16th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 19) – September 17th, 2023
Trinity Lutheran Church, Block, Kansas
Rev. Joshua Woelmer
Text: Matthew 18:21–35
“Forgiveness of Debt”
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Debt is everywhere in 21st Century America, in more ways than one. Our current national debt is somewhere around $32 billion—and that doesn’t even cover what we’ve promised for Social Security or Medicare.
But debt isn’t only a problem for our government to figure out—household debt can become a problem. Now, I’m not one to give financial advice, but I do hear terms such as “good debt” and “bad debt.” The idea is that good debt is like a low-interest mortgage on a house, while bad debt is a high-interest car loan. Regardless, we all know that people can get swamped in debt pretty quickly, especially if they can’t control their spending on a credit card.
There’s one financial guru named Dave Ramsey who has some pretty unique financial advice. I don’t agree with everything that he says, but there may be some good things that he says on debt and managing personal finance. He’s well known for encouraging people to get out of debt and stay out of debt. On a human mind level, I get why he says this. He’s not thinking of good debt versus bad debt. For him, all debt is bad because we are the problem.
The reason I bring up debt in this way is that God regularly compares sin to debt. In the Lord’s Prayer that Luke gives us, he even says: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Luke 11:4). That might seem strange if you don’t see the connection between sin and debt.
It goes like this. Every time you sin against someone, you become in debt to them. If you insult someone or disrespect them or commit any other sin, it’s like you’re taking out a loan from them. Some of these loans may be small, and some may be huge. Humanly speaking, some sins can seem smaller than others. But if I were to borrow some of Dave Ramsey’s language, none of this sin-debt is good. Not one bit. There’s no such thing as good sin-debt.
So our Gospel text begins with Peter asking Jesus, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” (21). This seems like a reasonable request. In fact, the Jews of Jesus’s day said to forgive someone three times, so Peter’s question actually comes across as more than generous—more than double what the Jews would say.
If we were thinking only in the human realm, this might seem reasonable. After all, how many bank loans would your bank forgive before not loaning you any more money? Three might be the maximum, but you’d be pushing it. How many sin-debts should you forgive your neighbor? Here’s where Jesus flips upside down our human reasoning.
Before getting into his parable, he says, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” (22). Really quickly here, Jesus does not want you to count 77 sins that your neighbor has committed against you, and then the 78th sin crosses the line. No, Jesus doesn’t want you to count. He wants you to lose count pretty quickly.
But getting back to the parable, what Jesus wants you to realize is that your sin-debt to God is way more than your sin-debt that you hold with other people. In fact, you can be the most victimized individual there is—you may have suffered so much sin from others—and yet you still are in massive debt to God. You have a sinful nature. You have inherited it from Adam and Eve. It prevents you from loving God perfectly. It corrupts even the best intentions that you have. Your pride and selfishness break the First Commandment by making yourself a god instead of honoring the true God.
So we pick up with Jesus’s parable about “a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants” (23). What this means is that he’s calling in his loans to see who hasn’t been paying up, and maybe he can try to get some of his money back for other ventures. One of the men owed him 10,000 talents. Now, this is a gargantuan sum of money. To have borrowed this much, he may have been a provincial governor or someone important. Or, it may be criminal debt from a crime that he had committed and was charged money for. Regardless, think of this like our national debt. It’s huge, and no one person could ever pay it off. He knows it, the king knows it, everyone knows it. So, the king orders slavery for him and family.
The man pleads for his life, begging, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything” (26). This is plainly bonkers. Patience? You’re asking for patience? On a loan that cannot be repaid in even a hundred years?
And yet, the king does something even more astounding: he forgives the loan. Our text says “out of pity,” but the word here is deep compassion from the gut. It’s a divine compassion upon our sorry state.
Then, you know the rest of the story. That same man goes out and chokes a fellow servant over a hundred denarii, or about $15,000 today. It’s like a car loan today. Could that be paid off with patience? Yes, of course it could. With a decent interest rate and steady income, you’re looking at 3-5 years. And yet, he doesn’t even give the man his patience. He demands it now. He’s reported by other fellow servants, and they tell the master, and he delivers the man over to the jailers until his debt is repaid.
We are that man, of course. We’ve racked up a huge debt, greater than the servant of the parable. You have nothing to offer in repayment for wicked and sinful lives. Fall before the throne of your heavenly King, and beg for his mercy. Confess your guilt. Don’t ask for patience, but for forgiveness.
And then rejoice, dear friends. For your heavenly Father and King has had pity upon you. He forgives you the entirety of your debt, pronouncing you free of all your payments. You are set free. This King has sent forth his only Son to take up your flesh and your debt. He came as your sin-bearer. Having no debt of his own, the debt of all mankind was placed upon his shoulders. He was nailed to the cross, where the ledger of your transgressions was covered in his holy, precious blood. He paid off that criminal debt by dying in your place.
St. Paul writes in Colossians 2, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (13–14). God took your debt and through Jesus paid it off.
So freely give as you have freely received. Forgive those who speak lies about you, who cheat you out of what is yours, who twist your words, and who abuse their authority to do you harm. Forgive those who sin against you not once or twice or seven times, but seventy-seven times. Forgive them from the heart, because God’s forgiveness has won your heart.
Is it hard to forgive? Yes, sometimes. But one important distinction to make is between the act of forgiveness and the emotions surrounding it. You are called to make the decision to forgive those who have sinned against you. Say the words “I forgive you.” That is forgiveness. Then, every time you see them again, and your sinful emotions threaten to bubble up, suppress them by reminding yourself that you have forgiven them. Work against the desire to get revenge or to stop talking to them or to avoid them. You are not a debt collector who is lurking to remind people that you still hold their debts, because you don’t.
And so, you forgive as you have been forgiven, because when God works in your heart the faith to receive forgiveness, by that same work he creates in your heart the love to give forgiveness. We forgive and forgive and forgive until we die. When we die, we die with forgiveness on our lips, as did our Lord Jesus who prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Stephen was the first Christian martyr, and he died praying this prayer for the Jews who were stoning him. Forgiveness is what marks our lives as Christians. Luther is well-known for saying on his deathbed, “We are all beggars, this is true.” If you want to live as a spiritual beggar, knowing that you deserve nothing good from God, then listen to God who declares to you the full forgiveness of all your sins and see God open up for you the riches of heaven as he showers you with spiritual treasures more precious than anything money can buy. No one is wealthier than the one whose debt of sin has been forgiven by God.
Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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