Have you ever heard anyone say, "I’ll forgive you, but I’ll never forget what you did." It is hard for us to really forgive and forget, isn’t it? Recently we celebrated my grandmother’s 100th Birthday. All the family gathered for this event including my sister from West Virginia. There are three brothers and one sister in our family. The three oldest of us are all close to 50 years old. As we were exchanging stories of when we were children, my sister told about the time she was 2 and I was 4. I threw a metal pail high in the air. We both watched it go up and come back down until it landed right on her forehead causing a big gash. After telling this story, she showed everyone the scar she still has to this day from that incident, and it was obvious that as the oldest brother she still thinks I should have done something to prevent her injury. She still hasn’t forgotten after almost 50 years! That’s the way we are too often. We might forgive someone, but for some reason we can never forget. To experience true forgiveness, we also need to learn to forget.

Nobody likes to be wronged. Nothing will get us more upset than when we feel we’ve been taken advantage of and it’s not our fault. Peter thinks he is being generous by offering to forgive those who have wronged him seven times. Let’s admit it. For most of us, that would be extremely generous. You know the old saying – "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." We don’t like to be used or abused. But there is a difference between being wronged and allowing someone to take advantage of us. Forgiveness needs to be absolute, even if we have to forgive someone seven times. This doesn’t mean we allow them to take advantage of us, but it does we mean we forgive them when they sin against us.

I think Peter was very surprised by Christ’s answer. He was willing to forgive someone seven times which is very generous. But Jesus said we must be willing to forgive seven times seventy, in other words 490 times. What he is really saying is we need to forgive an unlimited amount of times. To truly forgive someone means we have no ill feelings toward them.

Buttrick comments, "To forgive but not forget usually means not to forgive. Only to forgo resentment is a poor half forgiveness."

Jesus proceeds to tell a parable to bring home his point. This parable of the king and servants is a parable of God’s forgiveness to us. Notice the servant owed more than he could possibly expect to pay. Ten thousand talents was probably worth ten million dollars. The servant could not possibly repay this debt. He deserved punishment, but he fell before the king on his knees. Verse 27 tells us the king had pity on him and forgave the entire debt.

This is the way God treats us. Our debt of sin is too large for us to ever repay. We deserve eternal punishment. All we can do is come before our Lord and fall before him. And then we are forgiven. The debt is erased. Thank God for his love and mercy toward us.

But this same servant who had received such mercy from his lord, could not show the same compassion to his fellow servant. The fellow servant only owed 100 denari, a pittance compared to the servant’s ten thousand talent debt. But he would not forgive his fellow servant.

The Interpreter’s Bible points out, "...the king forgave the vast debt, though his debtor had asked only for time in which to pay; but the satrap, allowing no chance for repayment, promptly flung his debtor into jail. Has this contrast, like midday and midnight, any real verity as between God and us? Or is it deliberately overdrawn? It is not overdrawn. We pray, ‘Forgive us our debts.’ How many such debts have we incurred? How far has our evil influence carried, in the lies we tell and the shuffling example we set?"

So what does this teach us. We have been forgiven so much, that we need to learn to forgive others. Remember the Lord’s prayer tells us to "forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors." God has shown us so much mercy and compassion. He wants us to show the same compassion on others. He wants us to be willing to put past wrongs behind us.

Johnson wrote, "The parable illustrates the principle of the Lord’s Prayer, and enshrines one of the most important of all Christ’s teachings. It is a very striking story and entirely accords with what we know of his attitude. God freely forgives men, even the outcasts and sinners, and man can have no more important privilege than to mediate to others the forgiveness which he himself experiences."

Many believers can never experience true forgiveness from God because they are still carrying resentment around with them. They are still angry and bitter over what others have done to them in the past. This bitterness eats away at their soul; it robs them of their joy, it cripples their spirit. Do you feel unforgiven and condemned? If so, ask yourself, are you carrying some deep resentment from the past that you haven’t let go? Is there someone you have never forgiven? Every time you remember a certain person or situation is your heart filled with hate and venom? You need to allow God to remove that bitterness from your heart. Allow forgiveness to flow to others. Don’t hang onto past wrongs. Let them go, and learn to forgive others just as God has forgiven you.

Christ’s teaching is clear. If we harbor unforgiveness in our heart, God cannot forgive us. You might wonder why not. I think there are two reasons. First, we don’t really appreciate the immense debt that Christ has forgiven in our own life. We don’t really appreciate God’s love and his mercy. The second reason is that as long as we harbor bitterness in our heart, we are not allowing God to be in control of our lives. If we truly believe that our lives are under God’s control and all things work together for good, then how can we not forgive others? God has a reason for everything he does. If we truly trust him, then we realize that God can use even the harshest trial for his glory. Job had to suffer immense loss, the blind man that Christ healed had to be blind for upwards of 30 years, and Lazarus had to die. But all these things were according to God’s divine plan. We may not understand everything God does, but we need to learn to trust that he knows what he’s doing. If we aren’t willing to forgive others, how can we say that we are really trusting God? God wants us who have been forgiven so much to be willing to forgive others. After all, they are only doing to us what we have done so many times to God. Let us learn to forgive others so that we may experience the fullness of Christ’s forgiveness.

Footnotes:

This study of Matthew 18:21-35 © 1997 by David Humpal. All rights reserved.
All Scriptures unless otherwise noted are from the Revised Standard Version © 1971, A. J. Holman Company

Buttrick: The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 7, pg. 475 © 1951, Abingdon Press

The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 7, pg. 477 © 1951, Abingdon Press

Johnson: The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 7, pg. 476 © 1951, Abingdon Press