Matthew 18

Matthew 18:21-35

Section 4. (Matthew 18:21-35.)The failure in mercy of one who has received mercy. We have now a solemn word upon the responsibility of showing grace in a day of grace. In His teaching as to prayer the Lord has already warned us to the same effect, in words which are almost identical with those which close the parable before us. But here the principle is shown us in the full extent of its application, and enforced in the most absolute way. (1) The first object in dealing with a brother who has sinned is, as we have seen; restoration. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. Forgiveness is necessarily grounded upon the “hearing,” for that alone would show restoration. But Peter has a question here: how often is there to be forgiveness? The Rabbins had already decided as to this, and their limit was three times. Peter has so far appreciated the spirit of the Lord’s words as to more than double this number.

Seven was the perfect number: shall his forgiveness of an offending brother be “till seven times”? But the Lord answers, He has put no such limit; and then He puts one which is practically none at all: “I say not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven.” I suppose it would test Christian grace in us, to go even half way to such a boundary line; but the Lord does not mean us seriously to contemplate this. Could it be a question how often I should gain my brother? Peter is after all still viewing things from the stand-point of personal rights. He must still be seeking in some measure his own; but “love seeketh not her own.” Hence the personal element still rules here - “sin against me, and I.” The Lord takes up, therefore, this very side of things, but to turn it in another direction: “how oft shall I sin against God, and God forgive me?” If there be no limit here, and I am in the sense of this, how can this question of Peter be asked at all? (2) The similitude which the Lord draws for us here is necessarily a similitude of the Kingdom of heaven. It is not after all a picture of perfect grace, such as we know it in God, although this is as nearly approached as possible for the purpose of the illustration; and, of course, it is a true presentation of God, in no wise inconsistent with the fullest grace. But the Lord will not image one of His own people in the picture that He gives of this unmerciful servant. He is one with the responsibility of such a profession; but without the real apprehension of divine grace, as his conduct shows. Hence the grace shown to him is not the unconditional grace of the gospel, but that which, in fact, is manifested in the Kingdom, as in “baptism for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38) where the grace witnessed to is manifestly conditioned, as here, upon the truth of discipleship. The Kingdom, as we see in the parables, embraces the true and the false, and in it all is governmental, conditional blessing. The Kingdom of heaven is likened here unto a human king; which prepares us for certain points in it which we must not attribute to the divine. The king here will have a reckoning with his servants; and no sooner has he begun to reckon than there is brought to him one with an overwhelming debt, which argues in itself surely something more than any misfortune can account for. He is ordered, therefore, to be sold, with his wife and children and all belonging to him, for the debt. We see in this the “human” king, of course; yet there is this truth in it, that the sinner against God, as far as he can do it, wrecks not himself alone, but all connected with him. No man can be his own enemy only, as men sometimes assert; and we need no argument to prove how the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children in this world, although in the final account every one answers simply for his own. So helplessly are we all indebted to the supreme King. Good it is that there is mercy with Him for which all figures fail. The debtor falls at his lord’s feet with an impossible plea for mercy in his own case, - how impossible in our own! “I will pay thee all.” The king can accept no such agreement, takes no notice of it; but his heart is moved with compassion, and taking counsel of that, “he loosed him, and forgave him the debt.” (3) All this, thank God, the blessed Speaker has now made very plain to us; but the point of the parable has yet to come. “But that servant went out “out from an experience like this! - “and found one of his fellow-servants, who owed him a hundred pence” - denarii (about a 700,000th part of his own debt just forgiven); “and he laid hold of him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me what thou owest.” It was his own that he was demanding. Apart from the violence used, he was, as men say, quite within his rights. That was not the question; and every one at once understands that that was not the question. We too, in the exaction of our own from others, may be within our rights; and why is it that in our own case we are not as simple in judging of the real state of things as we are in the case of the man before us? We have been forgiven (if we are Christians) as well as he; and with regard to a debt in proportion to which his was as nothing. How is it that we can look upon grace or mercy shown to others as if it were anything more than the merest righteousness on our part, from the standpoint of forgiven men? There follows an appeal, so like his own recent one, save only in its greater reasonableness and simplicity, that it should have pierced the heart of the hardened man: “Then his fellow-servant fell down and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee. But he would not, but went off and cast him into prison till he should pay the debt.” It is the grace shown him that fully exposes the obduracy of his unmerciful heart. (4) Plain as the matter seems, it is developed and enforced upon us. The grief of his fellow-servants who bring the account of it to their lord; who on his part summons the guilty man and puts before him the wickedness of his conduct with abhorrence. The close of the parable has the moral of it, that mercy fails for him with whom it fails: “his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due” - an impossible thing, and typical therefore of an eternal recompense. A tremendous failure, when divine mercy fails to impress its image on the soul that has been subjected to its influence! Love that subdues not saves not, and this is, of course, the history of an unsaved soul. But the lesson that is to be learned is not to be limited by this, as the Lord’s application of it shows. His government is over sinner and saint alike; and He is the same with sinner and saint in His unchanging reprobation of sin. Communion can only be in the holiness and love of the divine nature; and through all degrees of resemblance to that which has been before us, the principle applies. “So also shall My heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother, from your hearts.”