The Unmerciful Servant

and grace, and mercy. And so he answered Peter, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” In other words, an unlimited number of times, because love doesn’t keep track of such things. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, love “keeps no record of wrongs.” But if you aren’t keeping track of how other people have wronged you; if you don’t keep mental notes on all the sins committed against you, how are you supposed to know when enough is enough? How are you supposed to know when it’s time to say, “I refuse to forgive you any more?” You aren’t. That’s the point. For a Christian, that day never comes. And to explain why, Christ gives us this parable.

The scene is the king’s throne room. One by one, his servants come in to settle accounts. Perhaps these servants were high-ranking government officials of some kind. Precisely who they are, and how one of them came to owe the king such a great sum, we aren’t told. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that this man’s debt far exceeds his ability to repay. How much does he owe? Ten thousand talents. One talent equaled six hundred denarii, and a denarius was one day’s wage. And so ten thousand talents would be equivalent to twenty thousand years’ of earnings, or something like a billion dollars. An incredible amount! But there’s a problem. The slave is bankrupt. His debts far exceed his assets. And so the king orders that his property be seized and sold. The king even orders the servant and his family to be sold into slavery. Not that even this would be enough to cover the debt; at the going rate for slaves, it would raise at most ten talents, a mere one-thousandth of what he owed. But it illustrates just how desperate the servant’s situation was. Even if he liquidated all his possessions, even if he and his wife and children were sold into slavery, it wouldn’t be nearly enough. The same goes for his offer to work, and pay back the debt. It was both desperate and ridiculous. He could labor for a hundred lifetimes, and still not have enough. His situation was truly hopeless. All he could do was beg for mercy. And then what happened? A miracle! The king took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go free. Just like that. No punishment, no seizure of his property, no slavery, nothing. The king simply wiped out all his debt and let him go free.

Now, in order to appreciate the point of this parable, we need to understand that every one of us, every person who ever lived, is in the same position as this slave. Because of our sin, we also owe a great debt, which is far beyond our ability to repay. Our only hope is to have the debt forgiven. The good news is that this is just what God has promised to do. Through the sacrifice of his life on the cross, Christ paid the penalty for our sin. And so He is able to completely forgive the debt of anyone who places their faith in him. Their guilt will be utterly wiped out, and they will be reconciled to God. No punishment. No need for “good works” undertaken in a vain attempt to pay for our sin. Just forgiveness, utter and complete.

I expect most of us here this morning would agree with what I have just said. We know that forgiveness of sins comes through faith alone. We know that we can’t pay for our sin by doing good works, that there’s no cosmic scale on which God is going to balance the good and bad of our lives to see which is greater. In