Monday, March 5

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Matthew 18:21-35

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

“The servant fell on his knees before him, ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!” he demanded.

“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’

“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master tuned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Years ago, when our boys were much younger, I had to step in to arbitrate a conflict that had erupted between brothers. One of them was crying and saying something about the other brother smacking him or something like that. The one accused of doing the smacking was standing there with a guilty kind of look on his face. So the first order of business was to determine who had done what to whom and why.

When I was confident that I had reasonable clarity on who had been the smacker and who had been the smack-ee, and wanting to move the two of them through a process of productive conflict resolution, I turned to the boy who had done the smacking and said, “Was that the right thing to do?”

He lowered his eyes and dutifully shook his head, “No,” he said softly.

Then I said, “Are you ever supposed to smack your brother?”

Again, he answered correctly, “No.”

I continued, “What are you supposed to do?”

He said, “Use my words.”

Then I went for the closing argument, “What should you say to your brother?”

He paused, as if trying to gather all the strength of his will, and said, “I forgive you.”

While he had the right idea, his execution left a little something to be desired!

Forgiveness. It stands right smack-dab in the middle of our faith; we all desperately need it; yet, we often struggle to offer it to others.

Peter comes to Jesus with a question:

“Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”

By his question he is admitting that he has a problem with forgiveness. He is saying that forgiveness is hard.

Jesus answers with a story; a powerful parable about a man who seeks forgiveness for himself but struggles to offer it to others.

While we will look more deeply into the parable in coming days, for today let’s look at the word Jesus uses for forgiveness in his story. Four different times Jesus uses the word apheimi (which would have been a translation of the word Jesus would have used in his native language – Aramaic). The Greek word apheimi carried a root meaning of “to send away or set free.” To a Jewish person listening to Jesus tell this story the word would have immediately brought to mind the Old Testament image of the “scapegoat.”

Way back in Leviticus 16, God told Moses to celebrate the Day of Atonement by laying his hands on a goat that had been selected for this purpose. He was then told to confess the sins of the people onto the goat, and finally to then carry the goat off to a solitary place in the desert and release it, so the goat would carry the sins of the people away.

This ancient practice was a visual image to the people of what God does with our confessed sins; and would be a precursor of the work of Christ on our behalf.

Jesus is teaching us that forgiveness is not ignoring sin and the hurt that sin causes. Forgiveness is not letting someone “off the hook” or “get away with it.” Rather, forgiveness is recognizing both the sin and the hurt; but instead of holding on to it ourselves, we confess it onto the “scapegoat” God has provided, who then carries the sin and the hurt far away.

Do you carry the sins of others in your heart today? Do you know that you can confess those sins and hurts onto the scapegoat and allow him to bear them away?

Thank God for providing not only for the forgiveness of your sins, but for the forgiveness of the sins of others as well.

Pastor Brian Coffey