Today we continue to study the Word of God. And I hope you will not mind too much the frequent coughing interruptions as many of you also have been suffering with colds and flus. So I'm sure you're quite used to this kind of thing. We continue today to study in Matthew chapter 18. In the Lord's teaching, but before we turn to Matthew 18, let us first look at two verses in Luke chapter 17, a parallel passage to this. Luke chapter 17, verses 3 and 4.
You recall that in Matthew chapter 18, the whole passage concerned sin, sin among Christians, sin in the church and how to deal with it. And we saw also that if a brother repents, we are to forgive him. But if he does not repent, we are to take the matter before two or three witnesses. And if he still does not repent, we are to take the matter before the church.
Now I would like us really to bear the Lord's teaching in mind. Many times when a brother or sister has sinned against us, we become so fed up with this that very easily we decide to quit the church altogether. And I don't mean just to quit that particular church or this particular church, but to quit altogether, that is, not to go to church anymore. That is very unfortunate. And that is not the way to deal with the problem. By running away from the problem, the problem doesn't go away. The problem in fact becomes compounded. It becomes worse.
You simply must deal with sin. If somebody has offended you in the church, you must have sufficient confidence in the church, in the brothers and sisters, in their sense of justice before the Lord, that they will straighten things out with you. So if somebody has offended against you, it is no solution simply to run away from the church. The church is there not to take sides with one person or against another person. Trust the fairness of the church, the brothers and sisters, and take the matter before two or three elders of the church, or two or three brothers and sisters, and say, "Look, this brother or this sister has offended against me, has committed this sin." Why don't you do this? Why do you say, "Well, I don't go to church anymore"? That doesn't solve any problem. That doesn't help that person. It doesn't help you. And it doesn't help the church because the church doesn't even know what was the problem, what happened. Take this matter to the church.
Now, of course, if you have no confidence in the fairness of the church, of course you will not do this. But I hope that you have sufficient confidence in the fairness of the church to give it a chance to see if they will deal with the matter fairly or not. I find this is a very practical problem that the Lord is dealing with in Matthew 18 because so many people find that somebody has carelessly or willfully perhaps offended you. And you say, "Okay, they offend me. I'm not going to church anymore." Well, only one person has offended you, not the whole church. And if you are a Christian, you have as much right to be in the church as the other person. Why should you quit? I don't understand this thinking at all.
And sometimes there are problems in the church like this and I don't know anything about it. I seem to be the last one to know. Whereas I could have intervened on your behalf if you are the offended party and straighten the matter out. So the Lord deals with a very practical matter which happens so many times, that somebody offends you and you decide, "Oh, all Christians are hypocrites, so I don't know." Are you a Christian or are you not? What do you mean all Christians are hypocrites? I mean, surely if you have been offended, take the matter to one of the elders, take the matter to one of the church offices, take the matter to the pastor or even to any other brother and sister and say, "Look, this person has done this. I don't think Christians should do that, should they?"
And then the matter is set in motion. Somebody will talk to that Christian and say, "Why did you treat this brother or sister like this? What is your reason for this? Have you any reason?" And if not, then you must repent of your action. If that person then repents, the matter is ended, they're finished. Then he is satisfied, you are satisfied, everything is dealt with and there is no more problem. But if you let the disease fester in the church, the whole church will become sick. You must deal with this for the sake of Christ and for your own sake as well as for the sake of the brother and sister.
But here the Lord is dealing with another question. The question is this: okay, this person has offended against me and he has repented, he has apologized, and I forgive. Okay, I forgive him. But then he goes and does it again. And then he does it again. Now this is the question that the Lord wants to deal with. Now how many times is he going to offend me and I keep saying, "Okay, I forgive you." I mean, there must be a limit somewhere.
So Luke chapter 17, verses 3 and 4 reads like this: "Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times and says, 'I repent,' you must forgive him." Seven times a day? Is there some kind of limit to this? You mean he steps on my shoes, steps on my toes seven times a day and says, "Sorry." And you say, "Okay." And he steps again and he says, "Sorry." And you say, "Okay." Seven times? I mean, how many more times are you going to wear my shoe out? And then I'm still forgiving him. And there must be some limit to this.
