Last updated: November 9, 2004
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?’
Matthew 18:32
God’s justifying love is unlike anything in the world. It frees us. A preoccupation with it is perhaps the most healthy thing we can do for ourselves on a spiritual level in our fight against sin. We must be continually aware of our shortcomings before a holy and just God, not forgetting that we are sinners, but rejoicing that we are covered in Christ’s righteousness. We must also be keenly observant that any practical righteousness that is being worked out in our lives is happening only because His grace is working in us to love the cross and what it has accomplished for us (Philippians 2:13; 1 Corinthians 1:18). To sum up my last entry: loving justification produces sanctification.
So, how does this love for justicication enable us to love other people? And why do I keep using the term “risk-taking” when I describe love? Hopefully that will become apparent even in these rough drafts. It’s a hopelessly daunting task to unpack what’s on my mind and what has happened in my life, but still I will try and pray that somehow God uses this to bless anyone out there who is on the verge of being loosed to risk in the cause of love.
Jesus’ Parable in Matthew 18
This is one of the most important parables of Jesus to me. I cannot read it without weeping. At the onset, Peter asks Jesus how many times he ought to forgive his brother, and Jesus tells him: over and over and over again. As long as your brother sins and repents, forgive him.
Why? If your brother sins against you in the same way continually, doesn’t he lose his chance for forgiveness with you? Hasn’t he had enough chances? Hasn’t he blown it too many times? How in the world can we forgive someone who continually hurts us?
Those are questions in my mind when I read Jesus’ initial response. In Luke 17 He’s even more pointed: “Pay attention 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, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
“Must”? This is not optional. We are commanded to forgive a brother who offends us in the same way seventy times seven times in one day. How in the world can anyone do that? It’s impossible.
In Matthew 18, we have the answer: do not forget how little you deserve and how unworthy you are of God’s grace in justifying you. Justification is the key to loving your brother and risking forgiveness, and we know that forgiveness is a risk.
Loving When It Hurts
If you are dancing with someone and he or she steps on your toes during a certain step, you will be wary the next time that step is taken. When you experience pain, the immediate response is to defend against being in the position to be hurt again by that person. We are not wired, by nature, to forgive and expose ourselves to being hurt again by that person. Yet, this is how we all, in our hearts, desperately want to be loved. None of us want to be loved based on our past failures or even our present successes. We want to be loved in success and in failure. We desire unconditional love.
The Parable Itself
So to illustrate His advice, Jesus launches into a parable. A slave owed his master an incalculable sum of money. The slave was driven to the point of begging, pleading for mercy from his master. The master, out of pity, forgave his debts and withheld what was due the slave. The slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a paltry sum.
This is leading up to the shock of the story. It’s in our nature to desire to be shown mercy when we are in a helpless circumstance. So the master’s forgiveness of the slave isn’t so shocking as what happens next. Of course, some of us have read this story so many times our hearts have become calloused to the shock factor this parable originally had. Here is how the shock moment is set up.
So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’
Note: his fellow servant. He was not over this servant. The servant owed him money. But they are both servants of the master. We see the servant who had just previously pleaded for mercy now in the position to choose between granting mercy or justice. His fellow servant did owe him money, so it was properly his right to take back the money. But he was also just forgiven a much greater debt by his own master.
Shock:
He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.
O, feel the weight of that! Feel the weight! This is a travesty. It is outrageous. It is scandalous. We are meant to be shocked when we read that. It should awaken us out of our stupor to cry “Foul!”
Justice Is Easy. Right Is Hard.
Did the servant do something just? Yes. He had every legal right to do what he did. But everything in us convulses when we read it. We do not believe and feel in our hearts that what he did was right. He who had been forgiven so much should have looked on his fellow servant in pity, still in awe of the debt his master had forgiven him, and extended the same mercy he had received. Instead, he demanded his right for the little money that was owed him and put his fellow slave in a prison to receive repayment.
Keep in mind that this is all because Peter asked Jesus how many times he ought to forgive his brother before it is “enough.” Jesus is telling us something incredibly radical. It’s foreign to how we are wired, yet at the same time, it’s what we deeply desire for others to give us.
In the movie The Winslow Boy, there is a moment I dearly love in an exchange between two of the characters.
Sir Robert Morton: I wept today because right had been done.
