I will call him “Joe.” Joe attended church and treated people with respect. Joe loved his wife and his grown daughter. Joe was a truly likeable guy. Joe’s daughter was married; and early in her marriage, Joe aided his son-in-law in establishing a business. All started well, but then the son-in-law took the business in a different direction and did not fulfill his commitments to Joe. One day as I talked to Joe about Christ and church membership, he said that he wanted both in his life; but, in complete honesty, he went on to share that he didn’t think he could because he held anger in his heart toward his son-in-law. He wanted Jesus and His church, but he knew that the thoughts he held toward another were not consistent with those wishes. He needed to forgive. Ben Witherington writes, “To forgive is indeed divine; it’s not a natural or an easy thing, but it certainly is a requirement for being a disciple of Jesus.” (356). Where does Witherington get such an idea? From Jesus Himself!
Jesus raised the bar! Boy, did He raise it! Peter thought that he raised the bar when he offered the grand number seven as the perfect cut-off limit for forgiveness. After all, the Jewish law of the day called for a difficult task in and of itself - forgiving a person three times. Peter more than doubled the Jewish law with his suggestion. What was Jesus’ response? A raised bar to seventy-seven times or seventy-times-seven (depending on the translation). In either case, whether 77 or 490, Jesus is not setting a limit on forgiveness; He magnifies the principle to say that forgiveness should always be extended. To illustrate His point, Jesus tells the story of a king and a servant and the servant’s fellow servant. King and Servant:
Do you hear the larger message in the parable? God chose to have mercy and cancel the debt, one that not one of us could repay. If we stopped here, we could sing quite a few songs about the forgiveness of God and rightfully be filled with gratitude. Yet, Jesus was not done. He continued. The freshly freed servant finds a fellow servant and demands payment. As opposed to the debt he owed the king, the fellow servant’s debt could actually be repaid over time; 100 denarii is “one six-hundred-thousandth of the first debt.” (Jones 272) The king discovers the harsh treatment and in turn hands the first servant to the jailers; he lost his freedom when he did not forgive. After we read this parable, we hear Jesus’ bold conclusion. Verse 35: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” To this conclusion we are likely to respond as did the disciples when Jesus taught the same lesson another time.
Increase our faith! In other words, “Lord, we’re going to need some more of that faith fuel if you are expecting this!” Forgiveness is indeed divine. We need God because it is not easy to forgive the one who:
With the aid of Christ, you can forgive. George Buttrick states, “What are people Christians for? That they may learn from Christ to forgive until seventy times seven . . . There is no escape from the story’s insistence that God’s forgiveness and man’s are linked. . . . God is ready to forgive, but he cannot enter an unforgiving heart: the door is barred against him.” (476, 477-478) Helmut Thielick, the German pastor and theologian, spoke of the thought of God’s forgiveness for our unpayable debt as a tool to “give us the royal freedom to forgive“(quoted in Jones 285). Thielick said this right after the end of Nazi rule and the devastation caused by Hitler. He knew the people needed to heal and the healing would come through forgiveness. Jesus raised the bar! Likely He raised it higher than we wish He would have. Yet the Lord spoke. Conclusion As “Joe” and I continued to talk, he knew that he was ready to start the process of forgiving his son-in-law. He knew that he could not do it alone; forgiveness is indeed divine. I joyfully remember the Easter morning when Joe openly confessed Christ as Lord and I baptized him. As I prayed with that soaking wet man, I embraced a forgiven man who looked to His Lord to guide him in his forgiving. The King and the servant celebrated together that day! God, give us strength to step up to the bar that You raised. #ordinarylives For further reading … Buttrick, George A. The Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. 7. New York: Abingdon, 1951. Jones, Peter Rhea. Studying the Parables of Jesus. Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 1999. Witherington, Ben, III. Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary - Matthew. Ed. R. Scott Nash. Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2006.
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