Well, the Lord says, seven times if it happens. Now seven of course is not meant to say seven is the limit. Seven is a perfect number as you know. It is meant in fact as virtue. In fact, if you can forgive a person seven times, you can certainly forgive him eight times. I mean, in fact you can forgive him ten times. I doubt if you can, by the time you reach seven and you have been able to forgive him that many times, you can certainly forgive him thereafter too.
Seven times all in one day. Now the next day starts all over again. You know, it goes back to zero. You turn the clock back and you start one, two, three, four, up again like this. Seven times a day, every day, for how long? Well, He didn't tell us. Every day it is going to be on and on with this forgiveness. Now that's the Lord's teaching. That's the Lord's teaching. We are to be unlimited in our forgiveness.
Now, for a moment, think for a moment how unforgiving you or the average Christian might be. Somebody offends you once and you are blue in the face or red in the face or whatever color your face becomes when you get angry, and you decide that that's it. "I shall never talk with this nasty creature again. I shall never again see the inside of a church." Only once and that's enough. That's it. What happened to the seven times in the day? Our forgiveness is as limited as that.
Why should we forgive? Why should we? I mean, I never did anything to him and he offends against me. Why should I forgive him? So let's turn to Matthew chapter 18 and we look at the Lord's teaching there. Matthew chapter 18, and we read from verse 21 to the end of the chapter.
"Then Peter came up and said to him, 'Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?' And Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you seven times but seventy times seven.'" Now, Peter here was thinking that he was being quite generous. He thought seven times is not a bad figure because according to the rabbis, the Jewish rabbis said that you can forgive a guy once and twice and three times but not the fourth time. I mean, three is enough. That's the maximum, finished. If the guy keeps doing this kind of thing, that's it. The fourth time, no more. That's it. And so Peter thought that if he goes double the number that the rabbis recommended and in fact a little bit over double, he was being extra generous. So what about seven times?
Well, this is not — here the rabbis were saying three times is all in the whole lifetime. Remember what Luke was saying there, seven times in one day. If you take that number through a lifetime, that will give you quite an astronomical figure. So the Lord says to him, "I do not say to you seven times but seventy times seven." Again, the figure is intended to be symbolic of a limitless number. A limitless number. If you can forgive a person seven times a day, say for seventy days, for two and a half months, I mean, that is pretty well without limit.
And then the Lord goes on. Why should we forgive? Well, notice the connection of verse twenty-three to what goes before with the word "therefore." "Therefore, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the reckoning, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And as he could not pay, the Lord ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, 'Lord, have patience with me and I will pay you everything.' And out of pity for him, the Lord of that servant released him and forgave him the debt."
"But the same servant, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. And seizing him by the throat, he said, 'Pay what you owe.' So his fellow servant fell down and besought him, 'Have patience with me and I will pay you.' He refused and went and put him in prison till he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their Lord all that had taken place. Then his Lord summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you besought me, and should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his Lord delivered him to the jailers, or torturers, till he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."
Notice the words "from your heart." It's not to say, "Okay, I've got to forgive you after all, the Lord said so. So, okay, forgive, forgive." But the forgiveness is not in the heart. Forgive from the heart — as joyfully, right, sure. It's what in Chinese you'll say clean, absolute forgiveness, and not just a grudging forgiveness. "Okay, but don't do it next time again. Next time I won't be so generous with you." The forgiveness from the heart.
Well, why should we forgive? The Lord explains why, and He explains it in this parable. Now, I have touched upon this parable sometime before, and I'm not going to deal with this parable in detail on these particular points, because I want to turn our attention to some important principles of the Christian life. But simply for the benefit of those who may not have heard me mention this parable before, I'll just give very quickly the outline of the matter.
The Lord himself is compared to the Lord of a great kingdom, a great establishment, if you like. And one of his servants has so mismanaged his business that he is in debt to the tune of 10,000 talents. How much is 10,000 talents? Well, if you had an RSV, it tells you in the margin this talent was more than 15 years' wages of a laborer. How much is 15 years' wages of a laborer? I do take, say, by the Canadian standard of living, because everything makes no sense unless you deal with it in each place according to that particular place's standard of living.