Catherine Winslow: Not justice?
Sir Robert Morton: No, not justice. Right. Easy to do justice. Very hard to do right.
It is easy for us to take the wrongs another person has committed against us and execute justice against them by not truly forgiving them in our hearts. This is what the servant did. And anyone reading this should feel repulsed by the justice of the servant. It’s easy to do justice. It’s very hard to do right. What would have been right was for the slave to forgive his fellow slave in the same way that he had been forgiven by his master.
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.
They were “greatly distressed.” We should be, too. How could this servant who had been forgiven so much choose to forgive so little? How could he keep from his fellow servant that which he had undeservedly received at the hand of his master?
Do you see justification’s role yet? I hope you do, but if not, keep reading. I hope it will become apparent to you in a profound way.
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?’
“As I had mercy on you.” This is what we know is the right I mentioned earlier. The slave had been forgiven so much, so he should have forgiven as well. This wasn’t to pay his master back! He owed no more debts to his master. But he owed a debt of love and forgiveness to his fellow slave because he had been forgiven so much by his master.
The Chilling Ending
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 chilling. This should make the hair on the backs of our necks rise up. Because the servant wouldn’t forgive, all his debts were back on his head. We owe forgiveness to others because we have been forgiven.
This is simply astounding and massive. What I hear from Jesus to Peter in this parable is: Peter, you owe God a tremendous debt which He paid on your behalf in My blood. Your sins are removed and My righteousness has covered you. Do you love that? Do you prize that? Do you value that? If so, then your desires should be to forgive your brother from your heart. You ought to want to forgive him, even if he sins against you seven times. Lose sight of what you have been forgiven of, and you will not forgive your brother from your heart.
There Are No Conditions For Grace
Those we love are going to disappoint us. They are going to fail us, over and over again at times. And if we are not preaching the cross to our souls every day and truly banking on that with all our heart, we will not want relationships restored with those who’ve sinned against us. We will rather cast them aside and guard ourselves against them. We will not risk exposing ourselves to that harm again because we’ve been hurt by them before. We become calloused and hardened over time. And if this passage is true, God is not happy with us at all when we do this.
When I have been offended by something someone has done against me, my immediate reaction is to be offended and demand justice. That is not entirely bad. We should desire justice to be done. But often I have used “justice” as an excuse to withhold forgiveness from someone. “I’ll forgive you if….” is not unconditional forgiveness. If a brother sins against us seven times, we cannot tell him “I’ll forgive you if you do not do this to me the eighth time.” And so we risk when we say, “I forgive you and wipe the slate clean.” It’s not as though we forget what happened, but instead we love in spite of what happened. We are exposing ourselves to the possibility of being hurt again. That’s a risk. And this hits upon the heart of my thinking on risk-taking love.
There have been times in my life where someone has shared something that did offend me, something I did not think was right. Instead of demanding my right, I said, “I love you and I forgive you. I do not think differently of you.” It was easy in those times. Why? Because I was aware of my own falling short of deserving love. When I wasn’t aware of my sin and unworthiness before God, I’d start demanding my rights and forgiveness was excruciatingly difficult.
What’s Merit Got To Do With Love?
When we have offended someone and desire forgiveness, we do not do so on the basis of our merit. We shouldn’t say, “I’ve done all this. See? Now you ought to forgive me.” We cannot offer risk-taking love based on performance. It is often in spite of performance that we risk the most.
When we admit we have offended someone and ask their forgiveness, we have tossed aside our armor and have exposed our most tender spots. That’s a risk in itself, to love someone enough to be brutally honest about how you’ve offended them instead of hiding behind lies and self-righteousness. What you shouldn’t do after admitting that you are wrong is say, “Well, I’ve done all of this to make up for it, so now you owe me forgiveness and I’ve earned restoration.” No, we are never worthy of someone’s forgiveness and their grace. That is a legalistic relationship, not a loving one. It is impossible for two people to truly love each other who view each other based on their merits, not based on a passion to show grace to them. I call it a “divine chemistry.” We must view each other, as brothers and sisters in Christ, as tarnished sinners covered with Christ’s righteousness.
