sum could never be paid.
It was far too much. The man had no resources for paying the full amount but all that could be paid would be paid and this was a pagan custom selling everybody in the family into slavery and selling everything they had so that whatever could be realized from that sale could be set to offset the debt. Now the principle is clear then. Men are brought before holy God and they must give an account for the stewardship of life and breath and truth that they have been given. And they will be convicted at that point of a sin debt that could never be paid. Too much to be paid and they have no resource to pay it. And frankly God has the power to deliver them over to judgment in hell. And although men cannot pay the full amount, they will spend forever in hell paying what they can pay. And I pointed out to you that men will not be able to pay off the debt in hell.
That's why hell is forever but they'll stay there forever paying all they could pay. And so it is a terrible but righteous sentence for the debt is real and the man has defrauded the king. And then the man follows the only course left to him.
Notice verse 26. The servant therefore fell down. Now here is the prostrate man. Here is a humbled man.
Here is a broken man. Here is a man who knows he's on the edge of judgment. And he worships and he says, Lord, and he affirms the sovereignty of the king over him, have patience with me and I will pay thee all. He recognizes the debt. He recognizes it's a legitimately incurred debt in the sense that he really does owe it. He recognizes the justice of his sentence. He does not argue for justice.
He does not say it's unfair. He simply says, please be patient and I will pay thee all. Now I believe this is pre-salvation conviction. And just as a note that we pointed this out last time, the reason the man says I'll pay all is because he really doesn't understand the enormity of his sin.
And I don't think any man really does. It is not uncommon for people who are brought to moments of great conviction about their sin, who are brought face to face with God and the fact that they have come short of his glory to want to say, God, just be patient. Just let me get over this thing and I'll promise I'll be better. I'll do better. I'll go to church. I'll give you my life.
I'll do whatever I can. That's a very common kind of reaction. For example, life goes on seemingly without incident and then a very, very severe issue happens in the family. Maybe one of the children takes on a terminal illness or is killed in an accident or whatever. Or maybe a spouse dies or gets terminal cancer or heart disease. Or perhaps a job is lost or perhaps a terrible accident is incurred. Or maybe a person is in a place of great distress in a war or in a dangerous situation, lost in the woods or whatever. And in the midst of that extremity of circumstance, people see the bankruptcy of their own life. They're brought face to face with conviction. God may allow the gospel to come into their mind. There may be a confrontation with God's law or God's truth from memory, bringing it up from in the past. And at that moment it is not uncommon for people to say, if you'll just get me through this, if you'll just help me, I'll do anything you want, God.
And they're really saying, just be patient and I'll pay it all. And they really don't yet understand either the enormity of their sin or its inability to be paid by them. But there's true contrition and there's true sorrow and there's genuine brokenness.
And I see that in this man. And the reason I see it is because of verse 27. And that is the key to the entire parable. Then the Lord of that servant was moved with compassion and loosed him and forgave him the debt. Now that is the key to interpreting the parable. The man was loosed.
What does that mean? He had no responsibility to pay that debt. None. He would never have to pay that debt. He was loosed from that debt.
Now that means the man would never go to hell to work off whatever could be worked off in eternity. The man was loosed from the obligation. And then secondly, he was forgiven. He was freed from having to do anything and then the king did everything. He just forgave him. Now I believe that has to describe the saving grace of God.
The man is loosed from any obligation. And he is utterly forgiven. Whatever other things in the parable may be unclear, that appears to me to be very clear.
I cannot see how you can interpret that any other way than to say the man was freed from the debt and forgiven. And that's the essence of salvation. The king himself absorbs the loss. And that is exactly as it was on the cross of Christ. Because it was on the cross of Christ that Jesus in his own flesh absorbed the loss. He himself paid the price for your sin and mine. And so God absorbs the loss. God suffers the consequence. God pays the price himself that could never be paid. And so I see in this man then the stuff of real repentance and genuine contrition and even though he doesn't understand the enormity of his sin and he really doesn't understand how it's all completely by grace, God sees in his brokenness legitimate repentance and gives him what he so desperately needs.
He frees him from any responsibility to pay the debt on his own and forgives him of his sin. Now you may be, as I said, confused about other parts of the parable, but you don't need to be confused about that. And once you set that in motion, you've got the rest of the parable interpreted. So if you want to take your pencil or pen and just circle the word forgave, this is the essence of what the Lord is teaching here. Now we saw all of that as the initial understanding of the parable and now we move to verse 28 and the main message.
That was all just foundation. Watch verse 28. "'But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him an hundred denarii and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat saying, Pay me what thou owest.'" That's incredible.
That's absolutely absurd. You say to yourself, how soon did this guy forget what he had been forgiven? How soon did he forget his Lord's compassion? The same servant, and it emphasizes the same servant who had just been what? Forgiven. The same one.
