Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

From the O.T. of the Day: "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? [Micah 6.8]

From the Epistle of the Day: And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. [Philippians 1.6]

From the Holy Gospel, in the NKJV: "So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, do not forgive his brother his trespasses." [Matthew 18.35; NKJV]

I.

Your dear Lord Jesus Christ teaches you how to pray. Twice in the New Testament, He gives you the Our Father, also called "The Lord’s Prayer." In Matthew, the Our Father is taught in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, a lengthy class given by Jesus to His apostles-to-be, as a large crowd gathered around them in the course of the lesson. The Our Father is offered as the alternative to the use of "vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore," Jesus says, "do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. In this manner, therefore, pray."

In Luke, the occasion for again teaching the Our Father comes in response to the apostles-in-training: "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." Often, in Protestant circles, the Our Father is viewed as a "model prayer," from a misunderstanding of what these disciples asked. When they mentioned John the Baptizer and his disciples, they were referring to the complex regimen of prayer times and prayer segments that made up the prayer life of the Essene wilderness community of which John was a part before he began his ministry. The monastic life that Luther encountered in his early adult life would be another example of this system and life of prayer.

In contrast, Jesus offers the Our Father – not as a model prayer for the individual to imitate, but as a holy text, a complete prayer, a prayer for the Christian community to use.

II.

Today’s Holy Gospel immediately follows the instruction of our Lord concerning what the catechism calls "The Office of the Keys," in which He indicates that unrepentant, persistent, and visible-to-the-public sinners are to be excommunicated from the church, because they are unwilling to repent and be forgiven. Peter then raises a question as to how this applies to the matter of forgiveness among individuals: "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?"

Now, you need to know that Peter thinks he is being generous here. According to Jewish teaching, one should forgive a repentant offender up to four times. Peter raises the ante to seven times, and he does not even include the question of whether the offender is repentant or not.

Christ’s answer speaks not only to Peter but to all Christians everywhere, as seen by His conclusion to the parable, which here is quoted from the King James Version so that you can notice the plural "you," which is "ye": "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses."

And the answer to Peter’s question is: "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven, " by which He means, "Forgive continually, and no matter what may be the attitude of the offender." Then, He tells the familiar parable in today’s Holy Gospel, about the servant who is forgiven by his master an unbelievable debt, who then will not forgive a very small debt owed him by a fellow servant.

In his famous book, Heretics, G.K. Chesterton compares what counts for virtue among pagans with what counts for virtue in Christianity. He writes: "The first evident fact, I say, is that the pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, are the sad virtues, and that the mystical virtues of faith, hope, and charity are the ... exuberant virtues. And the second evident fact is the fact that the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and that the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are ... as unreasonable as they can be."

"As the word ‘unreasonable’ is open to misunderstanding, the matter may be more accurately put by saying that each one of these Christian or mystical virtues involves a paradox in its own nature, and that this is not true of any of the typically pagan or rationalist virtues. Justice consists in finding out a certain thing due to a certain man and giving it to him. Temperance consists in finding out the proper limit of a particular indulgence and adhering to that. But charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the seemingly incredible, or it is no virtue at all.

Chesterton concludes: "It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse... For practical purposes, it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment."

II.

In today’s parable, Jesus’ point is precisely the same as Chesterton’s quote: Charity – love – means the pardoning of what is unpardonable. Charity means to forgive the behavior that is undeserving of forgiveness. And that is precisely what the master does. When Christ then applies His parable to Christians, with the words, "So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses," He makes this same point: Charity – love – means pardoning what is unpardonable; charity means to forgive the one who is undeserving of forgiveness. Indeed, "Faith, hope, and charity abide, these three, but the greatest of these is charity."

Yet, from this parable Jesus would show you that the ultimate Christian virtue is not these three. Yes, these are great Christian virtues, and of these three, charity is the greatest. But the ultimate Christian virtue is different, and in fact this yet-greater virtue is the foundation for these other three.

The ultimate Christian virtue is humility! And that truth is shown in the Holy Gospel for today! The man who was forgiven much remains just that: a man who was forgiven much, not a man who suddenly debt-free. But the servant in the text does not know this. He presumes to be a debt-free man, rather than a forgiven man, and so his dealings with his fellow servant are conducted totally without regard to his dealings with his master. On the basis of being a free man, he shows no charity to the fellow servant who owes him a relatively small sum. He take an action only a free man is permitted to do: He has his fellow servant thrown into the debtors’ prison until he should pay the debt.

Here is where humility should have entered the picture, but, in the case of this first servant in Jesus’ parable, it did not. The fact is that this man, forgiven the astonishing debt he owed his master, remains for the rest of his earthly life in the status of "the man who was forgiven much." To know this, and to so live the rest of life from this gracious, undeserved moment forward, is the Spirit-given virtue of humility at work. The reason that the first servant finds himself in the debtors’ prison at the end of the parable is that he only feigns humility in the first place, where his begging for mercy is not an act of humility, but simply manipulating his master.

Christ’s parable is a warning against manipulating God under the mantle of feigned humility! If you" from your heart forgive not every one his brother their trespasses," you merely manipulate God with your own prayers for forgiveness. Humility, on the other hands, speaks just as Christ teaches us to speak in the Our Father: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." This is so because we Christians know, and in all humility believe, that we are always in this life, "the one who was forgiven much."

There is "risk" to forgiveness." It’s not the rational way to think. Forgiveness depends entirely on what God has declared to you: "Your sins, which are many, are forgiven you!" To believe that is to take the risk of forsaking all your reason and your rights to be the judge over others and their sins, especially those sins which hurt you. The world, the devil, and your sinful flesh would tell you: "You don’t have to forgive – after all, there’s justice! You don’t have to forgive – after all, this is unreasonable! But faith says, "Ignore your rights and your reason: Take the risk of forgiveness! Make of those who sin against you the same man or woman that God makes you, "the one who is forgiven much." For that is how God sees you and treats you! And so, through His apostle, He says, to you: "And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one anther, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you!"