What does one laborer earn for one day? Well, I suppose if you take the figure at a very low figure, let us suppose that a worker in Canada earns $30 a day, and I'm sure most of them earn more than that, but suppose he earns $30 a day, and in a five-day week he earns $150, and in a month he earns $600. So I suppose that a $30 work day would be acceptable. Now, one talent, a talent equivalent to more than 15 years of work, that is equivalent to over 5,400 days of work.
Well, to put the matter quite briefly, 10,000 talents is equivalent to 50 million working days, 50 million denarii. A denarius is what a worker earned in one day — denarius. An average common worker earned in one day one denarius. 10,000 talents is equivalent to 50 million denarii. The figure will take us, if you multiply it by 30, to one and a half billion dollars — one and a half billion dollars. So you can get a good idea of what kind of figures we are talking about here.
Now, this kind of money, when we talk about a billion dollars, is the kind of finances that has to do with the state. I mean, Canada might, for example, as a state, in its budget, talk about one billion dollars here and two billion dollars there, but no private individual can manage to talk about money in those figures. So what is happening here is that this servant of the kingdom — maybe he was the finance minister, because the king's servants, in fact, all the high officers are also called servants of the king — this minister, maybe the finance minister, as we say, had so mismanaged the government's finances in some way that he has put the government in deficit to the tune of one and a half billion dollars, and that does pretty well happen from time to time.
And the king calls him to account and says, "What kind of a mess have you made with our government's accounts? What have you done?" Now, as a punishment for your sins — maybe they should do that in modern countries too. Maybe we'd get better finance ministers if they realized that they might be sold into slavery if they mismanage the government finances. That might be not a bad idea at all. But anyway, in the old days, of course, these kinds of things did actually happen.
The king called his finance minister to account for one and a half billion dollars deficit. And as punishment for making such a complete mess, he was ordered to be sold, his wife and his children were all to be sold as punishment for this matter. And he falls upon his knees before his lord and begs him that please to have mercy upon him. And he will repay. Notice his very ambitious words in verse 26: "And I will repay you everything." Well, how he proposes to do that, I don't know. Maybe he thinks, "Give me another chance as finance minister and I will bring the whole thing into credit next time to the tune of one and a half billion dollars of credit." I am sure that no king is likely to want to give him another chance at this, after he has made one mess already, to give him a chance to make a second mess.
But notice how generous this king is. This lord forgives his servant freely his debt. He said, "Alright, since you implore, since you repent, I freely forgive you your debt." He gives him another chance. He forgives him. He wipes out the debt. And so this minister is extremely happy.
He goes out, and then after a little while, what does he do? He runs into a fellow servant who owes him 100 denarii. We read here in verse 28: 100 denarii. By that account, by now we know that if we work at $30 equivalent per denarius, this man is owing him quite a respectable sum of money. He owes him about $3,000. It's not to be sniggered at — $3,000 is quite a considerable sum. But of course, nothing compared to $1.5 billion.
So he grabs his fellow servant and says, "Look here, I want this $3,000 back." And that man falls upon his knees and says, "Please, have pity upon me. I just don't have $3,000 in my pocket, and I will certainly repay you the $3,000." Well, $3,000 is possible to repay. It's still quite a sum that is within reach of the average working man given enough time. But he refused and he throws this man into prison. He has this man jailed over $3,000.
Well, this news is reported back to the king, back to the master, and the master is very angry with him and takes this finance minister that we are supposing about at this moment and says to him, "If I have forgiven you, should you not have forgiven your debtors? Shouldn't you have done the same?" Remember the Lord's Prayer? "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." That is when I was already dealing with this particular point. But if we do not forgive our debtors, neither will we be forgiven. And therefore, this man has his original forgiveness revoked.
And here, this is what we read in this passage. The Lord says to him, "You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you besought me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you? And in anger, in wrath, his Lord delivered him to the torturers." That's what the word is there — torturers. Until he should pay back the one and a half billion dollars, which means he will never be able to pay it back. Most certainly not in jail.