The forgiven one. Went out and found. In other words, the idea is that he was looking for somebody. This was not an incident that he didn't expect.
He didn't inadvertently run into the guy. He was out there searching for this fellow. And who was it?
Notice. One of his fellow servants. And here we're introduced to a word that I think has meaning in the parable.
Sooned alone. Fellow servant. And I think this identifies this one as another who has been forgiven.
Another in the family. And so the Lord then takes the parable into the family of those who are fellows in Christ, who are in the fellowship. It describes, I believe, in the parable of Christian brother.
It is used consistently that way in the rest of the parable in the four times that it appears. So he finds another fellow servant. Not just another servant somewhere in the world, but one who serves the same king. One who is a fellow servant.
And I think that can be seen as a term to identify believers in this parable. Now this other servant was not necessarily the same rank. He perhaps worked under this first servant. It may have been that he was a provincial governor and this guy was one of his local tax collectors. But they both served the same king. And what happens is really absurd.
It is just beyond belief. He goes, finds the guy, lays his hands on him, takes him by the throat. Literally the Greek says he went about choking him and saying, pay me what you owe me. Now let me just give you a little interpretive thought here for a moment. If the man is not a true Christian, as some would have us believe in this parable, if the man is not a true Christian, then the whole parable in its context breaks down. Because the impact of the entire parable is that here was a man who was fully forgiven, right? And went out and wouldn't forgive. Now if you remove the initial forgiveness and it wasn't really legitimate and he wasn't really forgiven, then the whole parable makes no sense.
It loses entirely its significance. We don't expect him to forgive if he wasn't forgiven. We don't expect him to act like God acts if he doesn't have God in his heart. We don't expect him to do what God did if he doesn't know God did that or if God didn't do that. And the judgment that came to the guy at the end of the parable should have come in verse 27.
Because there was nothing more to say to him. If his forgiveness wasn't genuine, the rest of the parable means nothing. It is not a parable about genuine salvation. It is a parable about forgiveness and the validity of forgiveness and one believer forgiving another. And what makes this parable so powerful, so dramatic is that the guy was really forgiven.
He was really saved and he gets his hands on this guy and starts to choke him. Roman writers, secular writers often speak about men going to their debtors and wrenching their neck until blood ran out of their nose and mouth. That's the old collection agency approach. Just find some big strong-arm guy to strangle him to death if he doesn't pay. And he says, pay me what you owe me. And I see the context here as a Christian going to another one in the family and demanding payment.
This one has been offended. Maybe the debt is real. Maybe there really was a sin against this person.
Maybe he really was defrauded in some manner and he won't forgive. You say, well, this can't be a Christian. Oh, you mean to tell me you don't think Christians have problems forgiving each other? I think they do.
I'm one. I've experienced that. Christians struggle with this. The flesh works its way into the picture, doesn't it?
In our redeemed lives. You have anybody that owes you money? You think of them?
Mmm, can you think of them? And how many times have you choked them in your mind? We have problems with that even sometimes in the church of Jesus Christ. You know, somebody says something you don't like and for the rest of the time in the church you avoid that person. Every time you see that person, the anger comes up in your heart. You hold bitterness. You hold grudge.
It throws back all the garbage of what happened years and years ago because you just can't let go of that. You as a Christian are not immune from that problem. So the people who get nervous because this guy is so unforgiving and say, how could a Christian be like this? Maybe haven't really thought about what Christians can be like because they can sure be like that. The flesh rises to seek its vengeance. And that's what you have here. It's a perfect illustration of that. It's just like 1 Corinthians 6 where the Christians were suing each other. Listen, Christians can really get it on when it comes to warfare with each other.
They can really hold grudges, retain bitternesses. And that's what you have, I believe here. And so he says, pay me what you owe me. We shouldn't be startled that this is a Christian, somewhat common. And look at the response in verse 29, and his fellow servant fell down at his feet and besought him saying, have patience with me and I'll pay thee all. Does that sound familiar? That's the same speech in verse 26. The guy got the same speech back that he gave the Lord, just as if that might jog his mind a little.
Didn't those words sound familiar? Isn't that the same thing you were pleading when you were pleading your case for an insurmountable, unpayable sum and you were begging the king to let you off the hook and now a guy owes you 18 bucks and you're strangling him? Even the familiar words echoing in his ears can't find a response from his heart. And the guy is begging. He besought him. He's begging. This isn't worship. He doesn't say he fell down and worshiped him. This is no sovereign. This is a servant to a servant. And he says, look, just be patient and I'll pay you all and he could have paid. There was possibility in that.
The application is obvious. Compared with our sins against God, our sins against each other are trifles. Our debt is unpayable.
