One of the hardest things to deal with as a Christian is when a “brother sins against you.” In a perfect church, no one would mistreat or sin against a brother, but the church is made up of humans who make mistakes in thoughts, actions and words. So, how much should I be willing to forgive?
In Matthew 18, Jesus dealt with the very difficult topic of when a “brother sins against you,” and He gave the proper steps for one to follow in handling the matter in a Christ-like manner (18:15-20). After discussing this with His disciples, Peter came and asked, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” (18:21). In an effort to illustrate the magnitude of one’s responsibility to forgive and the length one must go, Jesus told the parable of the unforgiving servant.
Read Matthew 18:21-35 and be reminded of the servant who was forgiven a large debt by the king but refused to turn around and forgive a fellow servant of a much smaller debt. Let’s put some values on the amounts to give it some perspective to us in the twenty-first century.
The first servant owed the king “ten thousand talents” (18:24). The Roman talent in this case was worth 6,000 drachmas, and a drachma was worth about 19 cents, so the total sum owed to the king was about ten million dollars. That’s a lot of money in any culture, but think what it meant to Peter. The average daily wage was about 17 cents, so it would have taken (if giving the king every cent earned every day) about 200,000 years to pay the debt. When the servant pleaded with the king, the king forgave the huge debt (18:25-27).
Contrast that with the rest of the narrative. Having just been forgiven $10,000,000 or 200,000 years of debt, that servant went out and found a fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii. A denarius was the average daily wage for a working man (20:2), so the second servant owed 100 days’ wages. Contrast owing 100 days’ wages with owing 200,000 years’ wages (or over 60,000,000 days), and you’ll understand the extreme disproportion that Jesus was illustrating.
Now, what was the point? Peter asked how often he should forgive a brother who sins against him. Jesus responded by emphasizing the extreme level to which servants of the Lord have been forgiven by our Master (a debt that would take 200,000 years to pay, if such were even possible), and how comparatively “small” the debt is for us to forgive brethren who sin against us. Forgiveness is not typically easy to extend to another (because we have been hurt, and often deeply hurt), but it must be done, for the sake of our own soul. Our heavenly Father will punish each of his servants, who, “from his heart, does not forgive his brother” (18:35).