Fellow Servants Risk
So there we stand, our tender spots revealed. And all we can do is beg just like the servant, “Have patience with me!” We cannot offer to this person, our fellow servant, a changed past with the absence of what we have done to offend them. Nor should we make bargains like, “If I don’t offend you the eighth time, will you forgive me?” We can’t change the fact that we’ve offended them seven times, and the power to not offend them the eighth time doesn’t come by mere willpower or stoic commitment. That’s not how true love operates. It keeps no record of wrongdoings. It believes all things, bears all things, hopes all things.
True risk-taking love says, “I have offended you seven times and I do not want to offend you eight times. I am not worthy of your forgiveness, I am not worthy of your grace. But I plead for it.” When someone repents like that, true risk-taking love says, “Yes, I forgive you. How can I not? I am also in need of Christ’s righteousness and God’s forgiveness. I love and forgive you.” Then, out of that forgiveness, amazing restoration can occur because these two people, fellow servants in Christ, have risked to love each other and have exposed themselves both to potential harm.
The one who repents exposes himself to being rejected based on his sinfulness. The one who forgives exposes himself to being sinned against again. But if we love each other, if we grasp the reality of the cross and what it accomplishes for us, viewing each other as justified sinners, amazing things can happen in setting loose people who risk in love. It is an amazing freedom, isn’t it, when we repent and receive forgiveness? Isn’t that what we crave, to be loved in spite of our shortcomings (and, I believe, in spite of our virtues)? It takes a risk-taker to love sinners like us.
I’ve said more than enough for now. There are more Scriptures I want to unpack. But justification’s role in forgiveness is absolutely critical. We must be a people who relate to God daily on the basis of His grace alone. If we do, then we can relate to each other in grace. If we don’t, then we will waste our lives in a prison of our own hard-heartedness. There are no untarnished saints, brothers and sisters. Every one of us requires a supernatural amount of grace to love because we have all fallen short of God’s glory and have experienced our depravity from one degree to another. But if we know how much we have been forgiven, we will be so much quicker to forgive those who wrong us. We will risk in loving them. We will look them in the eyes and say, “I know you are a sinner. But I love you and I forgive you.” And they will know that we are Christians by our love.
Risk-Taking Love Heals And Purifies
One last thing: as I said at the beginning, loving justification produces sanctification. When we love the cross, we cling to it and sin loses its savor. So, while we know we have offended God on the same count over and over again, loving the cross changes our affections so that, while we may have offended God “seven times” on an issue, we are given the freedom to not offend Him the “eighth time” through sanctification. Let me make it clear: I’m not advocating with the above that there is no change in the hearts or the deeds of two people who repent and forgive. There is no resigned acceptance of “Well, I will offend you the eighth time, so you just have to show me grace.” No, this type of love empowers a person to stop offending another the next go around.
If I were to realize I’ve offended God with a particular sin and say, “God, I’ve offended You seven times in this. I’m so sorry. I’ll just not do it the eighth time,” that’s willpower religion. It is self-righteousness. It is legalism, period. That’s why I have failed so many times in my life with God and many people that I love. So how do I live victoriously now? I say, “God, I’ve offended You seven times in this. I’m so sorry. I repent. Thank You for forgiving me in the cross and that I am counted righteous in Christ. That’s my only hope.” This has, without fail, produced a joy in God that makes sin so utterly distasteful that the “eighth time” has not happened to me.
But how can I be sure the eighth time will never happen again? Not by committed willpower! The only hope that the eighth time will never come again is if I continue to focus on the cross, that my righteousness is not mine but was blood-bought for me by Christ! Self-righteousness will fail me and the “eighth time” will occur. If I were to give God ten years of not sinning the “eighth time,” I would be no more pleasing to Him than I am right now because my righteousness is not inherent in me. It is outside of me and outside of time. It is Christ. If I stopped fighting for joy in the cross on day one of the year eleven, it is likely I’d sin the eighth time. That’s why I said this is life or death. So God has given me a holy joy that I fight for daily, and thus far I have not gone back to my sin and it offers me no appearance of pleasure or joy.
So, when two believers love each other with this love, it will invariably lead to less occurrences, if not complete eradication, of specific offenses. It does not eliminate the memory of those offenses (as if they never existed), but it does not hold the offenses against the person any longer and hopes in a future of change. This love is radical. It is so freaking huge. It is so potent and powerful. I cannot contain my admiration and exaltation of it. Praise God for justification, and praise God that love never fails!
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