The other debts we incur with people are easily payable. But the point is when we have received forgiveness so vast, so far reaching, so comprehensive, how can we be so small as not to forgive another? And frankly, folks, we ought to get used to forgiving and we're going to need it, right?
And we may want it from the very person we won't give it to. It's unimaginable, but Christians do this. It's the reason churches split.
It's the reason there's friction. You get people in a church, you know, maybe somebody does something they don't like in their class and instead of being able to give it to the Lord and forgive and embrace that person in love, they just get bitter and that bitterness just becomes divisive and projected on out. That's what splits churches. That's what devastates God's family.
It's unimaginable, but it's more common than we like to admit. And it may well be that the disciples were in the midst of doing it themselves. They were, you know, fighting to see who would be the greatest in the kingdom and in order to sort of keep their supremacy, they may have cultivated in their hearts certain attitudes toward the others which in their mind demeaned the others, put them down lower than they were so they could feel good about their self-exaltation.
And they may well have been holding grudges. But look at the response in verse 30. The guy says, have patience with me and I'll pay thee all and he would not. He would not, but went and cast him into prison till he should pay the debt. It's unimaginable. They had no compassion.
This is an impossible reaction. Himself pitied, he should have pitied. Himself forgiven, he should have forgiven. Himself loved, he should have loved.
Himself having received mercy, he should have dispensed it. The greatest sins that a man commits against a man are nothing. They're change, pocket change compared to the sins committed against God. And God forgives them all.
And who is man? Not to forgive lesser. The whole point of the verse is that he wouldn't forgive. And what gives the parable its power is that he was forgiven. That's the strength of the argument, that how can those truly forgiven not forgive? When God is forgiven an infinitely greater debt, how easily we forget.
It's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's current study here on Grace to You is titled, My Brother's Keeper. Now, the parable John looked at today emphasized a key point about forgiveness. When God forgives people, he frees them from the eternal debt they owe because of their sin. Or to put it another way, God forgives and forgets. He doesn't bring it up again. Now, John, I know we're supposed to forgive others as God does, but I think the part about forgetting an offense can sometimes trip us up.
So talk about that for a minute. Yeah, I would agree that it's not necessarily easy to forget. God may forget in the sense that he no longer holds it against the sinner. But God forgetting does not mean that he doesn't know that it actually happened. So it's forgetting in the sense that you no longer bring it up against the individual.
And I think that's as far as we can hope to go. If you have been seriously offended, you may not forget the fact of the offense, but we hope you remember the forgiveness that the Lord graced you with that made things right. So much comes by way of benefit into the life of a person who forgives. Forgiveness is a blessing that this culture doesn't know anything about. Society makes a virtue out of holding things against people. It's almost as if that's empowering you.
Well, the truth is the opposite. I want to mention a book that I've written called The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness. And honestly, I don't know anything more freeing and powerful in terms of liberating your own soul than to give forgiveness to someone who's offended you. The book tackles the issue of forgiveness, God's forgiveness for us and our forgiveness for others. And it covers all the ground, looks at the basis of all forgiveness, how forgiveness lovingly covers sin, what to do when you know a Christian who is in sin and how to confront that and many more elements. It also answers the question, should the forgiveness we extend to others be without conditions?
That's a very vital question. The book again, The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness includes a section on Christ's atonement addressing often debated questions about whom Christ died for. And then lots of great biblical information on liberating your own soul by being a forgiving person. The title again, The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness, 250 pages available from grace to you.
Thanks, John. And friend, to make sure you understand forgiveness, both God's forgiveness for you and your forgiveness for others, order a copy of John's book, The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness, when you contact us today. Call 800-55-GRACE during normal business hours.
That's weekdays from 730 to 4 o'clock Pacific time. Or you can visit our website anytime, GTY.org. The title of the book again, The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness, comes in English and Spanish, and you can order your copy when you call us at 800-55-GRACE or when you shop online at GTY.org. When you visit GTY.org, that's our website, you need to take advantage of the thousands of free resources that are there for you, including Grace Stream. That's a continuous loop of John MacArthur's verse-by-verse teaching that goes from the start of the book of Matthew to the end of the book of Revelation. Whether you're looking for something to listen to or while you're cleaning your house or going for a walk or making your daily commute, just jump into the Grace Stream anytime for verse-by-verse encouragement. You will find Grace Stream at GTY.org. And now friend, John's current study has been showing you the blessings of forgiveness, but what if someone sins against you in a way that is grossly out of character for a Christian? Does that make a difference in how you forgive or even whether you should forgive? Consider that tomorrow. Now for John MacArthur and our entire staff, I'm Bill Johnson, inviting you to join us for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.