The message of this parable is quite plain to us. It is very easy to understand. It is what Professor Schweitzer of Zurich puts it in his recent commentary, or more recently translated into English commentary from the Neue Testament Deutsch, where he puts it simply under the heading "Loss of Grace." The grace that was given was lost. The grace that was originally given was, through this man's unworthiness to receive of that grace, lost.
Or, put in another way, the message is also very plain, as that great German scholar H.A.W. Meyer puts it in his commentary on the Greek New Testament — in fact, one of the best commentaries available today, which though written a hundred years ago has this year only been reprinted. Twenty volumes. His twenty-volume commentary on the Greek New Testament. And this is what he writes here. He puts it under the heading "Doctrine of this parable." And this is what he says: "The remission which thou hast obtained" — he is writing to the reader — "which you have obtained from God, of thy great unpayable debt of sin, must stimulate thee heartily to forgive thy brother the far more trifling debt which he has incurred as regards thee. Otherwise, when the messianic judgment comes, when the Messiah, that is when Christ's judgment comes, the righteousness of God will again rise up against thee, and thou wilt be cast into Gehenna, that is into hell, to be punished eternally."
Now, this message is plain enough. Even this great evangelical German scholar, Meyer, points out that the grace originally given, the original forgiveness is then revoked, and the person, then even if you have been forgiven, you will then be cast into Gehenna, to be punished eternally.
Of course, this teaching doesn't go down well with most Chinese churches, who want to, for the sake of their doctrines, to reject plain words of the Lord. And when I was looking at Watchman Nee, it was almost painful to see the way he tries to wriggle out of this, and the more he tries to wriggle out, the greater mess he gets into. For example, he says that what happens here is not that the initial grace was revoked, but that the subsequent grace was revoked. Now, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, because if the initial grace was not revoked, then he would still be forgiven his one billion dollar debt, and if he was still forgiven his one billion dollar debt, then he would not be cast into jail, because he would be cast into jail for nothing — there would be no debt for him to repay.
Now this kind of thing is almost unintelligible. When we sacrifice the word of God, the truth of the Word of God, to dogma — now then, when asked how he might repay the debt in prison, Watchman Nee goes on to something which sounds remarkably like heresy. He goes on to say that a person will then be tortured through the one thousand years of the messianic reign. This is the nearest thing I've ever heard to purgatory in Protestant teaching. And then somehow, by being tortured for this one thousand years, he might then be forgiven at the end of the thousand years. Now this is incredible. If through my being tortured, my sins can be forgiven, why in the first place did Christ ever need to die? If my suffering and my being tortured can actually atone for sin, then why in the first place did Christ need to die? For if by being tortured for a thousand years, a one and a half billion dollar debt can be removed, then why did Christ need to die?
This is the kind of tragic situation that those who do not want to face the Word of God come into. But we shall not waste time with people's notions of this kind. It just goes to show, and I mention it particularly for the benefit of those in training, as I have always said and I say again: when you come to the Word of God, you must come without prejudice, you must come with an open mind, with no preconceived doctrines in your mind. Otherwise, you are going to try to escape the plain statements that such as Professor Schweitzer or H.A.W. Meyer have no problem in seeing. But because you are locked into a dogma, you try to avoid the plain statement of the Word of God, and then you begin to speak complete nonsense, and then it is dreadful the consequences that will follow.
No, no. What the Lord is saying here is too plain and too clear even to discuss, and as you saw, the great exegetes have completely and frankly confessed the plain meaning of these words.
Now let us look at the most important principles involved in here. First we will see that there are three stages. You might say that this parable is theologically extremely important, but I don't want to talk theology now. But for the moment I must use a few theological terms. There are three stages all mentioned in here, and all to do with our salvation, fundamentally tied up with our salvation. And I hope that you will attend carefully to this parable, because your salvation depends on it. You make one mistake here, and you are in big, big trouble.
