Jesus was never one to waste a parable. He knew that His sayings would be written down and spread across the world for the benefit of the Church. His majestic teachings are “broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough there for the elephant to swim.” In Matthew 18, He discusses forgiveness. Here He delivers the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.
Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master 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, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until 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 master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until 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.
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
The shallow portion of this parable is simple to discern, and full of trustworthy wisdom A Christian forgives, because he has been forgiven. If he does not forgive, he is subject to that dread promise of Matthew 6: “if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Woe to the man who cannot find pardon from God, yet how blessed is the man who finds His mercy? But what of the depths? I am not a strong swimmer; it would be a fine martyrdom to drown in the Word.
When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven in a parable, He oft begins, not with the Kingdom, but with the King, who, of course, corresponds to God. God is the primary object of the Kingdom of Heaven; it is His. He is the Alpha: the beginning of all things. If one wishes to ponder Heavenly things, and does not begin with God, he has already utterly gone astray, and must start again. All theology flows from a right understanding of God, so much so that the study of God Himself is called “theology proper.” It is impossible to properly consider any doctrine of religion without first considering God’s role, will, and power.
This parable does not begin with any desire of man, but rather with God’s desire to settle accounts with his servants. The debtor does not come before God of himself, seeking to be forgiven his debt, but rather “is brought” to Him. It is not important how he was brought, except that God is powerful enough to summon any debtor to His court. Try as he might, no man will ever be strong, intelligent, or sneaky enough to escape the judgement of the Lord.
The debtor owes an incredibly great debt to his Lord, and cannot of himself repay Him it. This is the state of every sinner. A great debt is owed to God for an abundance of things: life, love, peace, joy, nourishment, and so forth, but God grants these out of His Kindness, which superabundantly flows from His very Being and over-fills the cup of all who receive His graces, even the unrighteous. He does not count these gifts against us as something owed to him, for they are gifts indeed. What He does count against us is our sin, wherewith we store up His wrath in ourselves, for which His Justice demands fair recompense. Yet, while our experience of the natural graces (which God does not charge against us) is finite, our sin against the Almighty is infinite, and demands infinite repayment, which no man can ever settle. The doomed sinner is left in the state of the debtor in the parable, utterly without hope.
Therefore Jesus gives us an image of Hell in describing the state of this man. He is sold, along with his wife and his children, and all his property is taken from him. He was already a slave of his Master; blessed is the man who is a slave in the house of God! But God will no longer tolerate such a man in His own house, rather he is sold. Who else can shall he be sold to but sin, death, and the devil? Even worse, the debtor is denied his family as well, who have by his actions been brought into the same debt themselves, and are sold into the service of Satan. All earthly comforts have been torn from the debtor. His riches have rotted in his pocket, and his loved ones can no longer comfort him. He is without hope for the rest of his life.
It is the grave strictness of this penalty which convicts the debtor, and causes him to humble himself before his Lord. This shows the effectiveness of God’s Law unto contrition and repentance. Seeing that nothing but the bare pleasure of his Lord would keep him from this dreadful fate, he acted in faith and implored Him for mercy. Still he was foolish, and believed that he could repay his Lord, as if the ability was within him to do so, but the Lord forgave his ignorance and presumption along with his debt. It is common for Christians, when they are immature in the faith, to imagine that there is something they must—or can—do to atone for their own sins. This is, of course, a lie, but God does not refuse to justify them on account of their error, rather preferring out of His Kindness to show them weakness in His Strength. By forgiving the debtor his debt, the Lord showed the debtor that he had no power to ever repay it in the first place. The Lord also showed His Power, displaying that ten thousand talents, a truly massive amount of riches, was nothing to Him, and could easily be forgiven. So the Master had pity on the debtor.
The debtor is a debtor no more, and should be esteemed as a slave of his good Master. Yet alas, though he received the Word of forgiveness with joy, the soil of his soul was rocky. He was tempted when he saw that his fellow slave owned him a small amount. He sinned as a hypocrite when he seized the other slave in anger, as if he himself had not been a debtor for much greater. He continued in sin when he was merciless, refusing to have patience with his fellow slave. Where the debt that the unforgiving slave owed to the master was great, and impossible to pay, the debt that was owed to him was small, and could easily have been paid. The unforgiving slave sinned, not even in refusing to forgive the debt entirely (for perhaps there was a righteous purpose for which he needed his denarii), but in refusing to show any mercy whatsoever, even when the burden of mercy was much smaller than that which had been shown to him.
Seeing the anger, violence, and mercilessness of the unforgiving slave, his fellows reported him to their master. Now, the master in the parable is not as mighty as God, and cannot see all things of his own power, as God can. Where God sees all things through His own power, the power of the master is shown through his servants, such that what they see, he sees, granting him a sort of omniscience with respect to the parable. The sin, therefore, of the unforgiving slave could not escape the sight of the Master, and once more by His unspoken power He brought forth the slave. Where their first meeting was a time of mercy, this was a time of wrath. Even as his Master’s wrath burned against him for his sins, the slave was not yet unforgivable, but became so by his unrepentance. Knowing that the Master was full of mercy, the slave still foolishly refused to throw himself down at the Master’s feet and beg for pardon.
As God is the Alpha and the Omega, the Master’s actions form the beginning and end of the parable. Where the Master has forgiven the debt out of kindness, He now required it out of wrath. Now, if the slave could not pay ten thousand talents while free, and having wife, children, and riches, how much less could he pay while locked in a jail? So Jesus’ words, “until he should pay all his debt,” truly means that he should remain in prison forever. This is another image of Hell, which shows its utter eternity, for if a sinner cannot pay for the debt of his trespasses in this life, how much less will be able to pay for those same sins in Hell?
Jesus concludes the parable with a warning. “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” Here Jesus asserts with full firmness what He said earlier, “if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Forgiveness is a sure fruit of repentance. No man can be a Christian and harbor unforgiveness, or a desire for personal vengeance, or the like. To spurn forgiveness is to despise the Will of the Holy Spirit, and to walk the short and wide road to unrepentance. For to repent is to turn from sin, while unforgiveness is to willfully harbor hatred for another on account of their perceived sin.