The first stage mentioned in this parable is the stage concerning what in theology is called justification. That is the forgiveness of your sins. Put in plain language, it means forgiveness. Now, what are we speaking about here? What happens here is that you and I, because we have sinned against God — sin in the Bible is spoken of as debt, as something that you owe to God. Every time you commit a sin, there goes on your computerized spiritual account a debit. You are in the red. And the red is getting bigger and bigger all the time on your account, so that you are in big, big trouble before God. You are heavily in debt. Maybe in this country they don't always put it in red. In England it is always in the red. That is to say, every time you owe the bank money, that part will be in red. So if you owe the bank 50 pounds, that will be in the red. In this country, I think sometimes they put some marks indicating that it's a debit. It may still be in black, but it's in debit. And I have to explain that because not everybody is from England — they don't know what "in the red" means.
So every time you sin, you are in debt. And the debt becomes such as to be utterly unpayable. Because the wages of sin, using another figure of speech, is death. There is nothing that can buy you back from death. When you sin, the penalty is death. And how can you pay off with money or any other means the death penalty?
The picture that the Lord uses shows us that because we sin against God, we are so heavily in debt, we are so much in the red, that there is no way we can pay off our debts to God. There is no use to say that I will pay them off by some good works, because the good works are the things that we have to do anyway. There are no good works that we don't have to do. Good works are things that are expected of us. There are no good works that can wipe out the debit side of things. In other words, if you are good, you are doing no more than what you should have done anyway. That is why the notion that we can save ourselves simply by being good does not understand the problem of sin. We cannot save ourselves by good works, because good works are what we ought to do anyway. That's simply our job, to do good works. And therefore, you cannot by doing your job clear past debt. Now, this is something very important to observe.
What is more, the debt is of such a size that the Lord illustrates it by saying that we are in debt when we have sinned against God to the tune of an astronomical figure. We have no way to pay back this debt. Therefore, the only thing that can happen to us, if we are to be cleared of this debt at all, is to repent before God. The only way you can clear your debt with God is to come before God and say, "God, I am a sinner. I realize that there is no way I can repay my debt. I beg of you to have mercy upon me and forgive me." And only on that way, on that condition, can God clear your debt.
Well, how does He clear your debt? Because Christ pays the debt. Christ died upon Calvary to clear the debt. As we just now sang, burdens are lifted at Calvary. This man was in enormous burden, a burden that amounted to one and a half billion dollars. And the Lord lifts the burden off him. He takes the penalty. Now, that's the only way. That's what justification means in theology. Justification simply means that when you have repented, God forgives you your debt. He clears your account and says, "Okay, I forgive you your sins freely."
Now, that point is where most churches stop at. That is absolutely true. But we may not stop there. Because if you stop there, you might just end up without being saved at all in the end. How? Because notice that this man had his debts revoked. He had his debts forgiven, but when he proved unworthy of that forgiveness, he lost the forgiveness eventually as well. That is a very sobering teaching in the Word of God that you must bear in mind. That you never become complacent and say, "Okay, I've been forgiven now. Now I can go out and twist the guy's neck who owes me the $3,000. Hooray, I'm free now." You go out and twist your brother's neck and then you discover that you will have lost the forgiveness first granted to you.
So the second point that we must come to very quickly is the method which is often in theology called sanctification. We are concerned here with conduct. This is very important for us to understand, and I shall formalize and I shall put it in formulae that is stated in such a way that it is easier to remember in a moment. But for this present moment, let's just remember this. You have been forgiven, but that forgiveness places upon you a very serious responsibility. There are no privileges, as I've said before and I say again. There are no privileges without responsibilities. When you are forgiven, that is a privilege. But that privilege immediately brings with it a very serious responsibility. What responsibility? The responsibility that you, having been forgiven, will likewise forgive others. That's what happened with the servant. God expects us to forgive others because He has forgiven us.
What happens? Put yourself in the position. Supposing somebody owes you a hundred dollars and says, "I can't give you back. I have no money, and my mother is sick and my brother is sick, and I have no money to return. I can't return the money to you." And you say, "Okay, forget the hundred dollars, forget it, no problem, we forget it." And then he goes out and grabs another guy who owes him one dollar and punches him in the nose and gives him a black eye. "Give me back my one dollar!" You say, "What is this? I forgave you one hundred dollars and you deal with the other guy like this for one dollar? I don't believe this! Now I'm going to expect you to pay me back the whole hundred dollars right now." Isn't that what you would feel too? You would feel that since you dealt so generously